Chapter II

Of course, came the thought, a very good way to put out a fire is to pour cold water on it. That’s a very good idea.

At least, it had put out the fire.

Fire? What fire? The fire in his body, the scalding heat that had been quenched by the cold water.

Slowly, as though it were being turned on through a sluggishly turning rheostat, consciousness came back to The Guesser.

He began to recognize the sensations in his body. There was a general, all-over dull ache, punctuated here and there by sharper aches. There was the dampness and the chill. And there was the queer, gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach.

At first, he did not think of how he had gotten where he was, nor did he even wonder about his surroundings. There seemed merely to be an absolute urgency to get out of wherever he was and, at the same time, an utter inability to do so. He tried to move, to shift position, but his muscles seemed so terribly tired that flexing them was a high-magnitude effort.

After several tries, he got his arms under his chest, and only then did he realize that he had been lying prone, his right cheek pressed against cold, slimy stone. He lifted himself a little, but the effort was too much, and he collapsed again, his body making a faint splash as he did so.

He lay there for a while, trying to puzzle out his odd and uncomfortable environment. He seemed to be lying on a sloping surface with his head higher than his feet. The lower part of his body was immersed in chill, gently-moving water. And there was something else--

The smell.

It was an incredible stench, an almost overpowering miasma of decay.

He moved his head then, and forced his eyes open. There was a dim, feeble glow from somewhere overhead and to his right, but it was enough to show him a vaulted ceiling a few feet above him. He was lying in some sort of tube which--

And then the sudden realization came.

He was in a sewer.

The shock of it cleared his mind a little, and gave added strength to his muscles. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and began crawling toward the dim light. It wasn’t more than eight or ten feet, but it seemed to take an eternity for him to get there. Above him was a grating, partially covered with a soggy-looking sheet of paper. The light evidently came from a glow-plate several yards away.

He lay there, exhausted and aching, trying to force his brain into action, trying to decide what to do next.

He’d have to lift the grating, of course; that much was obvious. And he’d have to stand up to do that. Did he have the strength?

Only one way to find out. Again he pushed himself to his hands and knees, and it seemed easier this time. Then, bracing himself against the curving wall of the sewer, he got to his feet. His knees were weak and wobbly, but they’d hold. They had to hold.

The top of the sewer duct was not as far off as it had seemed; he had to stoop to keep from banging his head against the grating. He paused in that position to catch his breath, and then reached up, first with one hand and then with the other, to grasp the grating.

Then, with all the strength he could gather, he pushed upwards. The hinged grate moved upwards and banged loudly on the pavement.

There remained the problem of climbing out of the hole. The Guesser never knew how he solved it. Somehow, he managed to find himself out of the sewer and lying exhausted on the pavement.

He knew that there was some reason why he couldn’t just lie there forever, some reason why he had to hide where he couldn’t be seen.

It was not until that moment that he realized that he was completely naked. He had been stripped of everything, including the chronometer on his wrist.

With an effort, he heaved himself to his feet again and began running, stumbling drunkenly, yet managing somehow to keep on his feet. He had to find shelter, find help.

Somewhere in there, his mind blanked out again.

He awoke feeling very tired and weak, yet oddly refreshed, as though he had slept for a long time. When his eyes opened, he simply stared at the unfamiliar room for a long time without thinking--without really caring to think. He only knew that he was warm and comfortable and somehow safe, and it was such a pleasant feeling after the nightmare of cold and terror that he only wanted to enjoy it without analyzing it.

But the memory of the nightmare came again, and he couldn’t repress it. And he knew it hadn’t been a nightmare, but reality.

Full recollection flooded over him.

Someone had shot him with a beamgun, that nasty little handweapon that delivered in one powerful, short jolt the same energy that was doled out in measured doses over a period of minutes in a standard nerve-burner. He remembered jerking aside at the last second, just before the weapon was fired, and it was evidently that which had saved his life. If the beam had hit him in the head or spine, he’d be dead now.

Then what? Guessing about something that had happened in the past was futile, and, anyway, guessing didn’t apply to situations like that. But he thought he could pretty well figure out what had happened.

After he’d been shot down, his assailant had probably dragged him off somewhere and stripped him, and then dumped him bodily into the sewer. The criminal had undoubtedly thought that The Guesser was dead; if the body had been found, days or weeks later, it would be unidentifiable, and probably dismissed as simply another unsolved murder. They were rather common in low-class districts such as this.

Which brought him back again to the room.

He sat up in bed and looked around. Class Six Standard Housing. Hard, gray, cast polymer walls--very plain. Ditto floor and ceiling. Single glow-plate overhead. Rough, gray bedclothing.

Someone had found him after that careening flight from the terror of the sewer and had brought him here. Who?

Who?

The sense of well-being he had felt upon awakening had long since deserted him. What he felt now was a queer mixture of disgust and fear. He had never known a Class Six. Even the lowest crewman on the Naipor was a Five.

Uneasily, The Guesser climbed out of the bed. He was wearing a sack-like gray dress that fell almost to his knees, and nothing else. He walked on silent bare feet to the door. He could hear nothing beyond it, so he twisted the handle carefully and eased it open a crack.

And immediately he heard low voices. The first was a man’s.

“ ... Like you pick up dogs, hey.” He sounded angry. “He bring trouble on high, that’n. Look, you, at the face he got. He no Sixer, no, nor even Fiver. Exec, that’s what. Trouble.”

Then a woman’s voice. “Exec, he?” A sharp laugh. “Naked, dirty-wet, sick, he fall on my door. Since when Execs ask help from Sixer chippie like I? And since when Execs talk like Sixer when they out of they head? No fancy Exec talk, he, no.”

The Guesser didn’t understand that. If the woman was talking about him--and she must be--then surely he had not spoken the illiterate patois of the Class Six people when he was delirious.

The woman went on. “No, Lebby; you mind you business; me, I mind mine. Here, you take you this and get some food. Now, go, now. Come back at dark.”

The man grumbled something The Guesser didn’t understand, but there seemed to be a certain amount of resignation in his voice. Then a door opened and closed, and there was a moment of silence.

Then he heard the woman’s footsteps approaching the partially opened door. And her voice said: “You lucky Lebby have he back to you when you open the door. If he even see it move, he know you wake.”

The Guesser backed away from the door as she came in.

She was a drab woman, with a colorlessness of face that seemed to match the colorlessness of her clothing. Her hair was cropped short, and she seemed to sag all over, as though her body were trying to conform to the shapelessness of the dress instead of the reverse. When she forced a smile to her face, it didn’t seem to fit, as though her mouth were unused to such treatment from the muscles.

“How you feel?” she asked, stopping just inside the room.

“I ... uh--” The Guesser hardly knew what to say. He was in a totally alien environment, a completely unknown situation. “I’m fine,” he said at last.

She nodded. “You get plenty sleep, all right. Like dead, except when you talk to yourself.”

Then he had spoken in delirium. “How ... how long was I out?”

“Three days,” she said flatly. “Almost four.” She paused. “You ship leave.”

“Leave?” The Guesser said blankly. “The Naipor? Gone?” It seemed as if the world had dropped away from his feet, leaving him to fall endlessly through nothingness. It was true, of course. It didn’t take more than twenty-four hours to unload the ship’s holds, and, since there had been no intention of reloading, there was no need to stay. He had long overstayed the scheduled take-off time.