He began to wriggle his toes and fingers, ignoring as best he could the
resulting sensations; and in a few minutes he found himself able to
move with little effort. He lay still a few minutes longer, and then
unsnapped the top fasteners of the bag. The grille interested him, and
he was becoming more and more puzzled as to his whereabouts. He had
no recollection of any unusual events; he had been checking over the
medical stores, he was sure, but he couldn't recall retiring to his
room afterward. What had put him to sleep? And where had he awakened?
He grasped the top of the bag and peeled it off, being careful to keep
hold of it. He started to roll it up and paused in astonishment. A
cloud of dust, fine as smoke, was oozing from the fibers of the cloth
with each motion, and hanging about the bag like an atmosphere. He
sniffed at it cautiously and started coughing; the stuff was dry, and
tickled his throat unpleasantly. There could be only one explanation;
the bag had been drifting in open space for a length of time sufficient
to evaporate every trace of moisture from its fibers. He unrolled it
again and looked at the stenciled number--GOA-III-NA12-422. The first
three groups confirmed his original belief that the bag had belonged to
the _Gomeisa_; the last was a personal number indicating the identity
of the former owner, but Little could not remember whose number it was.
The fact that it had been exposed to the void was not reassuring.
Dismissing that phase of the problem for the moment, the doctor rolled
the bag into a tight bundle. He was drifting weightless midway between
ceiling and floor, almost in the center of the room; the hatchway was
in one of the six corners of the ceiling. Little hurled the bundle in
the opposite direction. It struck the far corner and rebounded without
much energy; air friction brought it to a halt a few feet from the
wall. The doctor drifted more slowly in the direction of the grating.
His throw had been accurate enough to send him within reach of it; he
caught hold of one of the bars and drew himself as close as possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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