Even if this did turn out to be the Himalayas, or some equally remote
area, there must be hill tribes about if one went far enough--there
should even be an occasional airplane passing overhead.
Barney stood just outside the door, frowning, pondering the situation
again, searching for the catch in it. McAllen and his friends,
whatever else they might be, weren't stupid. There was something
involved here that he hadn't become aware of yet.
Almost without thought then, he turned up his head, squinting at the
bright hazy sky above him--
And saw IT.
His breath sucked in and burst from his lungs in a half-strangled,
terrified squawk as he staggered backward into the cabin, slammed the
door shut, then spun around and began slapping frantically at the
switches on the wall-plate until door and window were gone, and only
the cabin's soft illumination was around him again. Then he crouched
on the floor, his back against the wall, shaking with a terror he
could hardly have imagined before.
He knew what the catch was now. He had understood it completely in the
instant of glancing up and seeing that tiny brilliant blue-white point
of light glare down at him through the incandescent cloud layers
above. Like a blazing, incredibly horrible insect eye....
_This_ world's sun.
THE END OF YEAR ONE
Barney Chard came up out of an uneasy sleep to the sudden sharp
awareness that something was wrong. For some seconds he lay staring
about the unlit cabin, mouth dry, heart hammering with apprehension.
Then he discovered it was only that he had left the exit door open and
the window switched on.... Only? This was the first time since they
had left him here that he had gone to sleep without sealing the cabin
first--even when blind drunk, really embalmed.
He thought of climbing out of bed and taking care of it now, but
decided to let the thing ride. After all he knew there was nothing in
the valley--nothing, in fact, on this world--of which he had a
realistic reason to be afraid. And he felt dead tired. Weak and sick.
Feeling like that no longer alarmed him as it had done at first; it
was a simple physical fact. The sheet under him was wet with sweat,
though it was no more than comfortably warm in the room. The cabin
never became more than comfortably warm. Barney lay back again, trying
to figure out how it had happened he had forgotten about the window
and the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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