"It feels awful lonesome and empty. And the breath seeping up out of your lungs, never going in--that's a funny feeling. And you miss the air blowing on your skin. I never realized it before. Air feels like--like silk, like whipped cream--it's got texture...." "But aren't you cold? Space is supposed to be absolute zero!" "Space is nothing. It's not hot and it's not cold. When you're in the sunlight you get warm. It's better in the shade. You don't lose any heat by air convection, but radiation and sweat evaporation keep you comfortably cool." "I still can't understand it," said Frayberg. "This Prince Ali, he's a kind of a rebel, eh?" "I don't blame him in a way. A normal man living under those domes has to let off steam somehow. Prince Ali decided to go out crusading. I think he would have made it too--at least on Cirgamesç." "Certainly there are many more men inside the domes...." "When it comes to fighting," said Murphy, "a sjambak can lick twenty men in space-suits. A little nick doesn't hurt him, but a little nick bursts open a space-suit, and the man inside comes apart." "Well," said the Captain. "I imagine the Peace Office will send out a team to put things in order now." Catlin asked, "What happened when you woke up from the chloroform?" "Well, nothing very much. I felt this attachment on my chest, but didn't think much about it. Still kinda woozy. I was halfway through decompression. They keep a man there eight hours, drop pressure on him two pounds an hour, nice and slow so he don't get the bends." "Was this the same place they took you, when you met Ali?" "Yeah, that was their decompression chamber. They had to make a sjambak out of me; there wasn't anywhere else they could keep me. Well, pretty soon my head cleared, and I saw this apparatus stuck to my chest." He poked at the mechanism on the table. "I saw the oxygen tank, I saw the blood running through the plastic pipes--blue from me to that carburetor arrangement, red on the way back in--and I figured out the whole arrangement. Carbon dioxide still exhales up through your lungs, but the vein back to the left auricle is routed through the carburetor and supercharged with oxygen. A man doesn't need to breathe. The carburetor flushes his blood with oxygen, the decompression tank adjusts him to the lack of air-pressure. There's only one thing to look out for; that's not to touch anything with your naked flesh. If it's in the sunshine it's blazing hot; if it's in the shade it's cold enough to cut. Otherwise you're free as a bird." "But--how did you get away?" "I saw those little rocket-bikes, and began figuring. I couldn't go back to Singhalût; I'd be lynched on sight as a sjambak. I couldn't fly to another planet--the bikes don't carry enough fuel. "I knew when the ship would be coming in, so I figured I'd fly up to meet it. I told the guard I was going outside a minute, and I got on one of the rocket-bikes. There was nothing much to it."