Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Space ships -- Fiction
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice--but the
voice didn't speak this time--through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people _should_. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor--how his head was burning!--and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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