"You are alive." The thought registered amazement. "When you lost consciousness, we thought you had"—there was a hesitation—"as you say, died."
"No," Jon Karyl said. "I didn't die. I was just plain dead-beat so I went to sleep." The Steel-Blues apparently didn't understand.
"Good it is that you live. The torture will continue," spoke No. 1 before loping away.
The cylinder business began again. This time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying to figure out what it was. It had a familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't quite put a taste-finger on it.
His belly said he was hungry. He glanced at his chronometer. Only 20 days left before the SP ship arrived.
Would this torture—he chuckled—last until then? But he was growing more and more conscious that his belly was screaming for hunger. The liquid had taken the edge off his thirst.
It was on the fifth day of his torture that Jon Karyl decided that he was going to get something to eat or perish in the attempt.
The cylinder sat passively in its niche in the circle. A dozen Steel-Blues were watching as Jon put on his helmet and unsheathed his stubray.
They merely watched as he pressed the stubray's firing stud. Invisible rays licked out of the bulbous muzzle of the pistol. The plastic splintered.
Jon was out of his goldfish bowl and striding toward his own igloo adjacent to the service station when a Steel-Blue accosted him.