The silver dagger sank into Sade's chest just over his heart. The fat man staggered back. But before he could fall, Swart acted, as quick as a ferret, clipped Keren's chin, and as she crumpled silently to the floor, he caught the gasping Mercurian and eased him down.
From Sade's chest blood spurted higher than the dagger's hilt as Swart yanked one of the hoses from the cylinder and directed its crimson spray on Sade's wound. Slowly, Swart drew out the dagger's sticky blade in the spray. When the dagger was out of Sade's chest there was no visible sign of a wound. Sade opened his eyes and looked up at them.
"What shall I do with her?" Swart said.
Sade got to his feet. He stood there, panting a moment. "The rope," he said. Swart pushed a wall button, extracted a length of cord from a panel compartment and returned. "Tie her to the cylinder," Sade hissed, "and tie the nozzle of the hose in her hair."
In a moment, the unconscious Keren was hanging by her backward-bent arms from the cylinder. The cord was tight from her wrists, around the cylinder and under to her slim ankles. In her hair was fixed the slowly oozing hose. A rivulet of red trickled down her smooth cheek.
"What about these two?" Swart said, motioning toward Norman and Dorothy.
"While we go to repair the new counteractive ship which Mr. Norman so kindly brought us," Sade said, "we can leave him and his girl in the glass cage."
As they were marched across the field, Norman remembered Johnny's face on the hospital pillow—tragic, old. Now, in the green beauty of this time-thundering world, this same fate reached for them as it was caressing Keren's cheek in the white-walled room in the tower. Norman put his arm around Dorothy's shoulder.
She drew away. "You deserted me for Keren once. Worry about her now, not me."