PORCYS PLANET
REJUVENATION CENTER
Dan read the sign three times. If this was rejuvenation, the Porcyns could have it.
Beside Dan, Milbun stood up, still struggling for breath, and pulled his wife and Mavis to their feet.
"Come on," he said. "We've got to get through the swamp ahead of the grayboas!"
The rest of the day, they pushed through slimy muck up to their knees and sometimes up to their necks. Behind them, the crowd screamingly thinned out.
That night, they washed in icy spring water, tore chunks of meat from a huge broiled creature turning on a spit and went to sleep in tents to the buzz and drone of creatures that shot their long needle noses through the walls like drillers hunting for oil.
The following day, they spent carefully easing from crevice to narrow toehold up the sheer face of a mountain. Food and shelter were at the top. Jagged rocks and hungry creatures were at the bottom. That night, Dan slept right through an urgent buzz from Kielgaard. The next night, he woke enough to hear it, but he didn't have the strength to answer.
Where, he thought, is the rejuvenation in this?
Then he had a sudden glimmering. It was the Porcyn race that was rejuvenated. The unfit of the Porcyns died violently. It took stamina just to live from one day to the next.