Instantly, the monstrous creatures poured through.
But in the next moment Randall was beside his bunk, shaking him awake and regarding him quizzically.
Dismayed over the continued evidence of a lurking, inexplicable fear, Stewart ate breakfast mostly in silence while he cast about for a reasonable interpretation of the nightmare.
It was almost as though the auroral curtain represented a mental veil that hid a horror-filled recess of his mind. The content of that fissure—was it something he didn't want to face? Something he had intentionally hidden? Was it actually that Randall could, if he desired, draw back the curtain? Why Randall?
He brought his cup to his lips and almost gagged on an icy bitterness. Carol chided him for his abstraction, dumped the coffee into a disposal slot and gave him a refill.
Randall slapped his thigh. "Well, we still have a telepuppet problem on our hands."
Mortimer sat up sharply. "You're not going to fool around with those damned things any more, are you?"
"Don't see how we can avoid it. We've got several days' repair work on that subspace drive coil—outside the ship. That's the only way we can either get out of here or recover use of our long-range transmitter. But I wouldn't want to turn my back on those puppets while they're out of control."
"You won't catch me out there again," McAllister vowed.