The Terror Out of Space

by Dwight V. Swain

"Eileen—!" he moaned. "Eileen...."

As from afar, a voice said, "That's right. Another shot of vorghon."

He turned his head, ever so slowly. He forced his burning, heavy-lidded eyes to open.

A man in the white jacket of the medcorps stood beside him, smiling. "Good," the man said. "I knew we'd do it. Vorghon always brings them around."

"You hit it, all right." It was another medman speaking. "For awhile there, I'd begun to wonder. But that last shot turned the trick."

Again Boone whispered: "Eileen—where is she?"

"Eileen, did you say? The first of the medmen came down closer. Some girl? You were alone, you know, aboard the carrier."

"The ... carrier—?"

"You don't remember that part, even?" The medman's brow furrowed deeper. His eyes flicked to his fellow for the fraction of a second as if in wordless exclamation, then came back to Boone again. "You were aboard a sphere-ship bound for Titan. Then the monsters hit it and all hands took off. When we picked you up, you were in an EC carrier, drifting just out of Hyperion's orbit." He chuckled. "You were out of your head at the time. Someplace along the line you'd gotten pretty sick."

Boone tried to drag himself up but found his arms were pinioned. "I was on Hyperion!" he mumbled. "I didn't leave the ship; it crashed down through the ice-shell. Eileen was with me—"