In all her life the gaunt woman had never known such torment of mind and body. Returning to the Observatory she had staggered twice and almost fallen and even now her knees seemed about to give way beneath her.
She clung to the metal frame supporting the scanner-glass and looked deep into the glass and saw nothing that pleased her. A dark expanse of woodland, nothing more. No para-guards moving between the trees, no flying machines in the narrow stretch of sky overhead, nothing.
And then, quite suddenly, she did see something and straightened in stunned disbelief, the wild beating of her heart subsiding.
The trees had thinned out and a clearing had come into view between the trees. In the center of the clearing was a small white dwelling and the scanners were moving slowly toward it.
TEN
Teleman had no way of knowing that the scanners had picked up his trail again as he stood listening to the whispered conversation of the dwelling's two occupants.
Despite the absolute darkness and Teleman's stillness the woman became suddenly aware that she was not alone with the man at her side. Her startled gasp was unmistakable and the stirring and shifting of position which followed immediately left no possible room for doubt. All of the sounds were sounds of agitation and swiftly mounting alarm, a whispered reply from the man which Teleman could not catch, another gasp from the woman, a rustling of the bedclothes, a creaking of the bed as one of the two lovers, probably the man, either sat bolt upright or propelled himself toward the edge of the bed with a violent lurch.
What prompted the woman to switch on the light at precisely that moment Teleman had no way of knowing. It was an act of folly, for it placed them at a disadvantage. The light streamed down from a lamp directly above the bed, flooding the entire room in an instant and defeating any hope which the pair might have had of using the darkness as a shield.
Both the man and the woman were completely unclothed. The woman had drawn the sheets up to her waist but the way the clinging fabric molded itself to her hips and thighs with every tremulous movement of her slender young body would have convinced even a not too observant man that no night garment, however thin, intervened between the sheets and the undraped loveliness which she was striving, in her modesty, to hide.