Unknowing, Sandra relaxed as the ground supported her back, and with the suddenness of falling night, Sandra slept.
Her dreams were less restful than the sleep. They were filled with a whirling panorama of lights, disembodied faces, grinning, leering faces who watched long, brutal needles find the vitals of mute sufferers whose only visible admission of unbearable pain was the tortured look on their mobile faces. And through the dream, McBride and Hammond fought against a huge metal barrier against which their mightiest efforts were futile.
The day wore on as Sandra slept, and night came, and in all that time Sandra had hardly moved. As the darkness fell, she aroused enough to drink from the brook and settle herself in a more comfortable position. Afterward she did not recall awakening at all but she did select a thick thatch of soft moss the second time and she wondered about it later. And it was about midnight when Sandra awoke.
She was slept out, rested. But the self-hatred was still vivid. The dream had kept it there, and though her body was rested, her mind was still tired from the furious mental action that went on even as she slept.
She stretched, rolled over on her back, and considered her actions of before with distaste. That had been a spectacle, and she hated spectacles except when they made her appear in a better light. She searched the sky wearily, picking out Garna, which was Telfu's sister planet, and Ordana, the behemoth of the Sirian system, both of which were shining close to the bright Geggenschein of Sirius. Above her, she spotted the place where all Telfans watched—the spot where Soaky should be according to their calculations. It was not a spot, but an area, and Sandra scanned it in a futile manner.
Nothing yet.
A minute change in the sky along the horizon made her turn quickly, hopefully. She scanned the sky carefully, and yet she knew that looking at the starry curtain was futile unless the scene became so evident that it could not be missed. She could see nothing, and besides, Soaky was supposed to be above, not on the horizon.
She looked above again, but there was nothing to see. Puzzled at that—that something that had caught her attention along the horizon. She shrugged, and in trying to rationalize she admitted that it might have been a meteorite; and she knew that she was overanxious.
It was the same, she knew.