"Mr. Smith!" he called as he thrust his head inside. "I think I need help!"
[TEN]
The first sensation that penetrated, agonizingly, to Taranto's consciousness was that of heat. Heat, and then the damp itch of soaking sweat.
The next feeling, as he groggily sought to take up the slack in his hanging jaw, was thirst. It was a raging demand that brought him entirely awake. Before he could control himself, he had emitted a groan.
Immediately, he was dropped from whatever had been supporting him in a swaying, dipping fashion. He landed with a thud on the hard ground.
A chatter of Syssokan broke out above him. It was answered by other Syssokan voices farther away. Taranto kept his eyes closed and lay limply where he had sprawled, while he tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
Shortly before dawn, he and Meyers had each swallowed his capsule as directed. He remembered a period of vague drowsiness after that, then nothing more until he had been awakened just now. From his still dizzy mind, he sought to drag the outline of events expected.
They had hoped to be taken out to the desert, possibly to a Syssokan burial ground according to the local custom, and left to be dried by the dessicating blaze of the sun. It had been planned that a spaceship would land in the late afternoon to pick them up. Undoubtedly, it would take the Syssokans several hours to report the "deaths" and to secure official permission for disposal of the bodies, even though they were less given to red tape than Terrans. Still, they should have abandoned the "bodies" long before Taranto had expected to awake.
He risked opening one eye a slit. Syssokan legs crowding around blocked his view, but he could tell that it was dusk. The heat he felt must be that of sand and rocks that had baked all day.