"It does not matter. I act as I must."
The Earthman rubbed sweat from his eyes with the back of a muddy hand.
"Everything is wrong," he mumbled. "I still can't remember cracking up the ship. Why did I always want to be a rocket pilot? Well ... I made my bed!"
The oncoming figures wavered and blurred in the heat. Kho emitted a grating sound reminiscent of an Earthly chuckle.
"As do all you mortals—who finally have to lie in them," he rasped. "I will tell you now, since I can carry this episode little farther. You have never piloted a spaceship."
Charlie gaped at him incredulously.
"You ... you ... what about the wreck?"
"It was a truck that hit you, Charles Holmes. You have no more sense than to be crossing the street with your nose in a magazine just purchased on the corner."
With some dulled, creeping, semi-detached facet of his mind, Charlie noted that the running figures still floated above the sand without actually drawing near.
"Are you—Do you mean I'm ... d-d-d—?"