She eased back against the pillow. "I haven't been feeling good," she sighed. "Maybe—I don't know what to think. Bill, lie down beside me. Let's listen together."
Listen. Listen to Unk? But Unk was dead. Maybe Unk's ghost....
It couldn't be Unk. So what was there out here beyond the ship in a pointless universe? He lay down with her, goose pimples all over his big body.
Then he heard it, and every square inch of his skin got the blue chills. His body seemed to lose identity and floated buoyantly in a sea of horror. A voice. A voice, gnarled with age, high and angry, spoken so fast, like a speeding phonograph record, that the words could not be made out.
That ghostly running stream of inarticulated words came from nowhere, blatted in from everywhere. Birthed inside their heads, grew in demanding volume from outside the ship. A voice that pervaded space, that pulsed like a yammering animal gone mad, that hooted sometimes like a locomotive lost on a whirling track.
"It's Unk," Bill chattered. "I know it's Unk. Somehow he's followed us here. He's after me, Molly. After all the dirt I did him. His ghost."
"Silly." She put her cold palm on his mouth. Is came running down the corridor. She jumped into Bill's arm, shivering. She was frightened. Bill almost sobbed.
"Darn that Unk! If he makes Is lose her pups—"
After awhile he lay down again, drawing the covers over him, Is under one arm, Molly warm under the other. In the darkness somewhere, Was sniffed rather unconcernedly around the room.
All night they listened to the Voice's peevish mutter.