Dowland stood stockstill for a moment, hardly daring to believe it. Then, quietly, he unbuckled the harness again, and let it down to the floor. The eyes of the big man on the couch seemed to follow the motion, then shifted slowly up toward the ceiling of the room, and closed again.
"Trelawney," Dowland said softly, without moving.
Miguel Trelawney made a deep, sighing sound, turned on his side and lay quiet, his back now to Dowland. A few seconds later, Dowland was looking down at him from the other side of the couch.
It might have been only a momentary thing, a brief advantage medic had gained in its invisible struggle with a process which would still end in death. But he couldn't be sure. The eyes remained closed, the pulse was weak and unsteady. Dowland thought of injecting a stimulant into Trelawney, and discarded the idea immediately. Medic manufactured its own stimulants as required, counter-acted any others. Even the effects of the quiz-drug would be reduced by it, but not enough to keep Dowland from getting any answer he wanted—provided Trelawney's mind cleared for only three or four minutes of lucidity.
There was no way of knowing when such a period of lucidity might develop. But now that the man had appeared to awaken, the possibility that it would happen within the next hour or two became a very definite one.
Dowland stood briefly in scowling indecision. The next hour or two could also see him nearly down the side of the mesa, depending on the difficulties of the descent ... but there was no real choice. It was a gamble either way again; if Trelawney didn't awaken, the other gamble remained.... How long, at most, could he afford to delay?
Leaving YM out of the calculation, since it couldn't be calculated, he had only the arrival of the Freeholder Troopers to consider. There was no apparent possibility that any sizable party could appear before daybreak, but there was an even chance they would be there around that time. When they came, he must either be in communication with the Solar Police Authority or far enough away from Lion Mesa to be able to avoid detection....
Four hours should be enough to give him a reasonable safety margin. He had till midnight, or a little later.
Dowland pulled a chair up to the side of the couch and sat down. The night wasn't quiet. The hogs squalled occasionally, and the wind still seemed to be rising. In spite of his efforts to avoid unsettling lines of thought, the nightmarish quality of the situation on the mesa kept returning to his mind and wasn't easily dismissed. The past—the past of over half a million years ago—had moved close too the present tonight.... That was the stubborn, illogical feeling—and fear—which he couldn't entirely shake off.