He glanced down at his pale body, unused to the sun, and shivered again. Even when he emerged from the shade into the warm sunlight, he still felt cold.
Participation was a compulsive act. Less than an hour after Hendley left the swimming pool in the central park, once more clad in his visitor's white uniform, he found himself lingering beside a fence enclosing a series of tennis courts. A shower, a rest, another whiskey and soda had refreshed him. Walking had loosened bruised, stiff muscles, although he still limped, favoring his right knee. Except for the knee and a swollen lip, he felt almost normal. Ready for action, in fact. Tennis, however, seemed a little too strenuous, even such indifferent tennis as that being played here. The players lobbed the ball back and forth listlessly, hardly trying when a shot went out of reach. Odd. A number of the activities Hendley had watched were carried on with the same indifference: lawn games, a bowling match, boating. In the parks and on the streets many Freemen stood around with vacant expressions. Yet the water polo players had thrown themselves into their game with a vengeance Hendley could attest to. Some participants in a football game he'd paused to watch for a while had piled into each other with an audible crunching impact. Even a group of cyclists racing around a circular track had competed with real fervor. They weren't very good riders, for Hendley had witnessed two collisions on a far turn in the brief time he watched. But they were enthusiastic.
Contact sports, he thought....
He walked on. The afternoon was waning, though the sun remained well above the horizon. How little the Freemen seemed to notice the sun! He never saw any of them staring up at the sky, while Hendley frequently paused to survey that awesome immensity. They brushed heedlessly past vivid flowers in bloom, trampled upon bushes, failed to turn their heads when a bird sang from a tree, while Hendley found these things fascinating. Perhaps in time you became used to them. They might come to seem ordinary. Even the vaulting sky might fail to make you feel small.
He came to an area of carefully tended lawns broken here and there by patches of white sand, defined by rough stretches of taller grass and shrubbery. Small groups of players strolled in the distance, pulling carts or carrying bags containing slender sticks. Something tugged at Hendley's memory. He had seen such a place in a miniature display in the Sports Museum. In the underground cities there was not enough space for such a layout, but it made a pretty picture in the late afternoon in the spacious Freeman Camp.
Near one of the familiar beige service buildings a player was setting a small white ball on the ground and preparing to strike it with the weighted end of one of the slender poles. He was a stocky, vigorous man twice Hendley's age, his skin reddened rather than tanned by the sun, his thick arms choked with dense gray hair, his head completely bald. Behind him another player hovered, watching, a tall angular man of much the same age, with a prominent Adam's apple, knife-edge nose, remarkably long arms, and an angry scowl. Calling on an old habit, Hendley attached the nickname Curly to the bald man with the hairy arms, and Happy to his scowling companion. Nicknames were easier to remember than numbers.
Curly glanced up from the white ball as Hendley came near. "Join us?" he called cheerfully. "It's better with three."
"Humph!" the other grunted.
"I'd like to," Hendley said. The exercise, which seemed mild, would help to limber abused muscles a little more, easing the soreness in his arms and neck. He was issued a bag of clubs and three white balls at the service building. When he joined the other players, Curly was waiting, prepared to hit his ball.