Dawn.
Already—another dawn!
Today I would have been mature. His jaw clenched. I must get up. I must move. I must enjoy my time of maturity.
But he didn't move. He felt his blood pump sleepily from chamber to red chamber in his heart, on down and around through his dead body, to be purified by his folding and unfolding lungs. Then the circuit once more.
The ship grew warm. From somewhere a machine clicked. Automatically the temperature cooled. A controlled gust of air flushed the room.
Night again. And then another day.
He lay and saw four days of his life pass.
He did not try to fight. It was no use. His life was over.
He didn't want to turn his head now. He didn't want to see Lyte with her face like his tortured mother's—eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes like beaten, sanded metal, cheeks like eroded stones. He didn't want to see a throat like parched thongs of yellow grass, hands the pattern of smoke risen from a fire, breasts like desiccated rinds and hair stubbly and unshorn as moist gray weeds!
And himself? How did he look? Was his jaw sunken, the flesh of his eyes pitted, his brow lined and age-scarred?