Eagerly, Shorty and I waited. Would it be an hour, or a day? Both of us were thinking of Blaine, locked somewhere around here, perhaps in a cell like ours. Or had the Radaks killed him by now? And Vivian and Mack, wandering out there in the Realm of the Things you couldn't kill.
"Guess they're done for," Shorty said, when I mentioned them.
"Unless we can get out there to them—"
Shorty's smile was ironic. "That would fix everything, of course. Don't be an ass, Bob. If we were out there, we'd all be trying to get back. For what? So the Radaks would jump on us and kill us."
It was all so utterly hopeless. But it was queer, that instinct all five of us had, to try and keep together.
The young Lei woman had brought us food and drink. Shorty and I slumped on the earthern floor now and sampled the food. Nauseous stuff, indescribable.
"If it's been weeks since we left the Earth," Shorty said, "no wonder we're nearly starved to death."
But we managed to eat and drink some of it, and then exhausted by the nerve tension of what we had been through, we drifted off into an uneasy slumber.
The rasp of the sliding door-panel jerked us into alertness. I had the feeling that only a little time had passed. The panel slid open just a foot or two, and a figure came in. It was Tahn.
Both Shorty and I were on our feet. "You came as you hoped," I said softly. "We're ready. Just tell us what you want us to do."