“I’d like to, too, but don’t forget Mom would be by herself.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” Jill said disappointedly. “Mother would tell us to go on, if we asked her, I know, but I still wouldn’t want to leave her. There are so many things that could happen.”
“We’ll just have to forget it then,” Ted said. “Maybe we can make it another time.”
The two kept a brooding silence, and Ted wondered if Jill was as disappointed as he was. When Randy found out that they had decided not to go, he said he did not care to go either.
That night Ted had a dream. In it he was exploring on the great barren desert with Jill and Randy but they wore no helmets and it seemed as though they could hardly get their breath. They gasped and choked, and the dream grew into a nightmare of terror. Suddenly, Ted woke. He sat up in bed in a cold sweat, feeling a strange lightheadedness. His breath was coming hard into his lungs.
It had not only been a dream. Something had happened to the atmosphere in the house.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Peril Continued
“Randy, wake up!”
Ted was jostling his bedmate. Randy opened sleepy eyes. He seemed to be unaffected by the reduced air pressure in the room. Ted remembered that people vary in their reaction to this.