"You never went anywhere," the nurse said.
"It's gone and I'm back both mean the same thing," he tried to explain. "The thing that is gone is my contact with the race field. I'm back means that all of a sudden, I'm normal. I'm back here. I'm looking out of my eyes. I'm hearing with my ears. I don't know everything any longer."
Daze was in him. Worse than the daze was the fact that even the memory of the experience was receding. Agony came with this recession. It seemed to him that this experience was the most important thing that had ever happened to him.
And it was going away. He watched it slide out of his memory. He felt like running wildly to try and recapture it. Which way he would run did not matter, just so he ran until he found it again. He fought the impulse to run. The experience was not out there; it could not be found if he searched the whole world for it.
It was inside him.
Nedra looked at West and started to speak, but the craggy man motioned her to silence.
"Saul on the road to Damascus," Zen muttered. "Something like this happened to Saul on the road to Damascus."
"Kurt—" Nedra said. Again the craggy man motioned her to silence. The fellow, rough mountaineer that he was, seemed to have some perception of the turmoil inside a fellow human being, and more than that, to have understanding and sympathy.
"I contacted the race mind," Zen said. "For a minute, I was in touch with the field of the race. But it's gone now," he added. Sadness and a falling voice went with the last words.
"Step in front of the scope, soldier," a gravel voice growled behind him. Turning, he saw that he was next in line. The lieutenant in charge of the first aid station had spoken to him. Seeing the eagle on Zen's helmet he hastily apologized. "I beg your pardon, sir."