Tennant teleported by inches instead of yards, and so blood oozed from a graze on his left ear when he rejoined a shaken Opal in the world that knew no night. For a long time—how long, of course, he could not know—they stood and watched the gateway burn to globular ash in a dark brown fire that radiated searing cold.
Opal was in trouble. An aura of anger, of grief, of accusation, surrounded him. Others of them came and for a while Tennant was forgotten. Then, abruptly, he was back in his own compound, walking toward the house.
In place of his country Napoleonic roll-bed, which he had visualized for manufacture with special care, Dana had substituted an immense modern sleeping device that looked like a low hassock with a ten-foot diameter. She was on her knees, her back toward the door, fiddling with a radio.
She heard him enter, said without turning, "It won't work. Just a little while ago it stopped."
"I think we're cut off now, perhaps for good," he told her. He sat down on the edge of the absurd bed and began to take off the clothes they had given him for the hunt. He was too tired to protest against the massacre of his bedroom decor. He was not even sure he wanted to protest. For all its anachronism, the big round bed was comfortable.
She watched him, her hands on her thighs, and there was worry written on her broad forehead. "You know something, Rog."
"I don't know anything," he replied. "I only think and have theories." Unexpectedly he found himself telling her all about it, about himself, where he had been, what he had done.
She listened quietly, saying nothing, letting him go on. His head was in her lap and he talked up to her while she ran gentle fingers through his hair. When he had finished, she smiled down at him thoughtfully, affectionately, then said, "You know, you're a funny kind of man, Roger."
"Funny?"