Bonner nodded.
“‘Suspended animation,’” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “That must be it. That’s the only thing that’ll explain it; nothing else will. If it could cover a period of ten minutes, why not a period of twenty or even a hundred thousand years—”
“If you’d like to turn in and get some rest, Chris, I’ll fix you up,” I broke in.
He caught the significance of my tone and grinned.
“You think I’m crazy, eh?” he said. “I’m not. It’s a wonder, though, considering what I’ve seen and what I—here, let me show you something!”
HE THRUST a hand into his lean pack and brought forth an object that at first glance I thought to be a butcher’s knife.
He handed it to me and I at once saw that it was not a butcher’s knife as I knew such knives. It was a curious sort of knife, and one for which a collector of the antique would have paid good money.
It was a very dark color, almost black; corroded, it seemed to me, as if it had lain for a long time in a damp cellar. It was in one piece, the handle about five inches long and the blade perhaps ten inches. Both edges of the blade were sharp and the end was pointed like a dagger. And it certainly wasn’t steel. I scratched one side of the blade with my thumb nail and exposed a creamy yellow under the veneer of black.
“Part of that’s blood you scraped away, MacNeal,” Bonner said. “Now what’s that knife made of?”