He moved at last, screaming at the agony that surged with every movement, finally rolled into a sitting position. There was but the barest glint of light from the earth fault, and his eyes grew strained as he peered about.
He was in a cave, obviously artificial, for there were shelves loaded with dully-gleaming objects, and man-hewn blocks of stone lay upturned where great strangling roots squirmed into the air like monstrous scaly snakes.
He looked at himself.
His hands were talons now, for the nails were curled and twisted into tangled knots, and the flesh had not the resiliency or the strength to straighten the fingers. He bent his head, watched fabric disintegrate into dust on his emaciated body, then gasped. Great festoons of the dust had not powdered into nothingness, and he recognized that they were the swirls of beard that hung pendant from his chin. He straightened, mind trying to grasp what had happened, and the hair from his head swirled about his shoulders, rippling in undulant waves into the clump of tangled masses that lay at his side.
He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, his tongue swollen. The terrible cold was still in him, and he shivered agonizingly for seconds. It was then he heard the sound of rilling water close at hand.
He crawled toward the sound, tangling hands and feet in the hair that grew so monstrously from his head, his fingernails scrabbling and clicking together like the whisperings of bare branches before a soft Winter breeze.
"I'm Kim," he thought again, and drank with great slobbering noises from the narrow shallow stream that pierced one wall of the cave and vanished through the opposite.
Thirst slaked, he lay, gasping, like some spent animal, thoughts swelling and unfolding in his mind, creeping unbidden from dark recesses, stealing into the brightness of his consciousness.
"I'm Kim," he thought. "Kimball Trent."
He sat, groaning from the hurt that was in every muscle, methodically broke the twisted fingernails close to his finger tips, permitting his fingers to flex more freely, giving him hands once more instead of paws. He tried to break his heavy hair and beard the same way, but his strength was not enough for that, and he searched for something that would free him of the burden.