Dark Universe by Daniel F. Galouye Read Free Book Online Page B

carry off a hostage."

    "Oh." The word was shaded with disappointment. Then the Adviser added dubiously, "The Wheel will be glad to learn that. A lot of us wondered why you stole away."

    Jared swung his legs over the side of the ledge. "I don't hear what you're trying to prove. You mean you think--"

    But the other continued, "So you were going to _attack_ a Zivver?
    That's a little hard to believe."

    First there had been Lorenz's open hostility. Then there was his jestful--or perhaps only superficially jestful--suggestion that Jared's abilities were Zivverlike. Now this latest obscure insinuation. It all added up to _something_.

    He caught the man's wrist. "What do you suspect?"

    But just then Wheel Anselm swept the curtain aside and strode in.
    "What's all this about attacking a Zivver?"

    Della followed him inside and Jared listened to her almost soundless motions as she came over to the slumber ledge.

    "That's what he was trying to do when he made his way over to the entrance," Lorenz explained skeptically.

    But Anseim missed the inflection. "Isn't that what I said he had in mind? How are you feeling, Jared my boy?"

    "Like I was clouted with a lance."

    The Wheel laughed patronizingly, then became serious. "You were closer to that thing than any of us. What in Radiation was it?"

    Jared considered telling them about his previous experience with the monster. But the Law of the Barrier applied as rigidly here as in the Lower Level. "I don't know. I didn't have much time to listen to it before I took that lance."

    "Cobalt," Adviser Lorenz murmured. "Must have been Cobalt."

    "Might have been Cobalt _and_ Strontium," Della suggested distantly. "Some got the impression there were _two_ monsters."

    Jared stiffened. Hadn't his dream, too, intimated there were more than one of the incredible creatures?

    "Light--it was awful!" Anselm agreed. "It _must_ have been the Twin Devils. What else could throw such uncanny things into your head like that?"

    "It didn't, as you say, 'throw things' into everybody's head," the Adviser reminded officiously.

    "True. Not all felt what I felt. For instance, none of the fuzzy-faces remember anything _that_ odd."

    "I don't either, and I'm not a fuzzy-face."

    "There were a few _besides_ the fuzzy-faces who didn't feel the sensations. How about you, my boy?"

    "I don't know what you're talking about," Jared lied, sparing himself the necessity of going into details.

    Anseim and Lorenz fell silent while Della laid a hand gently on Jared's forehead. "We're preparing something for you to eat. Is there anything else I can do?"

    Confused, he trained an ear on the girl. She'd never spoken that charitably before!

    "Well, my boy," Anselm said, backing off, "you take it easy for the rest of your stay--until you're ready to return home for Withdrawal and Contemplation Against Unwise Unification."

    The curtains swished as he and the Adviser left.

    "I'll hear about that food," Della said, and followed them out.

    Jared lay back on the ledge, exploring the soreness beneath the bandage. Still fresh in memory was his encounter with the monster--or monsters. In their presence, he had experienced the identical sensation he had felt in the Original World. For a moment, as he recalled the impression of uncanny pressure on his face, it seemed as though his eyes had received most of the force. But why? And he was still puzzled that Owen hadn't experienced the peculiar feeling. Could his friend's closed-eyes preference possibly have had anything to do with his not having sensed the psychic pressure?

    Della returned and he heard that she was carrying a shell filled with--he listened to the consistency of the liquid and sniffed its faint aroma--manna tuber broth. But he sensed more than that. There was something he couldn't identify in her other hand.

    "Feel well enough for some of this?" She extended the bowl.

    Her words had been feather-edged with concern and he was at a loss to explain her sudden change