World's End

Page 82

JOAN D. VINGE

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"Anything!" I cried. But I had nothing left to give her; I had thrown it all away.

"There is no more time/' she said. And Death swelled and spread and opened gaping jaws of blackness ... a roaring, rumbling fury rose out of the depths of the earth to claim me. The earth shook, dirt cascaded onto me from the rim of the open grave--

Terror woke me, to the light of a new morning--to the ground shaking beneath me, to a rumbling that seemed to rise through the planet itself. To a white plume of water boiling in the mist, forty meters high. I stared at it, stared at the shrouded world around me in dumbfounded panic. . . . Ang's geyser! I scrambled to my feet and ran back toward the rover, suddenly far more afraid of being left behind than I was of facing Ang or Spadrin again.

The rover materialized like a vision out of the fog. I

halted in my tracks, panting, trying to get my panic under control. Ang and Spadrin stood beside the vehicle, watching the geyser. Ang looked away abruptly, as if he

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sensed my presence. "Gedda!" he shouted, and gestured at me.

I joined them, not looking at Spadrin. I felt his mocking stare burn the S into my forehead.

"Where the hell have you been?" Ang said. "We've lost two days."

"Two days?" I said stupidly. I looked at my watch-- my watch was gone. And suddenly I saw that my hand was clenched in a fist, realized that it had been that way since I woke. I pried my fingers open . . . saw the uncut solii that lay in my palm. My hand knotted convulsively, before anyone else could see the stone. Dimly I remembered seeing footprints in the sand around me, where there had been none before. . . . "But I was only gone overnight. I... slept out." I waved a hand back the way

I'd come.

102

WORLD S END

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"Two days!" Ang was as sure of it as I was. "I searched all over. Thought you fell into a goddamn crater, or got swallowed up-- I told you never to do that!"