Far from Home | Page 9

bluntly that it was well the fishermen had returned his arms
and legs into their sockets before he fully regained consciousness. It
muttered and clucked to itself as it used the hypo which Johnny could
not feel. "Formidable!"

The pleasant drowsiness came down just as he was identifying the
queer smell as ozone, brine and good fresh air.
After a while they moved him to a small hospital in an upcoast town,
where he slept much, suffered not a little and, even waking, viewed the
world incuriously through drug-laden eyes. Finally they allowed him to
waken fully and the sharp-faced doctor, together with half a dozen
others from various parts of the world decided that, after all, he seemed
to be surviving.
Johnny lay and itched intolerably in the cast that covered him from
nape to thigh and listened to the bustling of the elderly nursing sister
who, good soul, having never been more than ten miles from her town
in her life, reminded him that it wanted but two days to Christmas and
opined that: "Such a tragedy for M'sieu. To be so far from home!"
Johnny smiled at the ceiling, not daring to laugh yet, and sniffed at the
salt sea air with its undertone of rank seaweed and gloried in it; even a
chance whiff of that particular cigarette tobacco that only a Frenchman
can appreciate. He thought that here, as across the water, night and day
followed each other in their proper order and the ground was a solid
thing beneath the feet.
Why--he could never be closer.
FIN.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's
Note | | | | This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction, | |
December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any | | evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was | | renewed. | | | | A few
obvious typographical errors have been corrected. | | | | Punctuation has
been left as is. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

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