The Sky Is Falling | Page 4

long moment of silence. Dave's heart had picked up speed, but
now it missed again, and he felt cold. He shivered. Hell or heaven weren't like this, either.
It was like something out of some picture--something about Cagliostro, the ancient
mystic. But he was sure the language he somehow spoke wasn't an ancient one. It had
words for electron, penicillin and calculus, for he found them in his own mind.
The chant picked up again, and now the brazier flamed a dull red, showing the Sather
Karf's face changing from some kind of disappointment to a businesslike steadiness. The
red glow grew white in the center, and a fat, worm-like shape of flame came into being.
The old man picked it up in his hand, petted it and carried it toward Dave. It flowed
toward his chest.
He pulled himself back, but Ser Perth and the nurse leaped forward to hold him. The
thing started to grow brighter. It shone now like a tiny bit of white-hot metal; but the
older man touched it, and it snuggled down into Dave's chest, dimming its glow and
somehow purring. Warmth seemed to flow from it into Dave. The two men watched for a
moment, then picked up their apparatus and turned to go. The Sather Karf lifted the fire

from the brazier in his bare hand, moved it into the air and said a soft word. It vanished,
and the two men were also gone.
"Magic!" Dave said. He'd seen such illusions created on the stage, but there was
something different here. And there was no fakery about the warmth from the thing over
his chest. Abruptly he remembered that he'd come across something like it, called a
salamander, in fiction once; the thing was supposed to be a spirit of fire, and dangerously
destructive.
The girl nodded in the soft glow coming from Dave's chest. "Naturally," she told him.
"How else does one produce and control a salamander, except by magic? Without, magic,
how can we thaw a frozen soul? Or didn't your world have any sciences, Dave Hanson?"
Either the five months under his uncle had toughened him, or the sight of the bulldozer
falling had knocked him beyond any strong reaction. The girl had practically told him he
wasn't in his own world. He waited for some emotion, felt none, and shrugged. The
action sent pain running through him, but he stood it somehow. The salamander ceased
its purring, then resumed.
"Where in hell am I?" he asked. "Or when?"
She shook her head. "Hell? No, I don't think so. Some say it's Earth and some call it
Terah, but nobody calls it Hell. It's--well, it's a long--time, I guess--from when you were.
I don't know. In such matters, only the Satheri know. The Dual is closed even to the Seri.
Anyhow, it's not your space-time, though some say it's your world."
"You mean dimensional travel?" Dave asked. He'd seen something about that on a
science-fiction television program. It made even time travel seem simple. At any event,
however, this wasn't a hospital in any sane and normal section of Canada during his time,
on Earth.
"Something like that," she agreed doubtfully. "But go to sleep now. Shh." Her hands
came up in complicated gestures. "Sleep and grow well."
"None of that hypnotism again!" he protested.
She went on making passes, but smiled on him kindly. "Don't be
superstitious--hypnotism is silly. Now go to sleep. For me, Dave Hanson. I want you well
and true when you awake."
Against his will, his eyes closed, and his lips refused to obey his desire to protest. Fatigue
dulled his thoughts. But for a moment, he went on pondering. Somebody from the
future--this could never be the past--had somehow pulled him out just ahead of the
accident, apparently; or else he'd been deep frozen somehow to wait for medical
knowledge beyond that of his own time. He'd heard it might be possible to do that.
It was a cockeyed future, if this were the future. Still, if scientists had to set up some, sort
of a religious mumbo-jumbo....

Sickness thickened in him, until he could feel his face wet with perspiration. But with it
had come a paralysis that left him unable to move or groan. He screamed inside himself.
"Poor mandrake-man," the girl said softly. "Go back to Lethe. But don't cross over. We
need you sorely."
Then he passed out again.

II
Whatever they had done to patch him up hadn't been very successful, apparently. He
spent most of the time in a delirium; sometimes he was dead, and there was an ultimate
coldness like the universe long after the entropy death. At other times, he was wandering
into fantasies that were all horrible. And at all times, even in unconsciousness,