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Show space travelers, in all faith! The panic that sometimes gripped first-time voyagers should of a certainty not have bothered the child at such a late date. What good fortune for himself-to have been on hand at just the right time! 'Twould be of the greatest favor at promotion time! He'd dashed off to intercept the-automatic ambulance at once. He'd found it at length, checking into the BirthingHospice. By the Mass! he'd thought with some exasperation. What wight ordered the software for that ambulance? Janni reached out her hand and took Dr'Anya's. "Truly, I still feel it," she said, her voice shaking. "...right h e r e . . . ' t i s still here, truly-" She pressed her other hand on a spot just under her ribs. "Terror. . . t e r r o r . . . " she said and rolled her head back and forth on the pillow, whimpering. Dr'Anya held Janni's hand tightly and stroked the maiden's head. "Ah, child," she murmured, "light of my l i f e . . . . " Janni's voice, drugged by the tranquilizer, came to her mother as though from a spaceliner-to-BauerWorlde voice transmission, the vowels and palatal consonants thready and ghostlike... a sound from the emptiness of space. "Why waited it so long, child?" she said. "Pray, why came it to thee on the very last leg of the journey?" Janni shook her head wearily. "I disapplied my Field, the curse of Saint Ida be on my head," the girl murmured. "Marry, but who would have expected such a reception so all of a sudden?" Her voice faded. She turned over and looked at her mother through the gloom, squinting a bit to focus her eyes. "True it is that no wight gets 26 |