Susan gasped, a sharp inhalation that burned deep in her lungs. The dizziness was present, and the headache pounded behind her eyes.
But it was the fact that air could hurt in her lungs, and that she was capable of experiencing the headache and dizziness at all, that was so amazing. She was alive! Somehow, she had survived.
The snowflake pattern and the mantra came, but this time a hint of the headache remained.
She opened her eyes. A blurred face swam into her vision, its features coming slowly into focus. After a few seconds she recognized Clayton. He sat in a chair beside her bed.
"Welcome back among the living," he said, smiling down at her.
Susan tried to speak, but produced only a hoarse croak. Her throat burned as if on fire.
"Your doctor said your throat will be sore for several days," Clayton said, "the price paid for fighting suffocation with such fierce determination."
Again Susan tried to speak, but could not.
"I know, you have questions. I'll answer them, but you have to promise you won't try to talk."
She nodded.
"Good. But first things first." He reached to the low, wheeled tray beside the bed and picked up a squeeze bulb of water, brought it to Susan's lips. "You're supposed to have plenty of liquids," he said.
She drank-the water felt good going down. When she'd had enough she nodded, and Clayton put the bulb back on the tray, then leaned back in his chair.
"Now, you want to know why you're still alive, right?"
Again she nodded her response.
He paused for a moment, then began: "I learned your ship had been moved from its hangar, out onto the surface, and figured that meant you would be leaving Luna soon-perhaps sooner than you had led me to believe." He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Susan nodded.
"I thought so. I tried to get in touch with you, and in the process stumbled across information about the technician-the one murdered while working on your LIN/C."
She winced.
"You were observed being escorted through the Survey Service compound," Clayton said, "and a bit of money across the proper palms bought the information that you were taken to Hyatt's office. I even learned about the airlock there. Of course, you were being taken out to the ship."
Again she tried to speak. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she hadn't been going to the ship. She wanted to tell him about what had happened at the strangely deserted mining camp, about Hyatt's body and the man who had tried to kill her, but still she could not talk.
And then she realized that even if she could talk, even if she told him everything that had happened to her since she had left Luna City, he would not believe it. He couldn't. Here, in this world, the mining camp had been deserted for years. Clayton would remember it that way; there was no other way he could remember it.
"I knew you didn't have your LIN/C," he continued, "so I used the Fleet computer's infrared locator to find you on the surface. The first pass, it missed you entirely, so I ran the program again." Susan hadn't yet arrived back in his world-in this time. "The second pass it picked you up, and I got a crawler and went out for you. It's a lucky thing I got to you when I did. A few more minutes and you would have been dead."
Clayton paused for a moment. Finally he said, "But that's enough for now. You need rest. And don't worry, they can't get at you here. I have a guard posted outside your door." He stood, then smiled down at her. After a few seconds he turned and went to the door. It irised open and he stepped into the corridor. The door irised closed.
In less than thirty seconds the room's sensors determined the lights were no longer needed, and they went out. Susan was left in the dark with her thoughts.
Again, as she had so often since that first attack, she felt horribly alone. No one would believe what was happening to her; no one could believe it. She wouldn't believe it herself, if it wasn't happening to her. It all seemed too unnatural, too unreal.
But what did it all mean?
Finally, some of it was beginning to make sense. Somehow those who were after her had the ability to jump through time. It seemed the pendants had something to do with it. Hers had saved her twice by displacing her in time.
No, three times. As she lay unconscious on the lunar surface, her air tanks depleted, the pendant had done it again. It had jumped her forward in time to a point where Clayton would be looking for her, to a time shortly after she had left Luna City for the mining camp.
But it seemed the pendant did more than simply juggle time; it worked with space as well, with the very fabric of reality. Somehow, it had transported her to a different place-to a place where the mining camp was no longer inhabited, where the power satellite still functioned in geostationary orbit. It had dropped her into an entirely different world, where Bill Darcy was the mayor of Luna City and his brother Sam was dead.
Susan put her hand to her throat. Sudden panic filled her thoughts. The pendant wasn't there.
Where was it? Where could they have put it when they undressed her? She had to have it. It was the only weapon that seemed to work against those who wanted her dead.
It was probably in the closet across the room. It no doubt rested in the pocket of her Fleet uniform there. In a moment she would get up and find it, put it around her neck.
But before she could act, the door to her room irised open. A figure stood silhouetted in the light from the corridor, a shaft of light reflecting off a blaster he held in his left hand-trained on her.