"Well what?" 

The officer's ears grew pink. "Affirm or deny." 

"I'd rather not do either till I have advice of counsel." 

"Oh. One of those." The officer's lips drew tight. "All right, then, if that's the way you want it. But I warn you, it won't help." 

Turning on his heel, he stalked out the door. The medmen followed. 

Still Boone lay unmoving. There was a tension in him now, and of a sudden he felt old and weary. 

So even here, even now, after all that had happened, Krobis was bound to get his pound of flesh. 

Almost idly, he wondered how it would end. 

Not that it mattered. Not now with Eileen still back on Hyperion, a captive of the Helgae. 

If she'd lived this long. 

Bleakly, he wondered what had happened that day--or was it night?--in the weird domed city. Were the Helgae living entities, as it had seemed? Had they really tried to probe his brain by some strange thought-wave system? Or was that all imagination? 

For that matter, had he ever actually been beneath the ice-shell? Did it even exist? And was there a warm, lush world inside it--a world where huge, six-sexed flowers bloomed and held their colors in spite of ammonia and methane; where Helgae bubbles formed in a flash to trap invaders? 

Above all, how had he come to be aboard a carrier, drifting beyond Hyperion's orbit? 

Those were questions to which, some day, he'd have to find the answers. 

Such questions--! And so many of them! 

Yet in his heart he knew that they were academic, almost. For they only concealed the true core of his tension. 

Eileen. 

 Prev. P 28/73 next