And thus it remained for twelve long years, until the day that Leland Hale came plodding along the beach toward the little village of Taun.

CHAPTER III

Hale did not feel well at all. He kept putting one foot in front of the other, pushing himself through the blue sand, but he would much rather have crawled into the shade and gone to sleep. His brow was feverish, and his arms and legs and neck felt stiff. It had been two days since he had been caught in the rain, and his sniffles and sneezes had developed into congested lungs and a stopped-up nose. He felt like hell.

The sun was low in the evening sky, but the air was warm and soothing. He was quite a distance from the mountains now, and there was no longer much of a fog at night.

Hale squinted his eyes at the sun.

"Dab it," he said aloud, "I'm dot godda walk eddybore today! I'b godda sit dowd ad relax."

Fever, plus loneliness, plus acute boredom, had started him in the relatively harmless pastime of talking to himself. He had come a long way on the hard-packed blue sand—which was easier to travel over than the rocky shelf above it—and his food had almost reached the halfway point.

He sat down in the shelter of the cliff, unstrapped his pack, and rummaged inside. Where the hell was the blasted aspirin? There. He took out the bottle and gave himself a massive fifteen-grain dose. Maybe it would make him feel better. He didn't like to use medicine; it made him seem weak in his own eyes. But there are times when necessity is the mother of prevention.

He ate, although he wasn't hungry. He was grateful for only one thing: the synthetics were absolutely tasteless. The head congestion had taken care of that.

Afterwards, he impatiently took another ten grains of aspirin, and, still feeling terrible, he curled up to sleep.

He woke up when something prodded him. He was instantly awake, but he didn't move except to open his eyes.

Standing over him were two men dressed in long gray-brown robes which were tied at the waist with braided ropes. One of them was pointing a tube at him that looked suspiciously like a missile weapon.

They were heavily bearded, but the beards were neatly trimmed, and their hair was brushed back and cropped reasonably short.

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