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base of the bulbous abdomen. It curved up over the insect's back and head. The
hypodermic tip quivered in the air a foot in front of the creature's head.
Jon-Tom found he was breathing fast as he searched for a place to hide.
There was no place to hide.
"Listen, you don't have do to this," he told the speaker, his eyes
following that wavering point. "I'm not going to give you any trouble. I
can't, without my duar."
"This is a reasonable precaution, particularly in light of the
disappearance of your companion," said the speaker. "I do not want you to
vanish one night when we are almost to Cugluch."
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"I couldn't do that, I couldn't.'* He wasn't ashamed of the hysteria
rising in his voice. He was genuinely THE MOMBNT OF THK MAOSCIAM 193 terrified
by the approach of what in essence was a three-foot-long needle.
**There is no need to struggle," the speaker assured him. "You can only
hurt yourself. The Ruze's venom has been used on the warmblooded before. It
knows exactly how large a dose to administer to render you immobile for the
duration of our journey."
"I don't give a damn if it's been to medical school.
You're not sticking that thing in me!" He jumped to his right, hoping to
clear the surprised guards and make a run for the water, not caring anymore
whether they used their swords on him or not.
They did not have the chance to react. As soon as Jon-Tom moved, the
Ruze struck. The stinger lashed down like a striking cobra. Jon-Tom felt a
terrific burning pain between his waist and thighs as the stinger went right
through his pants to catch him square in the left gluteus. He was surprised at
the ( intensity of his scream. It was as if someone had given him an injection
of acid.
The Ruze backed away, its work completed, and studied the human with
interest. Beetle guards spread out. Jon-Tom staggered a couple of steps toward
the entryway before collapsing. One hand went to his left buttock, where the
fire still burned, while he tried to pull himself forward with his other hand.
The coldness started in his legs. It traveled rapidly up his thighs,
then spread through the rest of his body- It wasn't uncomfortable. Only
frightening. When it reached his shoulders, he collapsed on his stomach.
Somehow he managed to roll over onto his back. His elbows locked up in
front of his eyes, then his wrists and fingers.
The long, thin, bug-eyed face of the speaker came within range of his
vision and gazed down at him from a great height. Jon-Tom fought to make his
vocal cords function.
194 "You... Hed... to... me."
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"I did not lie to you." the speaker replied calmly.
"You will not die. You will only be made incapable of resisting."
"Not that." It. took a tremendous effort for him to speak. His words
were weak and breathy. '*You said it... wouldn't... hurt."
The speaker did not reply, continued to regard him as it would something
moving feebly beneath a microscope.
Jon-Tom wondered how long the effects of the injection would last. How
many times between here and Cugluch would he be subjected to the Ruze's fiery
attentions? Once a week? Every morning? Better that he find some way of
killing himself quickly. He couldn't even do that now. His paralysis was their
security.
It was difficult to tell if the speaker was pleased, apologetic, or
indifferent. As for the Ruze, it was only doing a job. The dose it had
injected had been delivered with a surgeon's skill.
Satisfied, it nodded its absurdly small head and indicated that the task
of immobilizing the prisoner had been completed. The speaker turned to a group
of unarmed water beetles waiting patiently nearby.
Jon-Tom felt stiff, uncaring hands turning him. He wanted to resist, to
strike out against his tormentors, but the only things he could move were his
eyes.
Then they were placing him in the oversized glass coffin and preparing
to load it onto the back of the waiting cockroach-thing. Inside the
water-tight container it was peaceful, silent, warm. He fought against falling
asleep: that was what they wanted him to do, so he stubbornly resisted doing
it.
The speaker was nearby, giving orders. Jon-Tom was lifted into the air,
and thin straps were passed over and around his container. He could tell he
was being moved only because he could see movement TUB MOMENT or THE MAOICIAM
195 through the transparent material. He could feel nothing.
Then he was falling. The coffin had slipped, or been dropped. There was
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a rush of new activity around nim, but the cause of it remained foreign to his
senses. His vision was starting to blur from the effects of the Ruze's toxin.
Soon he would be asleep despite his best efforts to stay awakeStaring straight
upward he thought he could make out a vast dark shape coming toward him. It
was blocking out the sunlight. For an instant it appeared to linger near the
apex of the dome, and then the dome came apart. It did not crack or split like
glass or plastic. It simply imploded.
An explosive influx of water sent his coffin spinning, along with the
bodies of his captors. With his perception already distorted, it was
impossible to tell which direction he was tumblingHe was alone, a pebble in a
bottle, a tiny human marble being bounced between floor and walls. Something
had shattered the dome. That much he was certain of. He wanted to cry out as
the water spun him in circles, but his tongue and vocal cords were paralyzed
now. It didn't matter. There was no one to hear him.
The wall collapsed, and the swirling currents threw him outside the
broken enclosure. The angry waters quieted. It was peaceful outside the
boundaries of the ruined dome, though stirred-up sediments clouded the
pristine water of the lake. Or was the darkness only in his mind?
It seemed as though he was falling now, still tumbling over and over,
bouncing down the side of the underwater hill on which his prison had been
constructed. He fell slowly because of the water and because of the air within
his coffin. The latter was already beginning to smell stale. When he started
to 196 black out, he suspected it was due not to the aftereffects of the
injection he'd received but to the depletion of his small air supply.
In his drugged fashion he was elated. He would not have to suffer
repealed visits from the Ruze, nor some slow and painful dismemberment in
distant Cugluch. He was going to die here and now. He would have smiled if his
paralysis had permitted it.
The Plated Folk were going to be cheated of their ceremonial revenge.
Then the darkness came to him, and he welcomed it.
XII After an eternity it occurred to him that the temperature around him
was rising. Not so surprising in death, perhaps, but it did surprise him that
he could sense the change.
He tried to open his eyes. The muscles protested.
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It was as though he were not completely dead. He tingled all over, an
excruciating sensation.
Since his eyes weren't functioning, he tried to move his lips. They
worked, but fitfully. He forced them to. He badly wanted a swallow of air.
When he finally managed that complicated series of movements, he tried
to scream. The air went down his throat and into his lungs like a chunk of raw
liver. The next swallow was easier, however.
Long-dormant glands generated saliva, and this helped even more.
Possibly he was not dead. He argued the point with the rest of his body,
which insisted he was. He had drowned or suffocated or both, but he certainly
wasn't alive.
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