II
_Of course_, came the thought, _a very good way to put out a fire is topour cold water on it. That's a very good idea._
At least, it had put out the fire.
_Fire?_ What fire? The fire in his body, the scalding heat that had beenquenched by the cold water.
Slowly, as though it were being turned on through a sluggishly turningrheostat, consciousness came back to The Guesser.
He began to recognize the sensations in his body. There was a general,all-over dull ache, punctuated here and there by sharper aches. Therewas the dampness and the chill. And there was the queer, gnawing feelingin the pit of his stomach.
At first, he did not think of how he had gotten where he was, nor did heeven wonder about his surroundings. There seemed merely to be anabsolute urgency to get out of wherever he was and, at the same time, anutter inability to do so. He tried to move, to shift position, but hismuscles seemed so terribly tired that flexing them was a high-magnitudeeffort.
After several tries, he got his arms under his chest, and only then didhe realize that he had been lying prone, his right cheek pressed againstcold, slimy stone. He lifted himself a little, but the effort was toomuch, and he collapsed again, his body making a faint splash as he didso.
He lay there for a while, trying to puzzle out his odd and uncomfortableenvironment. He seemed to be lying on a sloping surface with his headhigher than his feet. The lower part of his body was immersed in chill,gently-moving water. And there was something else--
The smell.
It was an incredible stench, an almost overpowering miasma of decay.
He moved his head then, and forced his eyes open. There was a dim,feeble glow from somewhere overhead and to his right, but it was enoughto show him a vaulted ceiling a few feet above him. He was lying in somesort of tube which--
And then the sudden realization came.
He was in a sewer.
The shock of it cleared his mind a little, and gave added strength tohis muscles. He pushed himself to his hands and knees and began crawlingtoward the dim light. It wasn't more than eight or ten feet, but itseemed to take an eternity for him to get there. Above him was agrating, partially covered with a soggy-looking sheet of paper. Thelight evidently came from a glow-plate several yards away.
He lay there, exhausted and aching, trying to force his brain intoaction, trying to decide what to do next.
He'd have to lift the grating, of course; that much was obvious. Andhe'd have to stand up to do that. Did he have the strength?
Only one way to find out. Again he pushed himself to his hands andknees, and it seemed easier this time. Then, bracing himself against thecurving wall of the sewer, he got to his feet. His knees were weak andwobbly, but they'd hold. They _had_ to hold.
The top of the sewer duct was not as far off as it had seemed; he had tostoop to keep from banging his head against the grating. He paused inthat position to catch his breath, and then reached up, first with onehand and then with the other, to grasp the grating.
Then, with all the strength he could gather, he pushed upwards. Thehinged grate moved upwards and banged loudly on the pavement.
There remained the problem of climbing out of the hole. The Guessernever knew how he solved it. Somehow, he managed to find himself out ofthe sewer and lying exhausted on the pavement.
He knew that there was some reason why he couldn't just lie thereforever, some reason why he had to hide where he couldn't be seen.
It was not until that moment that he realized that he was completelynaked. He had been stripped of everything, including the chronometer onhis wrist.
With an effort, he heaved himself to his feet again and began running,stumbling drunkenly, yet managing somehow to keep on his feet. He had tofind shelter, find help.
Somewhere in there, his mind blanked out again.
* * * * *
He awoke feeling very tired and weak, yet oddly refreshed, as though hehad slept for a long time. When his eyes opened, he simply stared at theunfamiliar room for a long time without thinking--without really caringto think. He only knew that he was warm and comfortable and somehowsafe, and it was such a pleasant feeling after the nightmare of cold andterror that he only wanted to enjoy it without analyzing it.
But the memory of the nightmare came again, and he couldn't repress it.And he knew it hadn't been a nightmare, but reality.
Full recollection flooded over him.
Someone had shot him with a beamgun, that nasty little handweapon thatdelivered in one powerful, short jolt the same energy that was doled outin measured doses over a period of minutes in a standard nerve-burner.He remembered jerking aside at the last second, just before the weaponwas fired, and it was evidently that which had saved his life. If thebeam had hit him in the head or spine, he'd be dead now.
Then what? Guessing about something that had happened in the past wasfutile, and, anyway, guessing didn't apply to situations like that. Buthe thought he could pretty well figure out what had happened.
After he'd been shot down, his assailant had probably dragged him offsomewhere and stripped him, and then dumped him bodily into the sewer.The criminal had undoubtedly thought that The Guesser was dead; if thebody had been found, days or weeks later, it would be unidentifiable,and probably dismissed as simply another unsolved murder. They wererather common in low-class districts such as this.
Which brought him back again to the room.
He sat up in bed and looked around. Class Six Standard Housing. Hard,gray, cast polymer walls--very plain. Ditto floor and ceiling. Singleglow-plate overhead. Rough, gray bedclothing.
Someone had found him after that careening flight from the terror of thesewer and had brought him here. Who?
_Who?_
The sense of well-being he had felt upon awakening had long sincedeserted him. What he felt now was a queer mixture of disgust and fear.He had never known a Class Six. Even the lowest crewman on the _Naipor_was a Five.
Uneasily, The Guesser climbed out of the bed. He was wearing a sack-likegray dress that fell almost to his knees, and nothing else. He walked onsilent bare feet to the door. He could hear nothing beyond it, so hetwisted the handle carefully and eased it open a crack.
And immediately he heard low voices. The first was a man's.
"... Like you pick up dogs, hey." He sounded angry. "He bring trouble onhigh, that'n. Look, you, at the face he got. He no Sixer, no, nor evenFiver. Exec, that's what. Trouble."
Then a woman's voice. "Exec, he?" A sharp laugh. "Naked, dirty-wet,sick, he fall on my door. Since when Execs ask help from Sixer chippielike I? And since when Execs talk like Sixer when they out of they head?No fancy Exec talk, he, no."
The Guesser didn't understand that. If the woman was talking abouthim--and she must be--then surely he had not spoken the illiteratepatois of the Class Six people when he was delirious.
The woman went on. "No, Lebby; you mind you business; me, I mind mine.Here, you take you this and get some food. Now, go, now. Come back atdark."
The man grumbled something The Guesser didn't understand, but thereseemed to be a certain amount of resignation in his voice. Then a dooropened and closed, and there was a moment of silence.
* * * * *
Then he heard the woman's footsteps approaching the partially openeddoor. And her voice said: "You lucky Lebby have he back to you when youopen the door. If he even see it move, he know you wake."
The Guesser backed away from the door as she came in.
She was a drab woman, with a colorlessness of face that seemed to matchthe colorlessness of her clothing. Her hair was cropped short, and sheseemed to sag all over, as though her body were trying to conform to theshapelessness of the dress instead of the reverse. When she forced asmile to her face, it didn't seem to fit, as though her mouth wereunused to such treatment from the muscles.
"How you feel?" she asked, stopping just inside the room.
"I ... uh
--" The Guesser hardly knew what to say. He was in a totallyalien environment, a completely unknown situation. "I'm fine," he saidat last.
She nodded. "You get plenty sleep, all right. Like dead, except when youtalk to yourself."
Then he _had_ spoken in delirium. "How ... how long was I out?"
"Three days," she said flatly. "Almost four." She paused. "You shipleave."
"Leave?" The Guesser said blankly. "The _Naipor_? Gone?" It seemed as ifthe world had dropped away from his feet, leaving him to fall endlesslythrough nothingness. It was true, of course. It didn't take more thantwenty-four hours to unload the ship's holds, and, since there had beenno intention of reloading, there was no need to stay. He had longoverstayed the scheduled take-off time.
It created a vacuum in his mind, a hole in his very being that couldnever be filled by anything else. The ship was his whole life--his home,his work, his security.
"How did you know about the