Newland nodded.
"It happened yesterday," Troy said. "What's my name?"
"Troy Gordon."
"And yours?"
"Jerry Franklin Newland."
"What do you do?"
"Do?... Oh!" Newland drew a deep breath. "I'm courier pilot for the ...
for the...." He stopped, looking first surprised, then dismayed. Then
his face wrinkled up slowly, like that of a child about to cry.
"That part's gone again, eh?" Troy asked, watching him.
"Yes. There's some ... there's...."
"You are--or you were--courier pilot for the Cassa Expedition," Troy
said. He thumped his heel on the floor. "That's Cassa One, underneath
us. We've been away from Earth for three years and eight months." He
paused. "Does that help?"
Newland reflected, frowned. "Not much. I ... it seems to be true when
you say it." He hesitated. "We're prisoners, aren't we?"
"Uh-huh," he answered, flatly.
"I had that feeling. And you're hiding me here?"
"That's right," Troy agreed.
"Why?"
"Because nobody else knows you're still alive. It's better if they
don't, right now."
Newland shook his head, indicated a sign fastened to the ceiling above
the bunk in such a way that a man lying in the bunk on his back would
catch sight of it as soon as he opened his eyes. "That," he said, "made
sense as soon as I saw it just now! I remembered having read it before
and what it meant. But otherwise everything's still badly blurred."
* * * * *
Troy glanced up at the sign. It read:
RELAX AND TAKE IT EASY, JERRY! YOU WERE IN A BAD SMASH-UP, AND YOU'VE
JUST FINISHED A LONG STRETCH IN THE EMERGENCY TANK OF YOUR SHIP.
EVERYTHING'S BOUND TO SEEM A LITTLE FOGGY, BUT YOU'RE GOING TO BE OKAY.
DON'T TRY TO LEAVE THE ROOM. IT HAS TO BE KEPT LOCKED, BUT SOMEONE WILL
BE ALONG TO SEE YOU IN TWO OR THREE HOURS AT THE MOST.
Troy said, "Your memory will start coming back fast enough. You've made
a good start." He sat down, took his cigarette case from his pocket.
"I'll go over some of the things that have happened with you. That
tends to bring them ... and other things ... back to mind. Care to
smoke?"
"Yes, I'd like to smoke."
Troy tossed the cigarette case over to the bunk, watched the pilot
reach for and miss it, then bend forward awkwardly to fumble for it on
the floor. Reflexes still very bad, he thought. But when Newland had
the case in his hand, he flicked it open without hesitation, took out
a cigarette and closed the case, then turned it over and pressed the
button which snapped on the concealed light. The day before, he had
stared at the case helplessly until Troy showed him what to do. So his
body had begun to recall more of its learned motion patterns.
Troy said, "I told you the main parts twice yesterday. Don't let that
worry you ... you've retained more than most would be likely to do
after a quarter of the time you spent in the tank. You weren't in very
good shape after the smash-up, Jerry!"
Newland said wryly, "I can imagine that." He drew on the cigarette,
coughed, then tossed the case back to Troy who caught it and put it in
his pocket.
"Have you got back any recollection at all of what the aliens that
caught us are like?" Troy asked.
Newland shook his head.
"Well," Troy said, "they're downright cute, in a way. More like big
penguins than anything else. Short little legs. The heads aren't so
cute ... a hammerhead shark would be the closest thing there, which is
why we call them Hammerheads--though not when we think some of them
might be listening.
"They don't belong here any more than we do. They came from another
system which is a lot closer than Sol but still a long way off. Now,
we aren't the first Earth people to get to Cassa. There was an Earth
survey ship poking around the system about twenty years ago, and it
seems that the Hammerheads also had an expedition here at the time.
They spotted our survey ship but weren't spotted themselves, and the
survey ship eventually went back to Earth short two of its men. Those
two were supposed to have got lost in the deserts on Cassa. Actually,
the Hammerheads picked them up ... Jerry?"
The pilot's head was beginning to nod. He straightened now and took a
puff on the cigarette, grinning embarrassedly. "S'all right, Troy!" he
muttered. "Seemed to get ... sort of absent-minded there for a moment."
Which was, Troy knew, one of the symptoms of the re-awakening period.
Newland's mind had been shut away from reality for a long time,
wrapped in soothing, vaguely pleasant dreams while the emergency tank
went about the business of repairing his broken body. The habit of
unconscious retreat from his surroundings could not be immediately
discarded, and particularly not when the surroundings were as
undesirable as those in which Newland now found himself. It would be
better, Troy thought, to skip some of the uglier details ... and yet
he had to tell the man enough to make him willing to cooperate in what
would be, at the very least, a desperately dangerous undertaking.
* * * * *
He said, "You're still only three-quarters awake, Jerry. We have to
expect that. But the closer you listen and the more information you can
absorb, the faster you'll shake off the cobwebs. And that's important.
These Hammerheads are a tough breed, and we're in a bad spot."