The Project Gutenberg EBook of Second Sight, by Basil Eugene Wells

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Title: Second Sight

Author: Basil Eugene Wells

Release Date: August 28, 2009 [EBook #29832]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SECOND SIGHT ***

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_Basil Wells, who lives in Pennsylvania, writes that he has been
doing research concerning the keelboat age prior to and following
the War of 1812 on the "locally famous section of
portage-keelboat-rafting stream from Waterford down to Pittsburgh,"
turning from this to this grimmer future._

second
sight

_by BASIL WELLS_

Then his hand caught an arm and he
exerted his full strength. The entire
arm tore away from its shoulder....

His fingers moved over the modest packet of bills the invisible
rockhound had handed to him. He smiled through the eternal night that
was his own personal hell. Duggan's Hades.

"Thanks, Pete," he said gratefully. "Here, have a box of Conmos."

His sensitized fingers found the cigars, handed over a box, and he heard
the nervous scuff of the other's shoes.

"This eight thousand means I can see again--for a while at least. Take
'em! It's little enough."

"Look, Duggan. I get eight hundred for selling you the ticket on the
breakthrough time. Keep the cigars. You need the dough."

Feet pounded, thumping into swift inaudibility along the 10th Level's
yielding walkway. His fingers caressed the crisp notes that his lucky
guess on the 80th Level's tunnel juncture had won for him, plus the ten
dollars, that this meager business could ill afford, it had cost to join
the rockhounds' pool....

But now he was free. His own man. He was released from the calculated
economies of his wife. Janith knew to within a few dollars what his
newsstand on the 10th Level should make. He had never been able to save
the necessary thousand dollar deposit, and ten dollars an hour, that a
rented super mech cost. And she would never listen to his pleas that he
must see again--if only for an hour....

"Waste ten or twenty