st ahead of the accident, apparently;
or else he'd been deep frozen somehow to wait for medical knowledge
beyond that of his own time. He'd heard it might be possible to do that.

It was a cockeyed future, if this were the future. Still, if scientists
had to set up some, sort of a religious mumbo-jumbo....

Sickness thickened in him, until he could feel his face wet with
perspiration. But with it had come a paralysis that left him unable to
move or groan. He screamed inside himself.

"Poor mandrake-man," the girl said softly. "Go back to Lethe. But don't
cross over. We need you sorely."

Then he passed out again.

II

Whatever they had done to patch him up hadn't been very successful,
apparently. He spent most of the time in a delirium; sometimes he was
dead, and there was an ultimate coldness like the universe long after
the entropy death. At other times, he was wandering into fantasies that
were all horrible. And at all times, even in unconsciousness, he seemed
to be fighting desperately to keep from falling apart painfully within
himself.

When he was awake, the girl was always beside him. He learned that her
name was Nema. Usually there was also the stout figure of Ser Perth.
Sometimes he saw Sather Karf or some other older man working with
strange equipment, or with things that looked like familiar hypodermics
and medical equipment. Once they had an iron lung around him and there
was a thin wisp over his face.

He started to brush it aside, but Nema's hand restrained him. "Don't
disturb the sylph," she ordered.

Another semirational period occurred during some excitement or danger
that centered around him. He was still half delirious, but he could see
men working frantically to build a net of something around his bed,
while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently
immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders
involving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper and
seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous thing beyond the door.

Sather Karf sat hunched over what seemed to be a bowl of water, paying
no attention to the struggle. Something that he seemed to see there held
his attention. Then he screamed suddenly.

"The Sons of the Egg. It's their sending!"

He reached for a brazier beside him, caught up the fire and plunged it
deep into the bowl of water, screaming something. There was the sound of
an explosion from far away a