The Sword and the Net полностью

Otto stopped suddenly in his downward course. He slewed his body around and dragged it, uphill now, close to the voice, and saw that the tent-like cluster was made of interlocking struts of steel. He peered into their shadow and saw the body of a woman pinned beneath them. The voice was coming from her mouth. He felt around with both hands and found that only one of the struts was pinning her. He tried to speak to her, to tell her what he was doing, but her words did not change.

“Come and help me, Bob,” she said. “Are you all right, darling?”

Otto dragged himself around until he could seize the strut which held her. He did not seem to be conscious now of the pain in his legs. He could not move them nor use their force—but their existence did not seem to hamper him so much.

He wrapped an arm about the strut and heaved. It moved—and, his teeth sunk in his lower lip until the blood ran down his chin, he raised it from the ground and held it there. He racked his body and stretched in the free arm beneath the steel tangle and caught the woman’s shoulder and the stuff of her gown and began to pull her body free. Her voice ceased.

Unbelievably, he dragged her inch by inch from the web—and then, as he pulled her body clear, heard a little rattling sound from throat and knew that she was dead. He tried to ease down the strut he had held above the ground, and the whole structure collapsed.

Something struck him on the back of the head and the world went away from him.

There was slimy, spinning darkness. Sometimes it was the inmost self which whirled and the darkness which was stationary; sometimes this law, in each case seemingly immutable, was violently reversed.

The self became aware of its body—and he was afraid with a fear which was so terrible as to be exalting. And he began to doubt the darkness: perhaps there was no darkness: perhaps he only thought there was darkness.

The darkness ceased whirling but he remained still. The stillness was more frightful than the movement had been.

He was Otto Falken and there was a dull ache in his head and agony in his legs. He was Nils Jorgensen—and both his legs were broken. He had been shot down? He had been wounded? He had been injured by a bomb fragment? No—he was Jorgensen. He was in America. But his legs were broken—he knew that. Both his legs. There had been an explosion. . . .

He knew everything—suddenly, in a flash of memory and comprehension which left his body shaking.

There was softness beneath and around him. The softness of a bed. There was a heavy constraint about his head which was nothing to do with the pain inside it, and his legs were each of them bound and stiffly constricted and immovable in spite of efforts which shot him through with darts of anguish.

He was in a bed and there were bandages around his skull and splints upon his legs—and he could not see. A cold sweat of fear broke out all over him. He could not see.

He lay very still and thought about his eyes—and found that the muscles in lids and cheeks were stiffly contracted, screwing the eyes tightly shut like those of a child who has been frightened by a vivid light.

Perhaps he could see. Perhaps he was neither blind nor in darkness. Perhaps he had just clamped his eyes shut like this and failed to order them to open.

He ordered them to open—and nothing happened. He was conscious of the rigidity, as if they were frozen, of the little muscles beneath the skin.

He tried again, and the lids lifted heavily. There was light and he could see it. It was a soft, shaded light and it came from somewhere beyond his range of vision and it did not hurt his eyes.

He could see. Beyond doubt he could see. He saw, directly above him as he lay, a white ceiling divided by thick yet graceful beams of some dark and glowing wood. He saw, below these and at the end of his vision-range, the upper part of a wide, white-framed window, outlining a rectangle of that grey-shot blackness which is forerunner of dawn. He could see.

A little groan of relief came from his lips. He tried to turn upon his side to see yet more—and the moan became a groan, almost a cry, at the pain which the fruitless effort had caused. He lay limply as he was. His lungs laboured as if he had been running and again he felt the sweat cold upon his forehead.

He heard a whisper of movement, and into his vision, at the left side of him as he lay, came a figure. But it was out of his sight immediately, and all he knew was that it was a woman’s.

She stood at the extreme head of the bed, and there was a little rattling of glass or china. He tried to move so that he could see her, but failed by reason of new and breath-taking hurts.

She moved again. She bent over him—and he could see her face.