All Judgment Fled Read Online Free PDF Page A

together into a silvery triangular blur.
     
     
Just before it disappeared completely, McCullough rotated himself until he

was facing his direction of travel, and began searching for an identical

blur which would be Morrison's ship, even though the soonest he could hope

to see it would be in another two hours.
     
     
The colonel had suggested that he sleep on the way over, leaving his

receiver switched on at full volume so that Morrison could wake him

when it became necessary. McCullough had refused this suggestion for

two reasons. The one he gave the colonel was that he did not want to

be half asleep when he closed with P-One -- making contact might be a

tricky enough job with him wide-awake. The other reason he did not tell

anyone. It was his fear of waking up with no ship in sight, beyond all

help or hope of help, alone . . .
     
     
He was very much aware of the safety line coiled neatly at his waist,

and of the fact that the other end of it was not attached to anything.
     
     
But that was just the beginning . . .
     
     
In the weightless condition no muscular effort was required to keep

arms and legs outstretched, and in that attitude spin was reduced to a

minimum. But gradually the position began to feel awkward and ridiculous

and, in some obscure fashion, unprotected. All around him the stars hung

bright and close and beautiful, but the blackness between them went on

and on forever. He told himself truthfully that he enjoyed being out here,

that there was nothing to threaten him, nothing to be immediately afraid

of, and nobody to see his fear even if he should show it.
     
     
He was all alone.
     
     
His rate of spin began to increase slowly, then rapidly as his outstretched

arms and legs contracted until his knees were drawn up against his stomach

and his arms, with the elbows tucked in as far as his suit would allow,

folded tightly across his chest. But it was not until he realized that

his eyes were squeezed shut that McCullough began to wonder what exactly

it was that was happening to him.
     
     
He badly needed to straighten himself out, in both senses of the word.
     
     
But for some odd reason his body had passed beyond the control of his

mind, just as the various layers of his mind were no longer under the

control of his will. He was feeling rather than thinking. It was as if he

were an enormous, dry sponge soaking up, saturating itself in loneliness

-- the purely subjective loneliness of being unknown and unnoticed in

a crowd, the actual loneliness of being on a deserted beach where the

uncaring natural phenomena of wind and wave press all around, and the

awful, lost feeling of the child in the night who believes, whether

rightly or wrongly, that he is unwanted and unloved. The feeling which

was welling up inside McCullough was loneliness distilled, concentrated

and ultimately refined. Anything in his previous experience was like

comparing a slight overexposure to the sun with third-degree burns.
     
     
He crouched into himself even more tightly while the unseen stars

whirled around him and the hot tears forced their way between his

squeezed-together lids.
     
     
Then the awful feeling of loneliness began to withdraw, or perhaps he was

withdrawing from it. The weightless spinning was oddly pleasant. There

was a timeless, hypnotic quality about it. The sensation was like the

moment after a tumble into deep water when it is impossible to tell if

one is upside down or not, and yet the warm salt water is supporting

and protecting and pressing close
     
     
" Say something!" shouted McCullough.
     
     
"Something," said Berryman promptly.
     
     
"Anything wrong, Doctor?"
     
     
"Not -- not really, sir," said McCullough. "Whatever it was -- I'm all

right now."
     
     
"Good! I thought you were sleeping after all -- you haven't made a sound

for over two hours. We should be just about visible to you now."
     
     
McCullough straightened and slowed his spin. The