To Save a World Read Online Free PDF

of a world off on the edge of the universe, and not even decently part of the Empire. Other telepaths? Hell, it's bad enough, being a freak myself. I'm supposed to like the idea of other freaks?"
    "Nevertheless, think it over," said the man beside his hospital bed. "I don't want to put pressure on you, Mr. Rondo, but where else would you go? You certainly can't stay here. And forgive me for mentioning it, you don't look as if you have much chance for any other employment."
    He shrugged. "I'll find something," he said, and meant it. There were always suckers coming in on the big ships. He wasn't a marked man all over the planet. He'd get a stake somehow and get away; and there were still planets he hadn't tried.
    It wasn't until the second visitor came along that he changed his mind. The plan sounded tempting enough. All gambling machines were equipped, by the stiff Empire law which couldn't be bribed or bought off, with tamperproof fields—but, the visitor told him beguilingly, a tamperproof field couldn't keep out esp. They'd provide disguises, and a liberal cut of the winnings . . .
    And through their persuasions he caught the unmistakable feel of the gangster. One such group had beaten him within an inch of his life. Now he was supposed to get involved with another?
    Rondo was a loner, had been one all his life, didn't intend to change now. Bad enough to be at the mercy of one gang. The thought of being caught between two made even his self-destructive gambling instinct flinch.
    Anyway, even though Darkover didn't sound like his kind of place at all, they couldn't make him stay there. There must be a big spaceport, and where there was a spaceport there was gambling, and where there was gambling he could make a stake—and then there was a whole big galaxy waiting for him again.
    He called the number his first visitor had left.
     
    Conner was ready to die.
    He found himself floating again, as he had floated so many times since the accident a year ago: weightless, sick, disoriented. Dying, and death wouldn't come. Not this again. Overdosed, I was ready to die. I thought it would cut this off. Now here again, is this my hell?
    Time disappeared, as it always did, a few minutes, an hour, fifty years, floating across the cosmos, and a voice said clear and loud in his brain, not in words, Maybe we can help, but you must come to us. Such pain, such terror, there is no reason . . .
    Where, where? His whole world, his whole being, one silent scream, where can I turn this off .
    Darkover. Be patient, they'll find you.
    Where are you who speak to me? Where is this place? Conner tried to focus in the endless spinning.
    The voice drifted away. Nowhere. Not in the body. No time, no space here.
    The invisible cord of contact thinned, leaving him alone in his weightless hell, and Conner screamed inside his mind, Don't go, don't go, you were with me Out There, don't ever go, don't go . . .
    "He's coming to," remarked an all too solid voice, and Conner felt despair and loneliness and anguish all disappear under a sudden sharply physical ache of sickness. He opened his eyes to the too brisk, all but accusing eyes of Doctor Rimini, who made reassuring sounds which Conner disregarded, having heard them all too often before. He listened without speaking, promised blandly not to do it again, and sank into the lifeless apathy from which he had emerged only twice, both times for a futile attempt at suicide.
    "I don't understand yon," Rimini remarked. He sounded friendly and interested but Conner knew now how empty the words were. No, Rimini didn't give a damn, although they regarded him as a stubborn and still interesting case. Not a person, of course, with a unique and horrible way of suffering. Just a case. He opened a crack in his mind to hear the doctor chattering on, "You displayed so much will to live after the accident, Mr. Conner, and after surviving that ordeal it seems all wrong that you should give up now . . ."
    But what Conner heard