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Norton, Andre, 1912-2005

"Star Born"

Broken crystal littered
the floor in shards and puddles of strange chemicals mingled smells to
become a throat-rasping fog. Raf eyed those doubtfully. Some of those
fumes might combine in the blast--
Once again Dalgard read his mind and waved the mermen back, sending
them through the door to the ramp and the lower engine room. Raf stood
in the doorway, the bomb in his hand, knowing that it was time for him
to make the most accurate cast of his life.
The sphere left his fingers, was a gleam in the murky air. It struck
the pile of material. Then the whole world was hidden by a blinding
glare.
It was dark--black dark. And he was swinging back and forth through
this total darkness. He was a ball, a blast bomb being tossed from
hand to hand through the dark by painted warriors who laughed shrilly
at his pain, tossed through the dark. Fear such as he had never known,
even under the last acceleration pressure of the take-off from Terra,
beat through Raf's veins away from his laboring heart. He was helpless
in the dark!
"Not alone--" the words came out of somewhere, he didn't know whether
he heard them, or, in some queer way, felt them.


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