Free A Handful of Time by Rosel George Brown Page B

money. But if God should ask me, I would have to say, There was just something about those windowless monads that fascinated me.
    I began to move my left arm now, slowly, slowly stretching it out from my shoulder, I imagined, damping the sense of excitement that wanted to boil within me, the green planet rushing out to meet me. Or my windowless monad falling down to meet the planet. It doesn’t matter, of course, which way you look at it.
    Because each of us, locked in the windowless monads of our senses, sees only what his brain chooses to record. And if we reach out, for reassurance, to touch the hand of a friend, there are only the empty spaces between the atoms that touch, and the little deceit our senses practice.
    So used am I to the deceits of my senses, that I act as though I can communicate not only with my fellow man, but also with those other races of the galaxy whom we have not known well enough to call fellow man.
    I did not know whether there would be intelligent life on Algol II or not. All I had was a chemical analysis of the atmosphere, the temperature and the gravity. But it was such a planet where, in blithe disregard of Lecomte du Noüy, life might very well evolve.
    If there were nothing to eat on the planet, I would die. For my windowless monad was not a little cruiser I could navigate around space like a boat on a pond. That sort of thing was a government project all by itself. My monad would set me down, cough me up, let me back in after five years, Terran time, and take off again. With exactly and only enough energy for take off. Lots of them came back empty.
    I faced it, in the dark dream where I floated to my sluggish exercises. Most of them came back empty.
    After long, heavy hours that faded past uncounted, when I wondered if perhaps the mechanism had failed and I would hurtle through space forever, without warning I was ejected into a world of brilliant sunshine, green trees and moving figures.
    My first reactions were instinctive. I rolled over on my stomach and coughed the fluid out of my throat, my eyes tightly closed against the unaccustomed light. The sun was hot, but I felt cold, dreadfully cold, and naked in the empty air, uncontrolled breezes blowing over my damp body, the long, wet strands of my hair hanging down my neck, for my hair had grown long, even at the slow rate of life in Suspension.
    I lay there, in a state of partial shock, unable for a while to think of anything but my own acute discomfort. Then my body chemistry must have adjusted itself to the new environment, for I became aware of two sensations, as I lay with my head down in my hands, my eyes closed.
    First and foremost, I was terribly hungry. Hunger was clawing at my innards and I felt that my very stomach was being ripped and torn. I was trembling with it.
    The other thing I was aware of was a sound, a rushing sea sound, such as a sea shell makes in the ear.
    I turned over weakly and looked at the moving figures. The sunlight flashed and danced crazily in my eyes, for they were still shocked by it. Through half-closed lids I saw figures that were unmistakably humanoid.
    A grey, attenuated face came near mine. “Food!” I said, and pointed at my mouth.
    A hand, too smooth and slightly scaled, helped me up. The hand wrapped twice around mine and I saw it was opposed thumb and tentacle. I believe that’s all I noticed until something liquid was handed to me. I drank it and went to sleep with my head on a table.
    I woke up on a couch, feeling a great deal stronger and with my eyes focusing properly.
    There was a girl sitting beside me. I’m not sure how I knew it was a girl, for it was some time before I could tell one of these natives from another.
    Up close she looked silvery and I saw the skin was not really scaled. It was composed of large, slightly thickened epithelial cells. She stared at me from cool, bluish eyes. This stare was one of the most difficult things I had to adjust to on Algol II. The natives