XI
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Feldman fought for control of himself, forced himself to think, to hold
onto his sanity. It was sheer stupidity, since nothing could have been
more merciful than to lose this reality. But the will to be himself was
stronger than logic. And bit by bit, he forced the fear and horror away
from him until he could examine his situation.
He was spinning slowly, so that stars ahead of him seemed to crawl
across his view. The ship was retreating from him already hundreds of
yards away. Mars was a shrunken pill far away.
Then something blinked to one side. He turned his head to stare.
A little ship was less than three hundred yards away. He recognized it
as a life raft. Now his spin brought him around to face it, and he saw
it was parallelling his course. The ejection of the life raft must have
caused the thump he'd heard before he was cast adrift.
It meant someone was trying to save him. It meant _life_!
He flailed his arms and beat his legs together, senselessly trying to
force himself closer, while trying to guess who could have taken the
chance. No one he could think of could have booked passage on the
_Iroquois_. There wasn't that much free money in the villages.
Something flashed a hot blue, and the little ship leaped forward.
Whoever was handling it knew nothing about piloting. It picked up too
much speed at too great an angle.
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