themselves so? Now here is one who was both squeezed and stretched
alternately as well as hammered, dehydrated and almost asphyxiated, is
it not? This will bear watching. It is alive but there will have to be
X-rays in profusion."

It danced long sensitive fingers over the welts and bruises and
commented bluntly that it was well the fishermen had returned his arms
and legs into their sockets before he fully regained consciousness. It
muttered and clucked to itself as it used the hypo which Johnny could
not feel. "Formidable!"

The pleasant drowsiness came down just as he was identifying the queer
smell as ozone, brine and good fresh air.

After a while they moved him to a small hospital in an upcoast town,
where he slept much, suffered not a little and, even waking, viewed the
world incuriously through drug-laden eyes. Finally they allowed him to
waken fully and the sharp-faced doctor, together with half a dozen
others from various parts of the world decided that, after all, he
seemed to be surviving.

Johnny lay and itched intolerably in the cast that covered him from nape
to thigh and listened to the bustling of the elderly nursing sister who,
good soul, having never been more than ten miles from her town in her
life, reminded him that it wanted but two days to Christmas and opined
that: "Such a tragedy for M'sieu. To be so far from home!"

Johnny smiled at the ceiling, not daring to laugh yet, and sniffed at
the salt sea air with its undertone of rank seaweed and gloried in it;
even a chance whiff of that particular cigarette tobacco that only a
Frenchman can appreciate. He thought that here, as across the water,
night and day followed each other in their proper order and the ground
was a solid thing beneath the feet.

Why--he could never be closer.

FIN.

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction, |
| December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any |
| evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was |
| renewed. |
| |
| A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected. |
|