Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

She fought the sleepiness. She tried to push herself upright again, but she couldn't. Her muscles were too weak, her arms blocks of frozen ice. She couldn't move.

Yellow and green lights, growing larger. And a white light in the center. Very white, like halogen. She was starting to see details through the swirling snow. There was a silver dome, and wheels, and large glowing letters. The letters said NASA.

She coughed. The thing emerged from the snow. It was some kind of small vehicleabout three feet high, no larger than those Sunday lawn-mowers that people drove around on. It had big wheels and a flattened dome, and it was beeping as it came directly toward her.

In fact, it was going to drive right over her. She realized it without concern. She could do nothing to prevent it. She lay on the ground, dazed, indifferent. The wheels grew larger and larger. The last thing she remembered was a mechanical voice saying, "Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Hello. Hello. Please move out of the way amp;"

And then nothing.

Darkness. Pain. Harsh voices.

Pain.

Rubbing. All over her body, arms and legs. Like fire rubbed on her body.

She groaned.

A voice spoke, rasping and distant. It sounded like "Coffee grounds."

The rubbing continued, brisk and harsh and excruciating. And a sound like sandpaperscratching, rough, terrible.

Something struck her in the face, on the mouth. She licked her lips. It was snow. Freezing snow.

"Cousins set?" a voice said.

"Nod eely."

It was a foreign language, Chinese or something. Sarah heard several voices now. She tried to open her eyes but could not. Her eyes were held shut by something heavy over her face, like a mask, or She tried to reach up, but couldn't. All her limbs were held down. And the rubbing continued, rubbing, rubbing amp; She groaned. She tried to speak.

"Thin song now whore nod?"

"Don thin song."

"Kee pub yar wok."

Pain.

They rubbed her, whoever they were, while she lay immobilized in darkness, and gradually more sensation returned to her limbs and to her face. She was not glad for it. The pain grew worse and worse. She felt as if she were burned everywhere on her body.

The voices seemed to float around her, disembodied. There were more of them now. Four, fiveshe was not sure anymore. All women, it sounded like.

And now they were doing something else, she realized. Violating her. Sticking something in her body. Dull and cold. Not painful. Cold.

The voices floated, slithered all around her. At her head, at her feet. Touching her roughly.

It was a dream. Or death. Maybe she was dead, she thought. She felt oddly detached about it. The pain made her detached. And then she heard a woman's voice in her ear, very close to her ear, and very distinct. The voice said:

"Sarah."

She moved her mouth.

"Sarah, are you awake?"

She nodded slightly.

"I am going to take the icepack off your face, all right?"

She nodded. The weight, the mask was lifted.

"Open your eyes. Slowly."

She did. She was in a dimly lit room with white walls. A monitor to one side, a tangle of green lines. It was like a hospital room. A woman looked down at her with concern. The woman wore a white nurse's uniform and a down vest. The room was cold. Sarah could see her breath.

She said, "Don't try to speak."

Sarah didn't.

"You're dehydrated. It'll be a few hours yet. We're bringing your temperature up slowly. You're very lucky, Sarah. You're not going to lose anything."

Not lose anything.

She felt alarmed. Her mouth moved. Her tongue was dry, thick feeling. A sort of hissing sound came from her throat.

"Don't speak," the woman said. "It's too soon. Is your pain bad? Yes? I'll give you something for it." She raised a syringe. "Your friend saved your life, you know. He managed to get to his feet, and open the radio-phone on the NASA robot. That's how we knew where to find you."

Her lips moved.

"He's in the next room. We think he'll be all right, too. Now just rest."

She felt something cold in her veins.

Her eyes closed.

The nurses left Peter Evans alone to get dressed. He put on his clothes slowly, taking stock of himself. He was all right, he decided, though his ribs hurt when he breathed. He had a big bruise on the left side of his chest, another big bruise on his thigh, and an ugly purple welt on his shoulder. A line of stitches on his scalp. His whole body was stiff and aching. It was excruciating to put on his socks and shoes.

But he was all right. In fact, better than thathe felt new somehow, almost reborn. Out there on the ice, he had been certain he was going to die. How he found the strength to get to his feet, he did not know. He had felt Sarah kicking him, but he did not respond to her. Then he'd heard the beeping sound. And when he looked up, he saw the letters "NASA."

He'd realized vaguely that it was some kind of vehicle. So there must be a driver. The front tires had stopped just inches from his body. He managed to get to his knees, and haul himself up over the tires, grabbing onto the struts. He hadn't understood why the driver hadn't climbed out and helped him. Finally, he managed to get to his knees in the howling wind. He realized that the vehicle was low and bulbous, barely four feet off the ground. It was too small for any human operatorit was some kind of robot. He scraped snow away from the dome-like shell. The lettering read, "NASA Remote Vehicle Meteorite Survey."

The vehicle was talking, repeating a taped voice over and over. Evans couldn't understand what it was saying because of the wind. He brushed away the snow, thinking there must be some method of communication, some antenna, some Then his fingers had touched a panel with a finger hole. He pulled it open. Inside he saw a telephonea regular telephone handset, bright red. He held it to his frozen mask. He could not hear anything from it, but he said, "Hello? Hello?"

Nothing more.

He collapsed again.

But the nurses told him what he had done was enough to send a signal to the NASA station at Patriot Hills. NASA had notified Weddell, who sent out a search party, and found them in ten minutes. They were both still alive, barely.

That had been more than twenty-four hours ago.

It had taken the medical team twelve hours to bring their body temperatures back to normal, because, the nurse said, it had to be done slowly. They told Evans he was going to be fine, but he might lose a couple of his toes. They would have to wait and see. It would be a few days.

His feet were bandaged with some kind of protective splints around the toes. He couldn't fit into his regular shoes, but they had found him an oversized pair of sneakers. They looked like they belonged to a basketball player. On Evans, they made huge clown feet. But he could wear them, and there wasn't much pain.

Tentatively, he stood. He was tremulous, but he was all right.

The nurse came back. "Hungry?"

He shook his head. "Not yet."

"Pain?"

He shook his head. "Just, you know, everywhere."

"That'll get worse," she said. She gave him a small bottle of pills. "Take one of these every four hours if you need it. And you'll probably need it to sleep, for the next few days."

"And Sarah?"

"Sarah will be another half hour or so."

"Where's Kenner?"

"I think he's in the computer room."

"Which way is that?"

She said, "Maybe you better lean on my shoulder amp;"

"I'm fine," he said. "Just tell me the way."

She pointed, and he started walking. But he was more unsteady than he realized. His muscles weren't working right; he felt shaky all over. He started to fall. The nurse quickly ducked, sliding her shoulder under his arm.