Read The Stardroppers for Free Online

smashed it up while I was out. I suppose I should have taken it with me. I usually used to. So, like I told you, I walked out.”
    “You keep talking about these results you were starting to get. What sort of results?”
    Lilith made a frustrated gesture. “Things that don’t go into words. And yet they make this weird kind of sense!Oh, sometimes you do get very clear impressions, like a friend of mine got news that his father was going to die in an accident, but that doesn’t happen very often, and anyhow it’s not terribly important.”
    “I’d have thought death was pretty important,” Dan said, lighting a cigarette. The day was bright, and people in bright clothes, many with children, were coming and going on the bright-green grass of the park, but the air felt cold on his skin.
    “Sure it is. But it seems to be completely random, so what’s the good of it? If you could rely on it happening regularly, that’d be different.”
    A valid point, Dan conceded. He said after a pause, “Some people go out of their minds, don’t they?”
    “Oh, plenty.” She didn’t seem to find the thought disturbing, which was if possible more shocking than what had gone before. “I guess they get stuck halfway. They get impatient, and can’t wait to see the whole thing clear. Another friend of mine—she started fixing nonsene names on things and went around telling them to everybody, thinking they’d mean something. But of course they didn’t. What comes out of a ’dropper simply doesn’t belong in words!”
    “But aren’t you frightened that the same thing might happen to you?”
    “No. It’s like being killed in a car crash—you always think of it happening to someone else.”
    Which wasn’t in itself a reason for taking crazy risks, Dan countered silently. He said, “I keep hearing stories about people who—who actually disappear. You too?”
    A note of real envy crept into her voice. “They’re the ones, aren’t they?” she said. “They’ve got it and gone!”
    “Where?”
    “If I knew, wouldn’t I be there too?” She looked at him, puzzled. “Say, I think you’re putting me on!”
    “I’m not. I honestly want to know your views. These people who’ve disappeared—did you know any of them?”
    She shook her head.
    “Then how did you hear about them?”
    “Oh, everybody knows. You don’t talk about it much. It’s—sort of scary, follow? But that’s
it
, that’s the thing.”
    “Well …” Dan was groping for the right questions now.“Well, what do people think may happen when someone disappears?”
    “Oh, there are lots of theories,” she said scornfully. “But me, I suspect it’s something you can’t understand until you get there yourself. Sometimes, listening to a ’dropper, you
almost
see how it could be done. You nearly get it. You make to catch hold, and it’s gone again. It’s like trying to catch a wriggly fish with your bare hands. You miss it ten times, a hundred times, but you get closer, you get better at it. You have to keep plugging away. You have to be so hungry for fish, you daren’t get impatient; you have to keep calm, and concentrate, and stick at it. Can I try your ’dropper now?”
    She tossed her coffee cup in a litter basket and reached for the instrument without awaiting an answer. Reluctantly, Dan surrendered it to her.
    “This is a beaut!” she said in an impressed tone. “I thought it looked pretty good from the outside, but inside it’s a dream, isn’t it? I never used a fuel-cell model before. How do you switch on the power?”
    He showed her the little sliding switch on the cell, and she tucked the earpiece into position, leaned back on the bench, and closed her eyes.
    All the premature hardness went out of her face; the taut, nervous lines beside her sullen mouth faded and she began to smile a little. Dan watched her anxiously. He had an obscure sense of guilt, as though he were conniving at the corruption of a minor, and yet it was pleasant