Author: Charles Willard Diffin

Publisher: VM eBooks

Published: 2016-01-21

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13:

Chapter I The Message [Sidenote: Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to the Dark Moon--but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly enemy Schwartzmann.] In a hospital in Vienna, in a room where sunlight flooded through ultraviolet permeable crystal, the warm rays struck upon smooth walls the color of which changed from hot reds to cool yellow or gray or to soothing green, as the Directing Surgeon might order. An elusive blending of tones now seemed pulsing with life; surely even a flickering flame of vitality would be blown into warm livingness in such a place. Even the chart case in the wall glittered with the same clean, brilliant hues from its glass and metal door. The usual revolving paper disks showed white beyond the glass. They were moving; and the ink lines grew to tell a story of temperature and respiration and of every heart-beat. On the identification-plate a name appeared and a date: "Chet Bullard--23 years. Admitted: August 10, 1973." And below that the ever-changing present ticked into the past in silent minutes: "August 15, 1973; World Standard Time: 10:38--10:39--10:40--" For five days the minutes had trickled into a rivulet of time that flowed past a bandaged figure in the bed below--a silent figure and unmoving, as one for whom time has ceased. But the surgeons of the Allied Hospital at Vienna are clever.