Nightmare journey

they all dreamed, simultaneously, of the living city. The dream swiftly graduated into a full-fledged nightmare and grew rapidly worse than that. No one could get any rest at all.
    On deck again Tedesco 'pathed, Something will break soon.
    Let's hope!-Jask said.
    If I could see it, Chaney 'pathed, I could get these claws into it and take a good bite in its neck with these teeth. He held up his unsheathed claws and showed them his wicked teeth so that they would know he was not making an idle boast.
    Melopina sat against the deck railing, her head hung down, her shoulders bent, exhausted, her pretty blue-green neck membranes hanging limp like sails without wind, and she did not say anything at all.
    Something must break, Tedesco continued. Either this creature will get weary of us and go away, back to wherever it sprang from-or it will make itself fully understood, impart this compulsive information and deplete its energies of anguish.
    And if it does neither?-Jask inquired.
    Tedesco grunted. Then you will learn that a man can die from lack of sleep as easily as he can from lack of food or water.
    The Hadaspuri Maiden knifed on through the sea as darkness became complete and the stars popped out through holes in the gray clouds.
    28
    TWO days later the five passengers on the Hadaspuri Maiden moved sluggishly about their duties, not like real men but like zombies who had only a minimal charge of life donated them by sorcerers. They spoke hardly at all, either vocally or telepathically, because the amount of thought necessary to keep up a sensible conversation required energy they no longer possessed. Their eyes were swollen and teary. Their limbs felt as if they had been cast from lead; each step became a major journey, each tiny deed a Herculean effort.
    Soon they were forced to keep two watchmen at the wheel instead of one, in order not to be accidentally taken off their course for the northern shore of the inland sea. Once, after Tedesco's watch, they found themselves twenty degrees off course, though the bruin, in his state of near-collapse, did not recall altering any of the controls. After Melopina's watch it was found that she had somehow turned them completely about and that they were driving hard for Kittlesticks, from which they had come only days ago. Melopina had no recollection of turning the ship about, though she had often fallen asleep over the wheel, to be awakened by the awful nightmares. Clearly she had not turned them around on purpose; therefore, the double watch was immediately established.
    Though they had not originally been affected by the pitching waves through which the Maiden drove, they now found every tilt of the decks more than they could cope with. They zigzagged from place to place, staggering like drunkards, gripping safety rails and wondering when one of them might be pitched overboard.
    Their appetites dwindled, became almost nonexistent. They wanted sleep, not food, and they ate what little they could only because they knew they dared not forego food altogether. They tasted nothing they consumed, but they got indigestion from all of it.
    Out of desperation and the agony of her total exhaustion and her continuing inability to sleep properly, Melopina came up with the idea that was to save them. It did not seem like much; it had only a small chance of success; but it was, when all was said and done, their only hope of salvation.
    The idea came to her during one of her duties at the wheel. She turned to Jask, who was her watchmate, and she 'pathed, Do you think that if we worked together, the five of us could combine our esp powers and create a single psychic probe stronger than any of our individual powers?
    Jask did not want to have to respond. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and his mouth was as dry as a handful of sand. Finally he said, I never thought much about it. I don't know.
    Well, think about it now. It's important.
    Nothing is important but sleep.
    That's what I mean, she 'pathed.
    He 'pathed a question mark.
    She explained. The reason this creature keeps bothering us is to make full contact with us and-we all seem to agree-tell us something it deems vital to communicate.
    So?
    Thoughts moved like syrup down a two-degree incline.
    She 'pathed, None of us has been able to reach the thing on his own. But suppose that when we pool our talents, we have the necessary-call it “range"-to establish contact.
    Then?
    Then we let it tell us what it wants.
    And send it away