The Eyes of Darkness

as she approached his bed, she bit her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood. She struggled to contain her tears, but she needed all her willpower to keep her eyes dry.
    Danny became excited when he saw her drawing near, and in spite of his terrible condition, he shakily thrust himself into a sitting position, clutching at the bed rails with one frail, trembling hand, eagerly extending his other hand toward her.
    She took the last few steps haltingly, her heart pounding, her throat constricted. She was overwhelmed with the joy of seeing him again but also with fear when she realized how hideously wasted he was.
    When their hands touched, his small fingers curled tightly around hers. He held on with a fierce, desperate strength.
    "Danny," she said wonderingly. "Danny, Danny."
    From somewhere deep inside of him, from far down beneath all the pain and fear and anguish, Danny found a smile for her. It wasn't much of a smile; it quivered on his lips as if sustaining it required more energy than lifting a hundred-pound weight. It was such a tentative smile, such a vague ghost of all the broad warm smiles she remembered, that it broke her heart.
    "Mom."
    Tina could hardly recognize his weary, cracking voice.
    "Mom."
    "It's all right," she said.
    He shuddered.
    "It's all over, Danny. It's all right now."
    "Mom . . , Mom . . ." His face spasmed, and his brave smile dissolved, and an agonized groan escaped him. "Oooo-hhhhh, Mommy . . ."
    Tina pushed down the railing and sat on the edge of the bed and carefully pulled Danny into her arms. He was a rag doll with only meager scraps of stuffing, a fragile and timorous creature, nothing whatsoever like the happy, vibrant, active boy that he had once been. At first she was afraid to hug him, for fear he would shatter in her embrace. But he hugged her very hard, and again she was surprised by how much strength he could still summon from his devastated body. Shaking violently, snuffling, he put his face against her neck, and she felt his scalding tears on her skin. She couldn't control herself any longer, so she allowed her own tears to come, rivers of tears, a flood. Putting one hand on the boy's back to press him against her, she discovered how shockingly spindly he was: each rib and vertebra so prominent that she seemed to be holding a skeleton. When she pulled him into her lap, he trailed wires that led from electrodes on his skin to the monitoring machines around the bed, like an abandoned marionette. As his legs came out from under the covers, the hospital gown slipped off them, and Tina saw that his poor limbs were too bony and fleshless to safely support him. Weeping, she cradled him, rocked him, crooned to him, and told him that she loved him.
    Danny was alive.
     
     
     
     

39
     
    jack morgan's strategy of flying with the land instead of over it was a smashing success. Alexander was increasingly confident that they would reach the installation unscathed, and he was aware that even Kurt Hensen, who hated flying with Morgan, was calmer now than he had been ten minutes ago.
    The chopper hugged the valley floor, streaking northward, ten feet above an ice-blocked river, still forced to make its way through a snowfall that nearly blinded them, but sheltered from the worst of the storm's turbulence by the walls of mammoth evergreens that flanked the river. Silvery, almost luminous, the frozen river was an easy trail to follow. Occasionally wind found the aircraft and pummeled it, but the chopper bobbed and weaved like a good boxer, and it no longer seemed in danger of being dealt a knockout punch.
    "How long?" Alexander asked.
    "Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen," Morgan said. "Unless."
    "Unless what?"
    "Unless the blades cake up with ice. Unless the drive shaft and the rotor joints freeze."
    "Is that likely?" Alexander asked.
    "It's certainly something to think about," Morgan said. "And there's always the possibility I'll misjudge the terrain in the dark and ram us right into the side of a hill."
    "You won't," Alexander said. "You're too good."
    "Well," Morgan said, "there's always the chance I'll screw up. That's what keeps it from getting boring."
     
    •         •         •
     
    Tina prepared Danny for the journey out of his prison. One by one, she removed the eighteen electrodes that were fixed to his head and body. When she gingerly pulled off the adhesive tape, he whimpered, and she winced when she saw the rawness of his skin under the bandage. No effort