Me, I liked it better in '46.
Not so much pay, but--"
Hanson pricked up his ears. The conversation told him more than he
needed to know. He stood up and peered through the windows of the shed.
There, unattended under banks of lights, stood half-finished aircraft
shapes.
He wouldn't get much information here, it seemed. These were obviously
reanimates, men who'd been pulled from his own world and set to work.
They could do their duties and their memories were complete, but they
were lacking some essential thing that had gone out of them before they
were brought here. Unless he could find one among them who was either a
mandrake-man housing a soul or one of the few reanimates who seemed
almost fully human, he'd get little information. But he was curious as
to what the Satheri had expected to do with aircraft. The rocs had
better range and altitude than any planes of equal hauling power.
He located one man who seemed a little brighter than the others. The
fellow was lying on the ground, staring at the sky with his hands
clasped behind his head. From time to time, he frowned, as if the sight
of the sky was making him wonder. The man nodded as Hanson dropped down
beside him. "Hi. Just get here, Mac?"
"Yeah," Hanson assented. "What's the score?"
The man sat up and made a disgusted noise. "Who knows?" he answered.
There was more emotion in his voice than might be expected from a
reanimate; in real life on his own world, he must have had an amazing
potential for even that much to carry over.
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