Contemplating the possibility brought Scarne a sense of unreality. Sometimes he had the feeling that the whole sequence of events he had suffered, beginning with his first being picked up by the SIS, was the result of a game being played elsewhere in the universe. It was better not to think about it.
Every so often Scarne glanced at the door, in expectation of yet one more piece of luck.
Why not? It should happen, he told himself. At first he had been expecting, and now he was only hoping, that his luck would rub off enough so that Cadence Mellors would somehow find her way out of that work camp and back to him. According to his luck, he should see her walking through a door somewhere, some day. That was why he spent so much of his time in bars.
He took a swallow of his drink, and then looked up again. A girl had just entered the bar; for a moment he thought it was Cadence. At a glance the resemblance was remarkable, and it was not just a matter of physiognomy. Like Cadence, she was no longer very young; a little faded, more than a little jaded by life. But it was not Cadence.
She smiled. He smiled.
He continued staring at her, feeling familiar pangs.
His luck was running out. But it was still working for him. Within limits.
She was not Cadence.
But she would do.
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Also by Barrington J. Bayley
Age of Adventure
Annihilation Factor
Collision with Chronos
Empire of Two Worlds
Sinners of Erspia
Star Winds
The Fall of Chronopolis
The Forest of Peldain
The Garments of Caean
The Grand Wheel
The Great Hydration
The Pillars of Eternity
The Rod of Light
The Soul of the Robot
The Star Virus
The Zen Gun
The Knights of the Limits
The Seed of Evil
Barrington J. Bayley (1937–2008) was born in Birmingham and began writing science fiction in his early teens. After serving in the RAF, he took up freelance writing on features, serials and picture strips, mostly in the juvenile field, before returning to straight SF. He was a regular contributor to the influential New Worlds magazine and an early voice in the New Wave movement.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Barrington J. Bayley 1977
All rights reserved.
The right of Barrington J. Bayley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10210 1
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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The Grand Wheel Page 18