It was dark. She began to shiver from the cold. A pungent, resinous odor prickled her nose. When she tried to rub it, she found she couldn’t move her arms. Sudden panic soured her mouth: dark, cold, trapped. She tried to squirm free. Now she could feel pressure along most of her body. Nothing moved. She heaved frantically, heedless of roughness that scraped her. She stirred only dust that clogged her nose and made her sneeze. The sneeze stirred more dust; she sneezed again. A ghost of reason returned: if she could sneeze, she was not being crushed utterly. She tried to think. Her head hurt. Her arms—she tried to feel, to wiggle her fingers. One was cramped under her; she worked those fingers back and forth. The other moved only slightly as she tried it. It felt as if it were under a sack of meal—something heavy, but yielding. When she tried to lift her head from the dust, it bumped something hard above her: bumped on the very place that hurt so. Paks muttered a Company curse at that, and let her head back down.
