Read "Four-Day Planet" by H. Beam Piper online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
They had Tom Kivelson in a private room at the hospital; he was sitting up in a chair, with a lot of pneumatic cushions around him, and a lunch tray on his lap. He looked white and thin. He could move one arm completely, but the bandages they had loaded him with seemed to have left the other free only at the elbow. He was concentrating on his lunch, and must have thought I was one of the nurses, or a doctor, or something of the sort.
"Are you going to let me have a cigarette and a cup of coffee, when I'm through with this? " he asked.