All Judgment Fled (23 page)

 

 

Berryman, Hollis and Drew were staring at him, faces chalk-white
and reflecting the same horrible fear and guilt and confusion that
was gripping McCullough. He couldn't be so wrong, he told himself
desperately. He didn't have to listen to this . . .

 

 

". . . Beyond appeals to reason. The world is judging us, your country
and everyone in it, by your actions. But you don't care about that, do you?
Well, we don't care about you! Believe me, if we directed the two remaining
supply rockets off course, we would not be too strongly criticized for
doing so. We're ashamed of you, McCullough, and the rest of your murdering
pack -- you're little more than mad dogs! You sicken and disgust us . . ."

 

 

Brady's voice began to fade as Walters on P-One reduced the volume.
But not soon enough.

 

 

". . . Nobody here wants you, d'you understand that? We don't want
to see you back!"

 

 

 

 

chapter twenty-one

 

 

Mental anguish could take many forms, McCullough thought sickly, ranging
from simple worry over a possible future unpleasantness to the deep grief
at the loss of a dear one. But those were clean, uncomplicated emotions
whatever their degree of intensity -- this was the twisting, almost physical
pain of betrayal by a trusted friend who turns suddenly into an enemy
and raised to the nth power. For it was not only their personal friends
at Prometheus who had betrayed and rejected them, it was their whole
lousy race!

 

 

From the shocked, angry faces all around him, McCullough knew that
only two reactions were possible. Anger and counterattack or extreme,
soul-destroying guilt and despair. But they had come through too much
together on the Ship, they had overcome too many purely physical dangers
for them to die of a collective broken heart. He told himself that this
was so, but he was not sure that he could believe himself. He could not
be sure of anything any more.

 

 

A metallic crash from the door told of the Twos, even angrier probably
because the food dispensers were no longer giving food, beginning to
return from lunch. He wondered suddenly if intelligent beings could sink
so low as to eat animal food, and thought they might if something had
happened to the crew water and food supply. But Brady's theory was too
simple, surely. There were facts that it did not explain, and one fact
in particular was deafeningly obvious.

 

 

"I'm not a psychologist," said McCullough quietly, trying to control
his relief and excitement, "but it seems to me that the last thing an
intelligent person would forget is how to open and close a door." He
turned to the radio and went on quickly, "So you showed him pictures of
us dumping Twos into space, but I can guess at some of the things he said
to make you do it, so don't worry. Just link me with the transmitter,
Walters, there is something I want to say to him . . ."

 

 

He had begun by speaking quietly to the pilot, and his voice was still soft.
But the anger that crept into it when he spoke to the general made it
unrecognizable even to himself.

 

 

"We feel sorry for you, General Brady," be said, "we feel sorry for
all
you people. It would be a lie to say that we don't feel
angry and disgusted with you as well, but we do feel sorry. The harsh
facts of contact with an extraterrestrial culture are being brought
home to you, to
all
of you.
And you are all frightened.
The implications are only now beginning to dawn on you and you feel
guilty and ashamed because things may not have been handled right. It is
a very uncomfortable time for all of you, and your feelings and qualms
of conscience do you credit. But you, General, and all of you, are so
uncomfortable that you want to avoid both the responsibility and the
guilt by passing it onto us. Then, presumably, you will bury and forget
the whole thing by disowning us!

 

 

"There is nothing original about this course," McCullough went on. "It is
a clear case of your eyes and your hands scandalizing you, and you then
quote the highest possible Authority regarding your subsequent action in
the matter. If your right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out. If your right
hand scandalize thee, cut it ofl and cast it from thee, and so on. But
if you were thinking straight, you would realize that this is not a true
analogy. We are not just your hands and eyes, we are a cross-section
of all the people of Earth.
That
is what's really bothering you,
and you know it! What we feel toward the aliens is what you would feel in
the same circumstances, our thoughts would be your thoughts, our actions
and reactions yours as well. You know this is true but you don't want
to face up to it. Instead you are making us the scapegoat.

 

 

"We are doing the best we can with the situation here," he continued
more quietly. "We are better qualified to understand it, since we are
on the spot, and we are convinced that we are doing the right thing.
A tape containing much valuable new information has been prepared.
This will be placed in a Two-proof storage cabinet and played back to you
while we head for the hull to repair the damaged generator. While this
is being done, Twos permitting, we shall make contact with the surviving
intelligent members, or more likely member, of the Ship's crew.

 

 

"In the meantime, General, lay off Walters! What you're doing to him is
criminal and stupid. He is not responsible for our actions inside the
Ship. He is all alone, cut off from radio contact with us for days on
end, not knowing whether we are alive or dead and now believing that
you
don't care what happens to him. If you can't appreciate his
position, ask your space medics -- he must be clinging to sanity by
his fingernails!

 

 

"You might also consider
our
position. There are only two
functioning spacesuits left to us, we're constantly under attack or being
forced to hide from Twos and some of us haven't slept for three days. Now
you have turned against us and are threatening to turn the supply vehicles
off course. At best your remarks, if indeed you meant them, are totally
unstatesmanlike; at worst, criminally irresponsible. We're a long way
from home and you've literally got us outnumbered billions to one. If
those replacement suits don't arrive, we can never leave this Ship . . ."

 

 

McCullough broke off. He was beginning to whine and the realization
made him angry. He could see the weary despair in the expressions of the
others as they watched him, and hear the Twos stepping up their attack
on the door. But this was not the reason why he raised his voice.

 

 

"If you maroon us here, either by accident or design, there is something
you should bear in mind. We have lived on e-t food and recycled water
since the last supply vehicle went wide. The food is palatable if one
is hungry enough and the taste of the water is due only to our thinking
too much about its original source. So we can stay here if necessary.
We can go back with the Ship to its home planet and -- and see things
that nobody in all of human history has seen before.
an wyatt pin up

 

 

"So you can't reject us, General," he ended furiously. "Or cast us off
or do anything at all to us, because we damn well
quit
!"

 

 

A few minutes later they left by the other exit, moving in what they
hoped was the direction of the hull and the generator blister. From the
suit radios of Berryman and Hollis, McCullough's voice came as a tinny,
stereophonic duet as they monitored the tape transmission. Should it
cease, that would mean that the storage cabinet containing the linked
radio and recorder was not as Two-proof as they had hoped.

 

 

". . . Already treated design and structural philosophy in detail,"
the voice was saying,
"and our deductions regarding the home planet's
gravity, atmospheric conditions and environment have been supported by
pictures on living quarters walls and in illustrated literature. Regarding
these living quarters, however . . ."

 

 

"Which way?" said Berryman. "I don't know whether we're headed forward,
outboard or aft . . ."

 

 

McCullough could hear the Twos breaking their way out of the compartment
they had just vacated -- the things were like extraterrestrial bloodhounds!
He said, "Right, I think . . ."

 

 

". . . Construction personnel lived on board and vacated their quarters,
which are rather stark, when the project was complete. The large number
of empty storage compartments, living quarters and, most of all, the fact
that entry hatches and lighting circuits tend to be on local rather than
centralized control, and that there are no indications of permanent
communication lines between compartments, makes us sure that they were
used only by the construction gang.
"The strongest probability is that the large size of the Ship was dictated
by the operating requirements of its hyperdrive generators and that in
this, its first flight, it has been operating as an interstellar probe
containing automatic guidance and sensory equipment and a number of
animals being tested for survival in space conditions together with a
small crew who were little more than intelligent specimens undergoing the
same testing. Indications are that the 'crew' have virtually no control
over the operation of the Ship, and that initially they numbered only
two . . ."

 

 

They were in a long corridor which seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
Every Two in the Ship seemed to be after them, but just out of sight.

 

 

". . . We assumed the Two life-form to be unintelligent because they
showed no indication of possessing an organized language, no manual
dexterity in opening and closing doors or operating light switches and
no inclination to communicate. Here we must mention our belief that
an intelligent species making contact for the first time would make
allowances for a certain amount of, to them, unconventional behavior
and would not react with such continual and violent hostility. In the
light of this assumption we will consider the situation in the animal
enclosure . . ."

 

 

"If we were moving outboard there should be more intersections," said Hollis.
"One at every deck level, in fact."

 

 

The Twos were in sight behind them again, boiling along the corridor like
tumbleweeds in a hurricane, bouncing from wall net to wall net as their
tentacles hurled them on. Unlike the humans, they did not worry about
hurting themselves or protecting the two remaining usable spacesuits,
so they were gaining steadily.

 

 

". . . obvious that the Twos broke out and virtually exterminated all
other animal life-forms, with the exception of the Threes which, although
nonhostile where we and the intelligent e-t life-form are concerned,
can defend themselves against the Twos. The Twos bred unrestrained,
living off the automatic food dispensers and any other experimental
animal which had escaped the initial slaughter, their numbers controlled
by their habit of fighting and eating each other.
"One of the half-eaten carcasses in the animal enclosure belonged to a
large, caterpillar-like life-form which was quite obviously unsuited
to the cage in which it was found. Around it were the bodies of Twos
which, in addition to being cannibalized, showed numerous punctured
wounds in musculature and bone structure of the kind made by a solid
projectile-firing weapon.
"It is now obvious that this caterpillar life-form, which later data proves
to be intelligent, was killed trying to contain the original breakout.
The weapon may have been used by this being against the Twos and later
retrieved by the second intelligent e-t from its body, or the second
e-t used it in an attempt to rescue or avenge the first one . . ."

 

 

"No good," said Hollis breathlessly as he ducked out of yet another
useless compartment. "Only one door."

 

 

The room might have given them indefinite protection if they could have
defended the door against Twos, but there were no wall nets inside storage
and dormitory compartments and no means of bracing themselves against attack.
If the Twos succeeded in battering their way in, the result would be a
shambles of twisting, spinning bodies and stabbing, slashing spears and
tentacles and most of the casualties would be on the human side.

 

 

If they had to fight Twos, it was better done in a corridor.

 

 

". . . Before listing the data and reasoning which leads us to believe
that there were only two intelligent e-t's crewing the Ship, and that one
of them still survives in a physically and mentally damaged condition,
we must deal with what is known and deduced about their home planet's
environment and culture . . ."

 

 

At McCullough's signal they checked themselves against the wall net,
faced inward and laced their feet and legs through the strands so as
not to be torn free during the attack. The butts of their spears were
jammed against the net's supporting brackets or any other convenient
projection and they waited, McCullough thought, for all the world like
a bunch of medieval foot soldiers about to soak up a cavalry charge.

 

 

"Since we left the crew's quarters -- " began Hollis, then finished with
a rush, "I think we picked up some kind of scent in there. It's driving
them mad -- I recognize Twos we wounded a couple of weeks ago, and every
blasted Two in the Ship must be after us. This is a good chance for us
to wipe them out completely . . ."