"Yes," MacMartree agreed. "For a year. And after the year, another
patrol, and another year, and so on through a hundred patrols and
years, until the place is classified safe for colonization."
"I think my species is cowardly," Cole said, a trifle hotly.
"Cautious," MacMartree corrected gently. "Only cautious. It's as it
should be ... they have set up rules of caution, and we've never
suffered for it."
"Except from boredom," Phillips cut in, and they all laughed again.
"Really though," said MacMartree, "you should be proud, not bored.
Think of it, if the sun that just rolled down the horizon should
suddenly begin to expand into a super-nova, it's within our ability
to restore it to its normal status. Should a comet sweep this planet
tonight and drag a tail of poisonous gases over us as we sleep, our
force screen would protect us, and our mechanisms and devices would
make the air sweet and clean for us in minutes. If--oh, but you know.
Appreciate your power, your ability. Be glad you are what you are!"
The young men smiled in the darkness, because, of course, they _were_
proud, and satisfied, and pleased with their own omnipotence.
MacMartree slept the sleep of the aged, curled in the clinging, billowy
warmth of his sleep-kit. It took him a minute to rouse, when Cole came
and shook him by the shoulder.
"It's Phillips," Cole was saying. "Come and see him, Mac, come and see."
"Eh?" MacMartree questioned. "What about Phillips?"
"There's something--something wrong with him. I don't know ... come and
see, Mac!"
Abner lighted the lamp, and MacMartree blinked against the glare that
flooded the area within the screen. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed
to the brilliance, he saw what was happening to Phillips.
"You see?" Cole said, in great agitation. "Something is wrong with him."
As they watched, the stricken Phillips retched and vomited again.
MacMartree's nostrils crinkled at the offensive odor of it.
"Throw a disposal over that," he directed Abner. The younger man went
to his pack and returned with the disposal unit. One of the disposal
wafers took care of the mess Phillips had made.
"What's wrong with him?" Abner asked, completely bewildered.
MacMartree searched his memory for the word. "Sick," he said at last.
"Phillips is sick."
"Sick?" Cole echoed.
"What's that?" Abner wanted to know.
"I don't know, exactly. I've only read about it, in my books. A long
time ago, men got sick, like this."
"But why?" Abner and Cole said it together.
"I don't know." He bent down over Phillips. "Are you going to do that
anymore?" he asked.
Phillips looked up at him dully. "I ... I don't think so," he said,
weakly and breathlessly.
"Lie back," MacMartree commanded. "Close your eyes. Sleep if you can.
Maybe we can help you."
* * * * *
Phillips nodded, lips bluish and tight, his whole face a ghastly pewter
hue. He put his head down, eyelids fluttered shut. MacMartree regarded
him in silence for several minutes.
"This could be what you've been wanting," he said at last to Cole and
Abner.
"Wanting?"
"Something's happening, isn't it? Something we didn't look for. Maybe
there's reason for patrols after all, eh?"
Cole frowned. "You mean...." He didn't finish it. He got up quickly,
and strode to the scanner.
"Everything's all right outside," he said, after a moment. "Everything
outside the screen is just as it was at sundown."
MacMartree shrugged. "Nothing from out there could do this to Phillips
anyway. Nothing gets through the screen."
Cole returned and squatted down with the others. He picked up a handful
of pebbles and began flicking them, one at a time, at the force-screen,
watching them bounce back into the area.
"There's an explanation for this, of course," MacMartree said, with a
tone of confidence he did not feel.
The others nodded. After a time, Phillips' breathing grew more regular
and he slept. As they watched, the rest of them saw the color creep
back into his face, and sensed that he was better now. But still, it
was a puzzling thing. Phillips had been ... what was the word?...
Sick. According to MacMartree's histories, no man had been sick for the
last thousand years.
They decided to return to their sleep-kits for the remaining hour of
darkness, but they never got there.
Rising from his position beside the sleeping Phillips, Abner's long
frame lurched suddenly forward. He sprawled at the feet of MacMartree
and Cole ... and both men heard the dull snap as Abner hit the ground,
his left arm caught beneath his body.
MacMartree cursed. "Blast it, Abner, pick up your feet!" Then to Cole:
"Is the bone-mending stuff here, or in the ship?"
Cole started to say that he had brought it along, all right, but he was
interrupted by Abner's scream.
The sound of it rasped across their nerves. They stared down at
the writhing Abner, their brains numbed by that horrible, entirely
unfamiliar sound.
"What is it?" Cole questioned, finding his voice after a moment.
MacMartree ignored him, kneeling beside Abner.
Abner's wind sucked into his lungs, and was expelled in another fearful
scream. In spite of himself, MacMartree felt a prickling along the back
of his neck....
"Abner," he said intensely, "Abner, listen to me!"
But the younger man was doubled in a knot of agony, screaming and
screaming and screaming.
* * * * *
MacMartree struck him in the face, with his open palm at first, but
when that did no good, with doubled fists, hard. Finally Abner's
screams stopped. Then MacMartree tried again.
"Listen, Abner ... can you hear me now?"
Abner's voice came twisting up, thin and quavery.
"I--hear you ... yes, I hear you...."
"Your arm, is that what makes you scream? Your arm?"
"Yes, yes," moaning now ... "yes, my arm ... I want to die ... let me
die, please Mac, please...."
"Listen to me," MacMartree commanded fiercely. "Get hold of yourself
and listen! This thing in your arm, it's a _hurt_. Your brain should
be blocking it from your consciousness, but somehow it isn't. Do you
understand me?"
"Hurt," Abner echoed. Then he began to croon it, as though there was
something soothing in the sound of it: "Hurt, hurt, hurt in my arm...."
He made a twisted little hymn of it, singing it over and over again.
"That's right," MacMartree was saying, "Your brain isn't killing the
hurt, as it should. You must _think_, Abner, think of your arm, whole
and well, and with no hurt in it. _Think!_"
But Abner only repeated that ancient, awful word: "Hurt in my arm ...
hurt, _hurt_...."
MacMartree shrugged, and looked up at Cole, who was still standing
helplessly by.
"Fetch the serum," MacMartree said. "I'll try setting the bone...." He
grasped the twisted arm as he spoke, and one, tearing, final scream
broke out of Abner's throat. Before MacMartree could react, Abner went
rigid in every limb, then as suddenly relaxed and was still.
"He's dead," Cole choked. "Abner is dead!"
MacMartree felt for the heartbeat, shook his head.
"Only unconscious. The hurt did that, I suppose." He sat back on his
haunches, thoroughly baffled. Cole sat, too, and a few yards away,
where they had left him, Phillips stirred. He rolled over on his side
and propped himself shakily on one elbow, roused by that last, ringing
shriek of Abner's.
"It isn't right," MacMartree said, to neither of them. "The hurt, that
went with sickness--a thousand years ago." He looked up at them.
"I read about these things, you see," he told them. "There was hurt,
and there was sickness. When they knew enough about the human brain,
scientists simply bred into the part of our minds that makes us aware
of hurt the power to shut it off, automatically, before we're even
conscious it exists. And as for sickness...." He looked at Phillips,
shaking his head. "They got rid of that, too, and now...."
Neither of the younger men said anything for a time. They waited,
desperately relying on the older man to help them, to bring them
through this, whatever it was, into familiar ground again. At length,
Cole spoke.
"Mac," he began softly.
MacMartree looked at him, waiting.
"Mac, I ... I feel something ... I don't know ... perhaps it's
sickness ... or hurt ... I've never known those things...." He held
forth his hands, and they were twitching and trembling.
MacMartree's teeth ground together. "Another obsolescent word I'll have
to teach you," he said to them. "It is _fear_."
He went to work on Abner's broken arm, setting it and injecting the
serum that would cause the fracture to knit in a matter of minutes.
And as he worked, he tried to drive the nagging thought from his
mind ... sickness for Phillips, hurt for Abner, fear for Cole ...
_what for MacMartree?_ He was the oldest. He was leader of the patrol.
Perhaps a little of _all_ these horrors?
To keep his mind occupied, he counted off the required minutes for
the serum to take effect. Then, when the time had passed, he gave the
injured arm an experimental twist.
It flapped loosely at the break, as before, and Abner stirred and
moaned behind the veil of his unconsciousness.