Beyond the chamber was another hall, and at its end was another room.
It was a small, bare, windowless cell of the same blue stone. Dull
light came from the walls themselves, a waste-disposal hole opened
downward, a porous circle in the ceiling breathed fresh air. Otherwise
the place was featureless. When the black guards had urged the humans
through and the dilated wall had returned to a blank barrier, they were
alone.
They felt drained and light-headed in the thin atmosphere. Its dryness
caught at their throats and its cold gnawed toward their bones. But
most terrible, perhaps, was the silence.
Holbrook said at last, for them all: "Now what?"
Unhelmeted, Ekaterina's sunlight-colored hair seemed to crackle with
frost. Suddenly his living universe had narrowed to her--though he
could do worse, he thought in the dimness--with Grushenko hovering on
its fringes. Beyond, mystery; the stone walls enclosed him like the
curvature of space. The woman said with a forlorn boldness, the breath
smoking from her lips, "I suppose they will feed us. Else it would have
been most logical just to shoot us. But they do not seem to care if we
die of pneumonia."
"Can we eat their food?" muttered Holbrook. "The odds are against it,
I'd say. Too many incompatible proteins. The fact we can live on Novaya
is nearly a miracle, and Zolotoy isn't that Earthlike."
"They are not stupid," snorted Grushenko. "On the basis of our blood
samples they can synthesize an adequate diet for us."
"And yet they took our metallic possessions--even the most harmless."
Ekaterina sat down, shivering. "And that computer, did it not give them
orders? Is the computer the most powerful brain on this planet?"
"No." Holbrook joined her on the floor. Oxygen lack slowed his
thoughts, but he plowed doggedly toward an idea. "No, I don't believe
in robots with creative minds. That's what intelligence itself is
for. You wouldn't build a machine to eat for you, or ... or make
love ... or any truly human function. Machines are to help, to amplify,
to supplement. That thing is a gigantic memory bank, a symbolic logic
manipulator, what you like; but it is not a personality."
"But then why did they _obey_ it?" she cried.
Grushenko smiled wearily. "I suppose a clever dog might wonder why a
man obeys his slide rule," he said.
"A good enough analogy," said Holbrook. "Here's my guess. It's obvious
the Zolotoyans have been civilized for a very long time. So I imagine
they visited all the nearer stars ... ages ago, maybe. They took data
home with them. That computer is, as Ekaterina said a few hundred years
back, the commissar of interstellar relations. It has all the data. It
identifies us, our home planet--"
"Yes, of course!" exclaimed Grushenko. "At this moment, the rulers of
Zolotoy--whatever they have, perhaps the entire population--they are
studying the report on us!"
Ekaterina closed her eyes. "And what will they decide?" she asked in a
dead voice.
"They will send someone to learn our language, or teach us theirs,"
said Grushenko. A lift of excitement came to him, he paced up and down,
his boots clacked on the floor and his face became a harsh mask of
will. "Yes. The attack on us at the mine was a mistake of some kind.
We must assume that, comrades, because if it was not we are certainly
doomed. Now we have a chance to reason with them. And they can restore
the rightful captaincy to the _Rurik_!"
Holbrook looked up, startled. After a moment: "What makes you so sure
they will?"
"There is much we can offer them--it may be necessary to conceal
certain elements, in the interests of the larger truth, but--"
"Do you expect to fool a superman?"
"I can try," said Grushenko simply. "Assuming that there is any need
to. Actually, I think they are sure to favor the Red side. Marxist
principles would seem to predict that much. However...."
A minute longer he rubbed his jaw, pondering. Then he planted himself,
big and heavy, in front of Holbrook. He looked down from his height and
snapped: "I will be the only one who talks to them. Do you understand?"
The American stood up. The motion made his head swim. But he cocked
his fists and said in anger, "Just how do you expect to prevent me ...
comrade?"
"I am the better linguist," said Grushenko. "I am sure to be talking to
them while you still flounder about trying to tell the syllables apart.
But there are two sovietists here. Between us we can forbid you even to
attempt it."
Holbrook stared at the woman. She rose too, but backed away. One hand
lifted to her mouth. "Ilya Feodorovitch," she whispered. "We are three
human creatures."
"Comrade Saburov," said Grushenko in an iron tone, "I make this a test
of your loyalty. If you wish to commit treason, now is your time."
Her gaze was wild upon Holbrook. He saw the tides of blood go through
her skin, until they drained and she stood white and somehow empty.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, comrade."
"Good." Warmth flowed into the deep voice. Grushenko laid his hands
upon her shoulders, searched her eyes, suddenly embraced her. "Thank
you, Ekaterina Ivanovna!" He stepped back, and Holbrook saw the heavy
hairless face blush like a boy's. "Not for what you do," breathed
Grushenko. "For what you are."
She stood quiet a long time. Finally she looked at Holbrook with eyes
gone cat-green and said like a mechanism: "You understand you will keep
yourself in the background, say nothing and make no untoward gestures.
If necessary, we two can kill you with our hands."
And then suddenly she went to a corner, sat down and hugged her knees
and buried her face against them.
* * * * *
Holbrook lowered himself. His heart thuttered, wild for oxygen; he felt
the cold strike into his throat. He had not been so close to weeping
since the hour his mother died.
But--
He avoided Grushenko's hooded stare; he retreated into himself and
buckled on the armor of an engineer's workaday soul. There were
problems to solve; well, let them be solved, as practical problems in
a practical universe. For even this nightmare planet was real. Even it
made logical sense; it had to, if you could only see clearly.
He faced a mighty civilization, perhaps a million years old, which
maintained interplanetary travel, giant computers, all the intricacies
of a technology he did not begin to comprehend. But it ignored the
unhidden human landings on Novaya. But it attacked senselessly when
three strangers appeared--and then did not follow up the attack. It
captured a space vessel with contemptuous ease, did not even bother to
look at the booty, shoved the crew through an obviously cut-and-dried
routine and then into this cell; but cosmos crack open, visitors from
another star could not be an everyday affair! And it was understandable
the Zolotoyans would remove a prisoner's knife, but why his watch?
Well, maybe a watch could be turned into a, oh, a hyperspatial lever.
Maybe they knew how to pull some such stunt and dared not assume the
strangers were ignorant of it. But if so, why didn't they take some
precautions with the outworld spaceship? Hell, it could be a nuclear
time bomb, for all they knew--
The uniforms, the whole repulsive discipline, suggested a totalitarian
state. Could the humans only have encountered a few dull-witted
subordinates so far? That would fit the facts.... No, it wouldn't
either. Because the overlords, who were not fools, would certainly have
been informed of this, and would have taken immediate steps.
Or would they?
Holbrook gasped. "God in heaven!"
"What?" Grushenko trod over to him. "What is it?"
Holbrook struggled to his feet. "Look," he babbled, "we've got to break
out of here. It's our death if we don't. The cold alone will kill us.
And if we don't get back soon, the others will leave this system. I--"
"You will keep silent when the Zolotoyans arrive," said Grushenko. He
raised a fist. "If they do plan to terminate us, we must face it. There
is nothing we can do about it."
"But there is, I tell you! We can! Listen--"
The wall dilated.