"I've a very complete guess," Borden said evenly. "It includes Jerry's
furry friends. They act like domestic animals, like pets with an
inbred, passionate desire to be approved of by--people. Dogs are like
that. You agree, Jerry?"
"Oh, yes, sir!"
"If a party of human beings, in flight from something dreadful, had
come to some place in the arctic, on Earth, where they couldn't go any
farther, where the wives and families they had with them had no chance
of survival because of the thing from which they fled, what would they
do?"
Jerry said awkwardly, "If I may say so, sir, it does look just like
that!"
Borden went on without apparent emotion, "The men of those families
would know there was no escape. The odds are that they'd put their
family dogs out of the ground cars, because they might live. But if the
situation was absolutely hopeless they might not want their families to
suffer--what they'd first tried to escape. So the children would die
painlessly. So would the women and then the men would kill themselves.
Possibly, anyhow. Or they might go back and fight. Here, it seems, they
killed themselves."
* * * * *