"Because we are the greatest!"
He looked at the man curiously. It was as if the knowledge of semantics
did not exist, yet for twelve hundred years semanticists had slowly
been prying loose the ancient false extensions that cluttered men's
thinking and dwarfed their concepts.
Demarzule had wiped out all of that merely by his presence. Underwood
found himself wondering why he should be at all concerned with the
matter.
* * * * *
He knew, however, that as a member of the human race he had to keep on
hoping that the course of evolution would lead it to something greater
than constant strife and insecurity. He had been blind when he had
tried to escape. There was no escape; he saw that very clearly now.
A sudden sound in the corridor alerted his senses. His gun moved
slightly to cover the entrances.
Then Terry burst into view with the containers of chemicals from the
surgical lab.
* * * * *
"Made it," he said. "Any trouble here?"
"No, just one revived for a little while to gab. He's dead now." The
man was quiet in a pool of his own blood. "How do things look out
there?"
"A lot of racket in the direction of the lock area. Must be fighting
going on down there. I didn't see anyone at all near this end."
While he spoke, Terry bent over and moistened a strip of his clothing
with one of the liquids. He held it to his nostrils for a moment and
passed it to Underwood. Then he opened the return air vent and poured
the contents of the other bottle into it. The highly volatile liquid
quickly vaporized and passed to the fans of the central ventilating
blowers, from which it passed into every chamber of the ship. Within
ten minutes it had anesthetized every person aboard the ship except the
two who had inhaled the antidote.
While they waited, Underwood stared thoughtfully at the dead Rennies.
"I wonder how Jandro kills," he said. "Can there be any defense against
such silent power? Have you thought of what that implies with relation
to Jandro's people and the society they live in?"
Terry nodded. "I haven't thought much of anything else since I first
saw him kill that guard in our stateroom. A civilization in which every
member holds a silent, secret weapon over the head of his neighbor.
It's incredible that it could exist."
"But it _has_ existed and continues to exist, and I'll bet that Jandro
is the first of his kind to use this power for generations."
"It certainly implies a stability and individual recognition of
responsibility that has never existed among us. I doubt that it ever
will."
"Someday it _might_."
"We won't be around."
"There's something else, too," Underwood said. "This may be the way out
for us. It could be."
"What do you mean?"
"Suppose just one of us had the power Jandro has. That would be the
weapon against Demarzule that we need!"
Terry hesitated. "We're not likely to get that power--and if we did, we
could never get near enough to Demarzule to use it."
"No? Suppose we let the fleet capture us and take us back. It's my
guess that Demarzule wants us alive. His pleasure in our downfall
should come from personally witnessing our defeat. It would fit
his character. So we'll be brought back as prisoners. Then all that
would be necessary would be to dispose of him just as Jandro did with
Rennies."
"You're forgetting that Demarzule has the same organs and the same
powers. You don't know what kind of defense could be offered against
them--perhaps they are immune to such attacks themselves. That would
explain this mystery of Dragboran civilization. Maybe Demarzule
could detect it if any of us possessed the organs. Lastly, there is
absolutely no possibility of our getting them, anyway."
* * * * *
Underwood's face darkened. "That's the one thing I haven't figured out
yet, but there's got to be a way. It looks as if this is the only hope
left us to destroy the alien. We'd have to defeat the whole fleet to
continue searching for the Dragboran weapon, and there's no chance of
that."
"I hope you're right. Well, the anesthetic has had time to act. Let's
revive our men and set to work on it."
They made sure of their weapons, and left the control room. Within the
whole ship there was no sound except their footsteps in the corridor.
One by one, they opened the stateroom doors as they went down toward
the locks. They held the cloths moistened with the restoring vapors to
the nostrils of each of their own men.
The first were Dreyer and Phyfe. Mason and his crew were found in the
next room toward the stern. Quick explanations were made and those
revived went to the task of restoring still others.
In Illia's stateroom, they found her lying composed upon her bunk.
For a moment, as he looked down upon her serene features, Underwood
forgot the intense urgency of his tasks. He tried to recall just why he
had been willing to sacrifice the life that Illia and he had hoped to
share--sacrifice, because she had believed in man, while Underwood had
wanted only escape from the pressure of an erratic and chaotic society.
Surely that life together would not have been postponed if he could
have seen the choices earlier as he saw them now. Was it too late to
hope now for reprieve from the destruction that hovered over them? He
dared not answer.
Gently, he restored her to consciousness.
"I had the nicest dream," she said. "I knew you were in control as soon
as the first whiff of triptanate came through."
"We're not in control yet. The main fleet will arrive within a few
hours and have us cornered. Most of us are revived with the exception
of a large group down by the locks. Will you go up and help Armstrong,
the engineer? He's in B05 and badly hurt. We haven't been able to do a
thing for him yet."