"It is a very large room."
"Very large. There is something frightening about it. All of those
instruments...."
"They are not navigational instruments. I am quite sure of that. We are
no longer on board the ship."
"Were we ever?"
"Yes, I am sure we were once. On board a large ship traveling through
space."
"I seem to remember now, too. Some of it is coming back. Slowly, almost
painfully. I'm afraid to think about it, to even try to remember. We
were far more frightened than we are now. Something terrible happened
to us."
"We'd better just relax, take it easy and let it come back in a natural
way."
The woman shuddered. "Sometimes not knowing is worse than remembering,
worse than any positive knowledge can be. When a memory is crouching
like some great beast in the darkness of your mind it is safer to
remember. Safer to see the hideous shape clearly, to at least try to
force it out into the open."
"Not always, Ruth."
"Ruth. Yes, I am Ruth. You are Peter. You are my husband. The instant
you spoke my name it came back to me. Oh, darling, I love you so much.
I have always loved you."
"I know, Ruth. And I have always loved you. But beyond that everything
is obscure, and in some strange way incomplete. It's as though there
are many things which I should recall and understand but which have
been--left out."
"Left out? What do you mean?"
"It's hard to explain. But there's a kind of gulf, an emptiness, a
falling away when I try to remember what happened to us. The memory
doesn't seem to be there at all. I can remember the ship, and how
frightened we were. We were traveling through space toward a distant
star. There were others. How many I do not know or even what they
looked like. It may come back. We must wait and see."
"Wait? What good will waiting do, Peter? We can't just stand here
trying to remember or refusing to remember. We don't know where we
are. We have no idea where we are, or why we were brought here. Were
we brought here against our will? Or did we come voluntarily? Shall
we wait for something to happen, or try to make it happen? What shall
we do, Peter? Beat on the walls with our bare hands? Shout and create
a disturbance? Some of these instruments look fragile. Perhaps if we
smashed one--"
The man who resembled Summers shook his head. "No, Ruth. That would be
too dangerous a way of bringing down the thunder."
The man turned as he spoke, and looked more steadily and carefully at
his surroundings. The woman stared with him, standing very still, a
growing wonder in her eyes.
The instruments which towered on all sides of them differed greatly in
size and configuration. Some were metallic and complex, as intricate in
construction as the time-regulating mechanism of a great watch, set
on a pedestal and reflecting the downstreaming radiance in all of its
parts. Others resembled more translucent globes, resting level with the
floor, fragile in design and filled with a swirling blue mist. But that
globelike aspect was only partial, for they were pierced by metal rods
which projected sharply from their surfaces in hedgehog fashion and
obscured or distorted their roundness in various ways.
There were also several flat, boxlike structures with a fine mesh
covering and one huge box which was heavily screened in front and
bore a chilling resemblance to a cage. The screening was enveloped
in radiance, so that the mesh was only evanescently visible through
the glow and it was impossible to see beyond it. Yet for an instant
there was a deepening of the glow and the man who resembled Summers
thought he could detect a faint stir of movement behind the mesh, as
if some monstrous shape had been imprisoned within; a shape which was
self-luminous and very restless in its pacing.
The enormous room was illuminated by globular overhead lamps which
cast stationary shadows on its glass-smooth floor and turned the walls
into light-mirroring surfaces which deflected the radiance without
diminishing it.
The man who resembled Summers spoke calmly, but there was a slight
tremor in his voice. "We will have to wait. We must force ourselves to
be patient. It would be easier to let ourselves go, to act impulsively.
Inaction is difficult when you feel you're at the mercy of something
dangerous which you know nothing about. But we can't afford to take
unnecessary risks. We still have one safeguard. Being armed may not
protect us, but it's an advantage we can't afford to toss away. We'll
be tossing it away if we lose our heads."
It seemed only natural to the man that he should be armed. The weapon
he was clasping surprised him no more than his familiar attire had
done. Its presence in his hand he took for granted, and its absence
would have bewildered him and greatly increased his apprehension. The
woman was also clasping a weapon, and taking her possession of it so
much for granted that she did not even glance down at it when the man
stressed the fact that they were both armed by tapping her lightly on
the wrist.
The two small, compact energy weapons glittered in the downstreaming
radiance. Outwardly they were exact replicas of nuclear hand-guns,
accurate in range and deadly when fired. Nuclear hand-guns were capable
of disintegrating any object in their path, living or inanimate,
within a radius of thirty-five feet. There was no nuclear fallout, no
diffusion of destructive radioactivity, no risk to the user at all.
Seventy years of controlled atomic research on the red planet made
such weapons available to everyone privileged to carry them: regional
law-enforcement coordinators, authorized destroyers of dangerous
animal pests and explorers in space. But the weapons which the man and
the woman were clasping had not been atomically powered. They were
infinitely less destructive, with barely enough fire-power to kill a
man or large animal at close range, or bring down a bird in flight.
But the man and the woman did not know that. They had no way of
knowing.
The woman was the first to notice the change in the large, cagelike
object. The light shifted, and a slow shadow crept across it,
elongating as it moved, first parallel with the box and then at right
angles to it.
The shadow was sinuous and very dark, and it made a rasping sound on
the glass-smooth floor as it advanced in a swift glide. A yard from the
cage it ceased to be a shadow.
The woman went rigid. Her hand darted to her throat and all of the
color drained out of her face. She stared wordlessly, unable to move or
speak, and her stunned helplessness almost led to the man's undoing.
He was half turned toward her and did not see the long-fanged, catlike
beast until it was within eight feet of him.
He cried out when he saw it and leapt back. It sprang then, straight
toward him. Sprang with a terrible, deep-throated roar, its tawny
flanks quivering.
The man fired. He had no time to take aim, and there was no need
for him to aim with precision. Any blast from any weapon, at almost
pointblank range, would have found its mark in so huge a target.
A great gash appeared in the creature's right flank, and turned crimson
even before its body swerved and the man fired for the second time,
staggering backwards with a sobbing gasp. The wounded beast landed
upright directly behind him, and flattened itself. It hugged the floor
for an instant as its belly and right flank turned a brighter red,
flooding the glass-like surface with a swiftly spreading pool of blood
that was startlingly like its own elongated bulk in configuration.
Then it was in motion again, rearing on its hindlimbs with a roar and
swaying toward him. He swung about and fired three more shots into its
body, holding the hand-gun steady, and taking careful aim now despite
the pain-maddened animal's flailing claws and snarling ferocity.
The man did not escape unscathed. The enraged beast raked his shoulders
with its claws, tore a deep gash in his flesh from his neck to his
waist. The man leapt back and fired again. As the hand-gun blasted the
woman began to scream.
The beast staggered, fell back, and began slowly to crumple, his body
arching forward as it sagged, its forelimbs giving way first and the
rest of its bulk collapsing like a weighted sack, lopsidedly and with
tumultuous heavings. The man stood very still, watching it crumple,
seemingly unaware of the grievous wound he had sustained. The long
gash did not bleed. It remained a long, livid disfiguration running
the length of his spine, as if a scalpel dipped in acid had etched a
blemish with ragged edges in the precise middle of his back.
The man waited until the beast ceased to move, his gaze intent,
strangely calm. Not a muscle of his face moved. His absolute quietude
had followed so quickly upon his first startled outcry and his
aggressive action in defending himself that it would have baffled a
psychologist whose stock in trade was the reasonably predictable within
the limits of what is known about the human mind.
If there was a mental conflict within him it was not mirrored on his
features and even his posture was amazingly relaxed. He did not hold
himself stiffly, as might have been expected, but simply stood waiting
in a completely natural attitude--an attitude free of all strain--for
the wounded beast to breathe its last.
The instant the catlike creature's tawny flanks ceased to heave and
a rust-colored froth appeared at its mouth he turned quickly, moved
to the woman's side and took her into his arms. He held her firmly,
stilling her trembling with whispered reassurance and running his left
hand gently up and down her back.
"It's all right," he murmured. "I've killed it. It won't move again.
Easy now, there's nothing to fear."
The woman was shuddering violently and to quiet her he began more
firmly to stroke her bare back, running his hands over the velvety
smooth skin between her shoulder blades and even more firmly caressing
the twin mounds of her breasts.
Suddenly she was clinging to him, her arms locked about him so tightly
he had difficulty in remembering his only desire was to comfort and
reassure her. Or perhaps he did not want to remember. Passion awoke in
him, fierce, irresistible. He lowered his head and brought his mouth
down hard on lips that seemed to melt beneath the demanding ardor of
his kisses. She seemed suddenly unbelievably young to him, eager and
vibrant, as if he had met her for the first time. Yet she was his wife,
surely, and they had known many such moments of rapture in the past.
Or had they?
He had the strange feeling that he, too, had been born anew, that
he was not quite the same man who had plucked the blooming rose of
love many times before. He felt almost like a young boy, clasping
his virginal first love in a forest glade and watching her face turn
crimson....
"We have seen enough," a cold voice said. "My insight was flawless.
They were exposed to danger first--a great and terrible danger. And
they were stirred to passion as I was sure they would be. They are only
androids, but the proof is strong and convincing enough. I am quite
sure now that we will succeed as well with David Loring and the woman
of his choice."
The android man and woman did not hear the voice. It was too remote and
Tragor was not addressing himself to an Earthman. He was speaking to
Sull, and they both stood at the door of the laboratory.
And then, quite suddenly, the disks on the androids' thighs glowed
with a blinding incandescence and they slumped to the floor and lay
motionless.