The white, sterile room seemed to have closed in upon itself since
she had been first brought to it so many hours before, and the heavy
desk was now just a great mass of steel, its curved lines no longer
distinct, but trailing off somewhere in an incomprehensible geometry of
their own. There was movement behind the desk, white, blurry movement
that blended with the walls, but the flesh-colored mask that hovered
above it did not seem to move at all. Dot's eyes could no longer focus
for the fatigue of the tests had sucked the well of her physical
energy dry, but she knew the face.
He was Mannix, director of the S-Council, they had told her.
The tests had torn her soul from her, turned it inside out, stripped
it naked, examined it beneath their microscopes of unending questions
asked in a thousand different ways with a thousand different
inflections, connotations.... The sterile white rooms, the lights, the
darkness....
To hear what she and they had known from the beginning, and what the
blurred, unmoving face was telling her now.
"... tests have been evaluated according to Section 679, Sub-section B
of Commandment Seventeen, Part E, as amended, and you have been found
to be unquestionably sane. It is my duty therefore to interpret the law
with a finding of guilty of acts of heresy, as charged in each of the
counts cited, committed with the premeditated deliberation of a sound,
and therefore fully responsible mind."
Dot no longer felt fear, only a terrible tiredness. It did not matter
what Mannix said. Nor of course, could it matter what she might say.
There was the truth, of course, but it would be doubly incriminating,
and would spell disaster for Doug.
_She would never see Doug again._
"... entitled, by rank, to denial...."
_Or know him if she did._
"... may speak, now as privileged, before you are sentenced...."
_Never see her Earth, her Terry or her Mike again!_
"... and in the absence of remonstrance as privileged...."
_Or know that the sun and the stars above the alien planet upon which
she would walk were not those under which she had been born...._
"... hereby sentence you, Madame Lisa Blair, to loss of privilege to
breed offspring through sterilization, and to the complete loss of
all ego and all memory therewith connected through psychomutation,
which treatment shall immediately follow the first. In the name of
the Prelatinate, the Prelate General, and the party hosts, I do so
pronounce sentence."
A panel had opened noiselessly behind her.
The blurred face nodded imperceptibly, and arms suddenly were lifting
her to her feet, leading her from the white, sterile room....
* * * * *
There was an empty roaring in his ears as he struggled for
consciousness, and he could only half-feel the tugging at his body,
half-hear the frightened sound of Terry's voice.
"Dad--dad, you've got to get up, dad!"
Painfully, he made his shaking muscles take over the burden of his
weight, forced himself to his feet.
The viewscreen was black save for the receding white disk that was
Venus. The acceleration needle quivered at just under two gravities.
"--Dad, everything feels funny. So heavy. For a long time we couldn't
even move out of those bed-things."
His head hurt and there was drying blood on the side of his face. His
body felt as though it had been flailed by a thousand of the maces, and
his back wound was a long, throbbing ache, and it was sticky-wet again.
He tried to force a grin to his face, and even that drew tiny shards of
pain.
"Wish I could've gotten to one of those bed-things, Mike! Believe me I
never want to hear the expression 'hit the deck' again."
"Well you sure hit it. Anything feel busted?"
"Everything sure does! But I'll be O.K. in a minute." He sat heavily
on the edge of a hammock, fought against the tugging urge to sink
back into unconsciousness. But when the acceleration needle said one
gravity and the gyros took over, he had to get back on his feet.
"Dad! Where the heck are we going?"
"And when you get us there, will you tell us what the contraption did
to get us in this place, and make us all--even you--look all different?
We thought it was one of those scary dreams until you got us out in
front of everybody ... and I still ain't so sure...."
Doug still hurt, but the dizziness was going, and there was Terry's
question to answer. It was a good question.
"Earth, that's where we're going! Ever hear of it?"
"This is a _real_ space-ship, Dad?"
Doug smiled down at him. "It's pretty real," he said.
They watched him in silence as he began his search.
He wasted twenty minutes at it before he was forced to the conclusion
that there were no astronomical charts, no star maps. The Science
Council would have its own, and the robot didn't need any....
He was glad the boys were with him. Glad, because without them, the
cold panic that welled inside might have taken hold. Glad, because with
them, he could muster the will it took to keep from telling himself how
terribly big and empty infinity was.
Maybe you should've stuck with the MIT degree after all, Carl Grayson
had said. And, he had stuck himself with it! But, if the things he had
learned to get it had gotten him into this, then they would damn well
have to get him out!
Doug ripped the blank plastisheets from Tayne's unused notebook, tossed
them to the flat surface of the console. There was an ink-stylus in
another pocket of the dead man's tunic.
He pointed to a bulkhead chronometer. "Tell me when an hour's up,
boys," he said.
He must have his answers within the hour, for in computing them he
would need a constant to represent known navigation error, and the hour
would represent it, once he determined its value. And if he should
exceed that time, its value would be changed--and the constant, the
calculations, worthless.
With the viewscreen, he began his search of space for the bright,
blue-white planet that would be Earth. When he found it, he would use
twenty minutes of the hour to establish the plane of its ecliptic.
Then, if he could remember what the books had said, remember its
orbital speed, its orbital arc for the month of August and its
resultant distance from the sun. And then of course the same
mathematical equivalents for Venus, and subsequent establishment of the
necessary relationships. And then interjected in it must be his own
speed and relative direction for the space of one hour.
And when he had his dead-reckoning solution, it would still be like
shooting ducks--with Earth the biggest duck that a man ever had to bag.
And with a sling-shot--his stylus--not the finely-machined shotgun that
would be the slide-rule and calculator which he didn't have.
He kept turning the screen. In six precious minutes he found it, like a
bright new jewel pinned to the white silk scarf of the Milky Way.
Earth.
He reached for the ink-stylus, the blank plastisheets....
* * * * *
There was a searing, bright light above her and it sent stabbing
tentacles of pain through her head, and they lashed at her flagging
brain.
They had lain her prone on a cold, flat surface, and their faces
circled her, blurred as Mannix' had been, and infinitely far above her.
There was the murmur of voices, and the bright light was divided and
divided again into myriads of white, stabbing lances as it was broken
into glittering bits upon the edges of the slender instruments they
held.
Let them, let them....
_No, scream--scream or something, you idiot!_
In a second there would be the hypodermic or the anaesthesia and she
would not be able to scream--
"You're so--so stupid ..." she heard her voice saying, a dimly audible
echo off the edges of infinity itself. "Sterilize me. Keep me from
breeding. What I want, you fools! They all do, they all do, you know.
And you, yourselves, give the answer to it. To our question, how much
longer, how many, many more...."
She could not be sure if she spoke waking or dreaming, in the delirium
of exhaustion or in the unintelligibility of anaesthesia. But she was
thinking the words, and she could still feel the motion of her tongue,
its fuzzy touch against her teeth.
The glittering instruments were immobile.
"If heresy brings us this--this relief from a fear of forever being
only a machine of flesh and blood to produce--to produce as any machine
with no value whatever other than to produce until it falls into
wreckage--then, then heresy will some day flourish, and you'll all be
wrinkled and old, and there will be no young voices."
She let the words bubble from her, not caring, yet somehow caring,
somehow fighting with all her being. But it was not a clever ruse, for
there was still not strength enough to consciously pit her wits against
them. It was something else, this strange fight, something else that
stemmed from deep within her.
And now the murmur of voices above her had changed tenor, oddly
interrupted by jagged bits of silence.
Done something. What she had said had done something, and they were
hearing her. Hearing her, so she must speak louder, must open her eyes
wide and let the bright light send the stabbing flashes of pain deep
into her brain, whip it stingingly into consciousness.
It hurt, it hurt....
Colored circles, drifting, but it was from the light--and she was
thinking now, and in a moment she would be seeing their faces more
clearly. Had to talk again....
* * * * *
Dot lurched up on her elbows, felt the curious relaxation of a smile
on her lips. "Go ahead! The rest of the women know what you're going
to do to me! And pretty soon they'll let you do it to them! If we're
no good as an underground to stop you, we'll let you use us to stop
yourselves--think that one over before next election!"
From somewhere very near her a voice said "Madame Blair, please. You
are interfering with the operation!"
But now the words were coming more easily. Her hands and feet were cold
and wet, and her muscles shook, but now she was fighting with the last
of the energy in her, she was fighting because she had found the chink
in their armor, and she could widen it, could break through!
"Oh, very well--I wouldn't do that! Because I've been looking forward
to this for so very long. Just to think, I'll be comfortably dried up,
and--it'll be legal! No more fear!"
"You must be silent, Madame Blair."
"Is there some new amendment to the precious Commandments that
says I must be silent? The last one I heard was just before I was
brought here--Yes, have you heard the latest, gentlemen? An amendment
prohibiting the execution of a sentence on an official's wife, until
that official is present as a legal witness? But no, I can see you
haven't, and hope you get into all kinds of trouble! Chapter--Chapter
580, gentlemen--Book 631, Section 451, Paragraph A, Sub-paragraph 34,
Sentence."
And abruptly she let the bitter spurt of words taper into silence, and
her eyes were wide. Only one of them was at her side--the rest were
suddenly grouped around the one in charge, who was nervously fingering
a telecall dial.
Like children! Doug said they were creatures of pattern, and something
had suddenly smashed the pattern to smithereens, and they dared do
nothing until they had a firm hold on the torn-up ends again. She had
got them scared stiff!
_This is it, girl! Move!_
The last of her strength. A swift, sidewise kick, and she buried the
heel of one bare foot into the groin of the man who had stayed to guard
her. She had braced her other leg on the edge of the low operating
table, and thus anchored, the kick carried all the merciless impact
that was needed. She did not wait to see the quick look of agony that
mottled his face and she was off the table and running before he had
sunk silently to his knees. The surgical robe was short and did not
hamper her legs, and for the first time since she was a little girl,
she ran for the sake of pure, uninhibited speed. She had reached the
door marked EXIT ONLY before the rest of them realized what she had
done, and then they were after her, their howling voices a mixture of
disbelief and dismayed anger.
It was a long, wide corridor. The enraged shouts of alarm behind her
had already turned it into a thunderously echoing cacophony of pure and
terrible noises, and she knew that within moments, around some turn
ahead of her there would be more of them, and she would be trapped, and
it would be all over.
She would have let the sudden pain in her side double her when, less
than a hundred feet ahead of her, more of them did appear; her flagging
strength would have let her fall at their feet had she not seen it
at the last moment, hardly twenty feet from her--the thing for which
she'd been so desperately looking, had not been able to see through the
stinging mist that still made things blur uncertainly.... Another door.
Another door marked SERVICE EXIT at the top.
She ran through it, breath sucking painfully into her lungs, the
surgical gown already wet and clinging to her with ice-cold sweat.
A long steel ramp, forty feet above the ground, curving in a gentle
half-spiral to the broad street below.
She fled the curving length of it, swiftly past other service exits,
her flight becoming more of a fall each split-second than a run, for
her legs would not keep up. And then her momentum pitched her headlong
into the street and she struggled desperately for balance.
She heard them behind her, feet thundering on the ramp, thundering in
her ears.
A silver vehicle sped by, missed her, its undertow plucking at the
sodden fabric of her garment. Another, and then suddenly the thundering
grew louder and there was no more strength left.
The speeding golden-hued vehicle bore down on her, and Dot screamed,
fell headlong in its path.
* * * * *
Doug's error was wide, but mercifully, he had led his target by too
great a distance rather than by too little, and the ecliptic had
been right. It would not be a chase, but a meeting. He brought Ship
QT into a sharp, angling turn when he was sure, and there was silent
thanksgiving at his lips as the moon of Earth rolled slowly far
below him. And Earth itself became a pale blue bull's eye, growing
perceptibly larger with each minute in the viewscreen.
He did not unlock the top button. He could be already many, many hours
too late, but there was no knowing.
Like a great torpedo, the ship hurtled toward its target as though to
blast it from Space. In eight minutes it would be midway between Earth
and its moon, and in nine, Doug would invert, cutting the difference
between crash and controlled landing perilously thin.
"Terry, get the dead man's sword and belt. Mike, help me find some
tools--anything that even looks like a wrench."
When two of the nine minutes were gone, Doug had found a tool that
would serve. When a portion of the third was gone he had a section of
the communications panel naked. When seven of them were gone he had its
high-kempage pack loose on its bearers, and when there were but seconds
left in the ninth, he had it free, and lashed with torn strips of his
cloak to one of the hammocks.
"Hold on, now," he said then. His voice was raw and it hurt to
talk. There was a dryness in his mouth that made his words fuzzy
and indistinct, and his tongue felt swollen enough to choke him. "I
want both of you on that hammock--get that thing between you, strap
yourselves down, and then hold onto it for all your life. When we land,
get the straps off quickly, and--" he clenched his teeth, had to push
the words through them, "--and have your swords ready. I'll take care
of the rest; you just follow me. Understand, boys?"
They nodded silently, strapping themselves securely to the hammock.
Three seconds ... two, one. Release the top button. Press the panel
full around, all the way ... there go the bow belly-jets--stern jets
topside.... Top button, all the way in, twist it--
The Moon swam into the viewscreen, was shrinking fast, too fast. No,
slowing a little....
He swung the screen to full stern, and Earth was rushing up, not quite
yet filling it.
Speed in thousands per second ... sixteen ... fifteen point
five--fifteen. The needle fell so slowly. Gravs were coming up, one
point five--two full. Over two now, and speed falling a little faster.
Earth filled the screen.
And then he took his eyes from the dials, for he knew that whatever
they read, he was at the full mercy of the ship itself. The top button
was all the way in, and locked. She was giving all she had.
When the grav indicator quivered at four, Doug slumped to the deck,
unable to stand. He rolled to his back, winced, and tried to keep his
eyes on the grav needle.
* * * * *
They blurred, stung in oceans of hot tears. The shrill siren-scream of
atmosphere pierced the thick, heavily insulated hull and Doug knew what
was coming--heat, unbearable heat.
His short gasps seared his mouth, and his heart was like a gigantic
pile-driver inside him, struggling to burst its way through his chest.
And then as though it had all been but part of a timed experiment in
some weird laboratory, the sensation of being crushed to death began to
abate. He could see the grav needle again, and it had already fallen
back to two. Speed was now in unit miles per hour, and the figures were
dropping from nine hundred.
Doug forced himself to his feet.
"Dad ... Dad, are we O.K.? Dad?"
"Maybe," he said.
When the grav needle was steady at One, Doug reduced thrust to hold
them hovering at a little more than two hundred thousand feet over the
Atlantic, with the coastline of what to him was France almost directly
below.
A sickening, quick drop and the horizon-ecliptic indicator showed
parallel flight, and Doug could feel the thrust of the belly engines
beneath his feet. Then he pressed the bottom button, then the middle,
and the Atlantic was rushing beneath them. Carefully, he depressed the
next one up. All the way in, he locked it. The velocity figure in unit
miles per hour was fifteen thousand.
Eleven minutes later he cut the power again, slowed, brought the ship
once more on its stern, and began his descent over Washington.
Within moments they would spot him, would be ready.
It would have to be fast, miles from the central space-port--a suburb,
near a highway.
He let her fall fast. Ten thousand. Eight. Four.
He tilted, angled a little north and west, then dropped again.
At five hundred feet he trebled the power, and it was as though a great
'chute had snapped open above them.
Three hundred feet--the highway perhaps a quarter of a mile distant.
No one down there, but they could be hiding, waiting.
Fifty feet. Had to time it just so, now....
The last ten feet they fell.