stamped all over them, and dignified, soberly-dressed men who looked no
different from your next door neighbor and had criminal records a yard
long, including, in all likelihood, a murder or two the Law would have
a difficult time proving.
I didn't have to speculate about it. I _knew_, because I'd done more
than my share of social research. There was nothing to prevent a man of
distinction from becoming a killer, if he had a secret life that was
ugly and devious and a powerful enough motive.
But now he was talking again, despite the darkness, and I was listening
with my nerves on edge. I was completely in the dark as to why
something about him had set the alarm bells ringing but I was sure I
could hear them, very faint and distant this time, but clearly enough.
It was funny. Sometimes it meant something and sometimes it didn't. I
could feel that danger was hovering right at my elbow and in the end
discover I'd been completely mistaken.
I hoped I was mistaken this time, but I knew there was a
possibility--remote, perhaps, but dangerous to ignore--that the man
who had set the small mechanical killer in motion by the Lakeside had
followed me from the Administration Building into the Underground and
was standing by my side.
"You take one of the really big power combines," he was saying.
"Like, say, Wendel Atomics. It has its defenders and detractors, and
I daresay there are quite a few people who would be happy to see its
Board of Directors behind bars. I'm not defending the Wendel monopoly,
understand. If I was a Martian colonist I might feel quite differently
about it. But you've got to remember that when you give the go-ahead
signal for a project that big you're asking fifty or a hundred key
executives to do the impossible--or pretty close to the impossible."
"The impossible?" I said, trying to sound no more than mildly
interested, because I didn't want him to suspect what a jolt his
mention of Wendel Atomics had given me.
"Oh, yes," he went on. "That's what it boils down to. Every one of
those men will be as human as you or I. They'll react in highly
individual ways to every problem that comes up, every frustration,
every serious interference with their private lives. You've got to
remember that a man's private life is the most important thing in the
world--to him personally. Every one of those fifty or a hundred men
will have health worries, money worries, love life worries, every kind
of worry you can think of. And on Mars worries can pile up."
"So I've heard," I said.
"Well, that's all. That sums it up. I'm simply citing Wendel as an
example of what the New Chicago Transportation System is up against.
I'd say, in general, that most of the directors are doing their best,
when the Old Adam in them isn't in the driver's seat, to keep the
trains running on schedule."
He stopped talking abruptly. I didn't think anything of it for a
moment, for a loquacious man will often pause in the middle of a
conversation to wonder what kind of dent he's been making on the party
who's doing most of the listening. But when a full minute passed and
the darkness held, and he didn't say a word, when I couldn't even hear
him breathing, I began to grow uneasy.
Reach out and touch him? Well, why not? It was the simplest, quickest
way of finding out whether he was still at my side and he could hardly
be offended if my hand grazed his elbow in a jostling motion that would
seem accidental.
It was very strange. I didn't think he was the man I'd feared he might
be any longer, because of what he'd said, because he had brought Wendel
Atomics into the conversation. If he'd _had_ designs on my life giving
his hand away like that would have been the height of folly. It would
have been like giving me cards and spades, and a detailed history of
his activities for the past five years.
It didn't take any gifted reasoning to figure that out and I didn't
pride myself on it. Even a child could have done it. What disturbed me
and kept me from feeling relieved was something quite different. The
alarm bells were still ringing. _They were still ringing._
Louder now and with a dirgelike persistence, as if I was already dead
and buried. And neither a child nor a grown man could have figured that
one out.
That's why I felt I had to reach out and touch him, had to start him
talking again ... had to be sure he was still there at my side.
He was there, all right. He was there in the most alarming possible
way, as a dead weight lurching against me, then swaying and screaming
as I tried to straighten him up, and stop the terrible downward drag of
his sagging body.
He was sinking lower and lower, clutching at my knees now, refusing
to take advantage of the support I was offering him. I strained and
tugged, but it was no use. He was too heavy to raise and I could hear
the breath wheezing out of his throat and there could be no mistaking
the weight of horror that was making him twist and writhe as he
sagged--the deadliness of whatever it was that had struck at him in the
darkness without making a sound.
He screamed again. It was the kind of agonized protest which could only
have come from the throat of a man who hardly knew what was happening
to him ... a man with his terror heightened and made more acute by
the awful, groping-in-the-dark realization that he was experiencing a
torment he was powerless to explain.
There had to be an answer but I didn't know what it was, and when
the scream died away and the tugging stopped all I could hear for an
instant was the steady droning of the train. Then there was another
violent movement close to me and a harsh intake of breath.
My hand shot out, grazed something smooth that whipped away from me and
caught hold of a wrist that was much thinner than a man's wrist had any
right to be.
Much softer too, velvety soft, and it tugged and jerked in a frantic
effort to free itself, holding tight to the knife that it would have
taken all of a woman's strength to plunge deep into my heart.
But she could have done it, whoever she was, for there was a wiry
strength in her--a strength so great that I had to twist her wrist
cruelly before her fingers relaxed and the knife dropped to the floor
of the train.
She gasped in pain--or was it fury?--and exerted all of her strength
again in a desperate effort to break my grip. And this time luck was on
her side. No, call it what it was. Luck may have figured, but most of
it was plain blundering stupidity on my part. I was pretty sure I knew
what her first, misdirected blow with the knife had done to the man I'd
been talking to, and the thought so sickened and unnerved me that my
fingers relaxed a little when the knife went clattering, and she took
advantage of that to break free.
The passengers were crowding me now, pushing, shoving in alarm, and I
knew it would be easy enough for her to force her way between them,
still exerting all of her strength and get far enough away to be just
one of the thirty terrified people when the train roared out into the
light again. They'd all look disheveled, on the verge of panic and I
wouldn't have a chance of identifying her.
How could I have identified her with any certainty, even if she'd
been the only one with a guilty stare? I hadn't the least idea what
she looked like. I only knew that she wasn't old, was all woman in
her lithe softness, the opposite of an Amazon despite her strength.
The femininity which had emanated from her--how instantly it can make
itself felt, how instinctively overwhelming it can be!--had made me
feel like a brute for an instant, even though I'd known it was her life
or mine and I would have been quite mad to spare her.
There were men I could think of, the opposite of brutes, who would have
knocked her unconscious with a blow to the head. To spare a determined
killer is potentially suicidal, but I doubted if I could have done that.
I was still doubting it an instant later, when the train emerged from
the unlighted tunnel and the bright glare of the Underground lamps
flooded the aisle, bringing the man she'd stabbed by accident into
clear view.
I was sure by now that she'd stabbed him by accident in a try for me,
but that wasn't going to help him at all. He had flopped over on his
back and was lying sprawled out in the middle of the aisle, and his
eyes stared up at me, sightless and glazed.
There was no blood either on or beside him, but that only meant that
he'd been stabbed in the back and there hadn't been time for blood from
the wound to stain the edge of his clothes and trickle out from beneath
him across the aisle.
His face had the pallor of death and his lips were drawn back over the
large white teeth I'd noticed when he'd been talking to me. Drawn back
in a stiff, unnatural grin and I didn't have to bend down and listen
for a heartbeat I knew I wouldn't hear to be completely sure that the
words he'd spoken to me would be the last he'd ever speak on Earth.
Just the way his head lolled, back and forth with the rhythmic
throbbings of the train, would have clinched it for me. And I couldn't
have bent down, because the other passengers were all staring at him
too now, and elbowing me away from him to get a closer look, torn
between morbid curiosity and stark terror.
I was too shaken, too sick at heart, to resent the elbowing. There was
anger in me too, cold, uncompromising and right at that moment I could
no longer even think of her as a woman.
* * * * *
It was past midnight when I got home and let myself into the apartment.
I was more shaken than I would have cared to admit to anyone who didn't
know me as well as Trilling did, because casual acquaintances can do
you an injustice and judge the extent of your control by the way you
happen to be looking at the moment.
I was quite sure that I was looking _very_ bad, and however severely
I'd been shaken up by what had happened I still had a fair measure of
control over my emotions.
I hadn't stayed in the train or on the platform to assist in the
investigation, but I didn't feel guilty about it. Trilling could square
all that with the authorities easily enough and he wouldn't have wanted
me to talk to the police and have to identify myself. I was sure of
that. My evidence would be taken down and turned over to the proper
authorities in good time. The rule for me--the only rule I had a right
to consider--was no entanglements.
I shut and locked the front door and almost called out: "It's me,
darling!" as I usually do when I come home late, because when Joan is
alone in the apartment and hears a door opening and closing she gets
angry when I just walk in unannounced. It's part woman-curiosity, part
fear, I guess--the thought that it could be a prowler and why should
she be kept in suspense while I'm hanging up my hat and coat?
But this time something prevented me from calling out. Possibly the
quarrel we'd had was still rankling a little deep in my mind and I
wasn't quite sure how she'd take the "Darling."
My stubborn pride again. Or possibly it was just the feeling I had that
the apartment was quieter than usual, that when you're keyed up and
alert enough to hear a pin drop and you hear nothing--just a stillness
that's a little on the weird side--your anxiety becomes too great to be
relieved by calling out a cheery greeting.
I felt somehow that it would be wiser, and set better with the way I
felt, if I just hung up my coat and walked into the living room without
saying a word.
So I walked into the living room without saying a word and she was
sitting right in the middle of it, on a straight-back chair with all of
her bags packed and standing on the floor by the window, and with all
of my bags packed and standing cheek-by-jowl with hers, and the three
trunks that were going with me to Mars all sealed up and double-locked,
and she wasn't angry or shaking her head or looking at the luggage with
scorn.
There was pride in her lustrous brown eyes and the adorable tilt of
her chin, and a warmth and a tenderness, and she was smiling at me and
nodding.
"Oh, darling," she said. "Darling ... darling ... come here. Did you
think I'd ever let you go to Mars without me? It was just talk--just
stubborn, wild, crazy talk and it didn't mean a thing."
If you marry a woman like Joan and ever have a moment of doubt ...
well, it means you ought to have your head examined. But you're twice
as far removed from sanity if you throw away the check. For you can
always be sure it will be redeemed eventually, in full measure and
brimming over.
I didn't even have to put on my uniform and attach the small silver
hawk to it.
6
We were not the only passengers in the eight-cabined forward section
of the big sky ship which had been assigned to us. But it had taken us
almost a week to get acquainted. To get really acquainted, that is, so
that we could relax and feel at ease and really enjoy one another's
company.
We were sitting in lounge chairs on the long promenade deck that ran
parallel with all eight of the cabins, staring out through translucent
crystal at a wide waste of stars.
Sitting in the first chair was a tall, sturdily built man of
thirty-eight, with keen blue eyes and a dusting of gray at his temples.
His name was Clifton Maddox and he was an electronic engineer. He had
stories on tap that could turn your hair white, because he had been to
Mars and back eight times.
Seated next to him, with her hand resting lightly on his arm, was a
woman in her early twenties, with honey-blonde hair and eyes that held
unfathomable glints and an enigmatical ingenuousness that could keep a
man guessing in an exciting way. Her name was Helen Melton and she had
eyes only for the man at her side. She had managed to make of the trip
a continuous honeymoon, despite a few lovers' quarrels and the stern
exactions which her work as a medical laboratory technician had imposed
on her.
I mention these two because they were fairly typical of the group as a
whole. They were all unusual individuals, the kind of people you take
a liking to straight off, when you meet them casually at a party and
exchange a few words with them that you keep remembering for days.
Joan and I sat in the last two chairs on the promenade deck, a little
apart from the others. Joan was deep in a book and a little weary of
talking and I ... was thinking about the robots.
The robots were a story in themselves--a story that could bear a great
deal of re-telling. If right at that moment I'd had a son--a bright and
eager lad of six or eight--I'd have set him on my knee and talked about
the robots.
The five hundred passengers in the big sky ship were not alone in the
long journey through interplanetary space. In the last years of the
twentieth century, I'd have taken pains to make very clear to him, and
in the early years of the twenty-first, a great new science had grown
from an infant into a giant.
The science of cybernetics, of giant computers that could do much
of Man's thinking for him on a specialized technological level, had
transformed the face of the Earth and was continuing to transform it at
a steadily accelerating pace.
The rocket's four giant computers were of the newest and most efficient
type--humanoid in aspect, with conical heads, massive metal body-boxes,
and three-jointed metal limbs which had all of Man's flexible
adaptability in the carrying out of complex and difficult tasks.
Robotlike and immense, they towered in the chart room with their
six-digited metal hands on their metal knees, their electronic circuits
clicking, their tiers of memory banks in constant motion, but otherwise
outwardly indifferent to the human activity that was taking place
around them.
Four metal giants in a metal rocket, functioning cooperatively with
Man in the gulfs between the planets, might have made an imaginative
fiction writer of an earlier age catch his breath and glory in
the fulfillment of a prophecy. An H. G. Wells perhaps, or an Olaf
Stapledon. But the reality was an even greater tribute to the human
mind's inventive brilliance than the Utopian dream had been.
The four giant computers were capable of solving problems too technical
for the human mind to master without assistance, usually with
astounding swiftness and always with the more-than-human accuracy of
thinking machines whose prime function was to correlate without error
the data supplied to them on punched metallic tapes, and to perform
intricate mechanical tasks based upon that data.
The robots were tremendous, by any yardstick you might care to apply,
and if I'd had a son--
I stopped thinking about the robots abruptly and sat very still,
listening. A sound I'd heard a moment before had come again, much
louder this time--a chill, unearthly screeching.
The chart room was just outside the eight-cabin section and I could
hear the sound clearly. My nerves again, my over-stimulated imagination?
In space strange and unusual sounds are as common as pips on a radar
screen. It was queer how quickly you got used to them. You had to
walk around with your ears plugged up, in a sense, but the plugs
didn't have to be inserted. They were just natural growths inside your
ears--invisible and without substance, but plugs notwithstanding.
They produced a kind of psycho-somatic deafness which didn't otherwise
interfere with your hearing.
Just the very unusual sounds, the totally inexplicable raspings,
dronings, creakings--usually of short duration--were blotted out.
You didn't hear them unless something deep in your mind whispered:
"This one is different. This is an emergency. Take heed!"
The screeching was very different. It was like nothing I'd ever heard
before, on Earth or in space.
The others must have heard it too, for it had been too loud, the second
time, to be ignored. But apparently that strange acceptance of strange
noises in space which goes with the kind of deafness I've mentioned
had only been shattered for me. The six men and women in the lounge
chairs had looked a little startled for a moment and exchanged puzzled
glances. Which meant, of course, that they had heard it despite the
mental earplugs in some inner recess of their minds. But that didn't
prevent them from shrugging it off and resuming their conversation.
Joan also looked a trifle uneasy. She stopped reading just long enough
to raise her eyes and frown, then became absorbed in the book again.
I got up quietly and pressed her wrist. "See you," I said.
She shut the book abruptly and straightened in her chair. "Where are
you going, Ralph?"
"Just stay right where you are, kitten," I said. "I'll be back in a
moment."
"That screeching noise," she said. "I was wondering about it, Ralph. I
guess you'd better see what's causing it."
So she'd been disturbed by it too, and ignoring it had taken a
deliberate effort of will which I hadn't realized she was exerting. It
made me happy in an odd inner way, because it proved again what I'd
always known ... that we were very close and there were currents of
understanding which flowed back and forth between us and I had a wife I
could be proud of.
"It's probably nothing," I said, not wanting to alarm her. "But I might
as well take a look. It seems to be coming from the chart room."
"All right," she said and squeezed my hand.
I had to open and shut two sliding panels and pass along a blank-walled
passageway to get to the chart room. To my surprise the door was
standing open. It's usually kept locked, because there's no section of
the sky ship where a man who didn't want anyone to suspect that he
harbored within himself the most dangerous kind of destructive impulses
could do more damage.
The shattering of a photo-electric eye or the ripping out of a single
live connection in just one of the four cybernetic robots could have
wrecked the rocket, and sent it spiraling down through the space gulfs
in flaming ruin, depending on just how vital to the robot's functioning
the shattered part happened to be.
There was a security alert system which would have to be disconnected
first, but anyone resourceful enough to get inside the chart room
at all, without identification-disk proof that he had a right to be
there, would have known precisely how to take care of the preliminary
obstacles.
I didn't waste any time in getting to that wide-open door, for my mind
was racing on ahead of me like the most alerted kind of alarm system,
its jaggling warning me that every second counted and that what I
dreaded most might very well be true.
What I actually saw, when I reached the doorway and stood there looking
in, took me completely by surprise. It wasn't the way I'd pictured it
at all. But it was just as unnerving, just as much of a threat to the
safety of the ship and it startled me so I must have looked almost
comic, standing there idiot-still. But there was nothing comic about
what I saw.
The woman I'd almost asked to go to Mars with me was staring straight
at me, her hair still piled up high, a look of terrified appeal in her
eyes. She wasn't alone. She was struggling furiously with a crewman I'd
talked to a few times and neither liked nor disliked--a heavyset man
with high cheekbones and pale blue eyes. He was gripping her savagely
by the wrist and they were both backed up against one of the robot
giants.
Suddenly as I stared her head went back and a convulsive trembling
seized her. She began to scream.
7
It was a christ-awful moment--for her and for me. For her because she
had no right to be in the Chart Room, or even on the ship, as far as
I knew, and there was a look on the crewman's face that chilled me to
the core of my being. It went beyond the anger of a duty-obsessed man,
outraged by her infringement of the regulations. It was a completely
different kind of anger. There was a savage cruelty, a killing rage in
his eyes, impossible to misinterpret.
It was just as awful a moment for me, because I wasn't sure I could get
to him before he broke her wrist or did something worse to her. I'd
seen a woman kneed in the groin once, by just such an enraged human
animal, and the memory of it had never left me. A strong man, turned
maniacal, could kill with his hands in a matter of seconds. I'd seen
that happen too, and the victim hadn't been a woman, but a man as
powerful as the killer.
I crossed the Chart Room in a running leap, grabbed him by the
shoulders and swung him about, raining blows on him more or less at
random. I just tried to hit him as hard as I could without caring
much where the blows landed, so long as they resounded with a meaty
smack where they would do the most good. My only aim was to stun
and, if possible, cripple him in a terrible, punishing way, so that
he'd release his grip on the wrist of the woman he'd been trying to
hurt before she screamed again and her hand dangled with a sickening
limpness, making me want to permanently demolish him in slow and
painful stages.
For a moment I was only sure of one thing. My fist had smashed very
solidly into his face at least twice and drawn blood. I could see the
gleam of blood on his jaw as he reeled back, and I was almost sure I'd
heard his nose crack. There was nothing wrong with that, but it didn't
satisfy me. I wanted to turn his face into quivering jelly. But most
of all I was hoping, praying that she'd break free before I set about
doing that, because a voice was screaming deep in my mind that if she
couldn't he might still be capable of injuring her cruelly.
She broke free. Just how I don't know, because the punishment I'd
dished out hadn't stunned him. He could still have fractured her wrist,
judging by the look of blazing fury he trained on me.
His determination to repay me in full probably explained it. He needed
both of his hands free for that, because I could see that what he would
have liked to do most was get a strangler's grip on my throat.
The human windpipe doesn't fracture easily, as every experienced
medical examiner knows. It's elastic and it gives, and post-mortem
appearances prove that you can die by strangulation with your windpipe
intact. But I have a horror of anything like that, and I didn't intend
to let his fingers come anywhere near my throat.
I smashed my fist into his groin twice, putting so much
shoulder-to-elbow resilience into the blows that he bent almost double,
wrapped his arms about his middle just above his groin and went
staggering backwards.