How do you kill a man without killing him?
Unless that question could be answered, Earth
would lose the war, and every Earthman would die!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity June 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The room was a maze of mirrors that reflected his nightmare image.
At first he had tried to close his eyes but found that they had done
something to them. He could not close them and was forced to look at
the thing in the hundreds of mirrors, seeing it from all angles.
He had tried to sleep--thinking that, if asleep, he would not see the
mirrors and himself. But they had injected drugs into his body--drugs
that made sleep impossible except when they wanted him to sleep. A
human body had to have a minimum of sleep; they knew what that minimum
was and gave it to him when they wanted him to have it.
But even sleep was no release. During those first days, he discovered
that a man unable to close his eyes will _see_ while he sleeps. And in
every dream the mirrors and the nightmare were there, superimposed upon
the dream as two negatives placed one upon another. If he dreamed that
he was a child again, playing in the fields and chasing rabbits, the
nightmare image was there, superimposed upon the dream. If he dreamed
that he was a teen-ager, walking Betty home from the movies and holding
her soft hand in his, it was there--hovering in the air around them. No
matter what he dreamed, it was there.
He found that there was one relief from the nightmare and only one.
They had left his right arm intact. _In the event_, he thought, _that
I give in, I will be able to write the answers they want to know._
But that was not a complete relief. To stare at the smoothness and
perfection of flesh on his right arm for long periods was to admit that
the rest of his body was....
They were clever with pain, he thought. Pain, he had realized during
those first days, was a monumental thing to a man. Pain was the first
sensation experienced by a man: the slap of the doctor's hand and the
first breath of air in lungs unaccustomed to breathing. And pain was
the very last sensation that a man experienced: the pain of death.
Crowded in between those two sensations that represented a person's
life span, pain was the dominant impetus. What drove a man to do
anything except the impetus of pain and the instinct to avoid pain? A
man did a million things to avoid physical pain. To avoid hunger pains,
a man would eat; to avoid the pain of coldness, a man would light a
fire; to avoid aching muscles, a man would make a wheel to carry his
burden; to lessen that burden, a man would split an atom.... And a man
did a million other things to avoid emotional pain. To avoid the pain
of loneliness, a man would make friends; to avoid the pain of boredom,
a man would play a game; to avoid the pain of ugliness, a man would
create beauty....
Not an unpleasant reality, he realized. Not unpleasant because it was
necessary. Nothing in the universe moved unless a force pushed or
pulled it. A man unable to sense physical or emotional pain would do
_nothing_. There would be nothing to push him. As wind moved clouds,
pain moved man.
The sight of his body was not exactly painful to him. They had not
disfigured him; they had only _changed_ him. To disassociate him from
his body, no doubt. What they had done to him many would call an
"atrocity," he realized. But, in a war, every time one soldier killed
another, it was an "atrocity"--one man had taken the life of another.
_They_ had a job to do and they were doing it.
Successfully, he knew. When they came the next time, he would tell them
what they wanted to know. _Want to know where Fort Meade is located on
Earth? Give me a map and I'll show you. How many soldiers do we have
in the mountain range a hundred miles from here? I'll give you my best
estimate. I'll tell you anything you want!_
Pain was the impetus to push a man, he knew. They had pushed him and
pushed him. Doing their job. And they had pushed him far enough. A man
was not linked to other men and his nation and his world by tangible
threads. A man was separate and distinct; a man's body was a world in
itself. He had been pushed into his world by pain. Somewhere--beyond
the wall of pain that came or vanished when they wanted--somewhere, he
had friends, an army, a world called Earth. But they didn't matter.
_His_ world mattered....
And, oddly, he wasn't afraid of pain any more. It was just a thing, a
thing to be avoided in any way. And he wasn't to be pitied. They had
_changed_ him. Sergeant Chester Gregg wasn't a man any more. He was
something that could be added to and subtracted from, a pliable thing
that could be prodded and molded, an object that could be pushed this
way and that way....
* * * * *
Murphy raised his head. He could tell from the flashes of artillery
fire that they were surrounded. Antarian artillery had a purplish flash
of light that their own guns did not have. And he could see: in every
direction there was an occasional flash of purplish light. The flashes
formed a circle--a circle around them.
He lowered himself into the foxhole.
"What?" Hank inquired.
"Surrounded."
"Are you sure?" Hank crouched in the semi-darkness as if about to
pounce on something.
"Damn it, if you don't believe me, _take a look_!"
Hank hesitated. He was a tall, lanky person with red hair and boyish
freckles. He had an awkward, self-conscious manner, and despite his
powerful body, the freckles and manner made others think of him as a
boy rather than a man. He was eighteen and combat had hardened his
muscles without hardening his appearance. "I believe you," he said.
"Do you think we'll get out?"
"Hard to tell. Maybe."
Murphy leaned back and looked up at the dark sky. It was filled with
stars, stars that twinkled, and intermingled with them were other
points of light that were not stars. They were atomic explosions, and
unlike the stars, they did not twinkle. An atomic explosion in outer
space, without the pressure of atmosphere, expanded tremendously. When
it reached the limit of expansion, it faded, and watching a battle in
outer space was like watching a maze of tiny blinking lights. Murphy
watched those tiny blips of light every night. One night, if he lived
long enough, there would be no blips of light and that would mean that
one side was beaten.
They were fighting and dying on Antares but their battle was a
secondary one. It was the battle in outer space that would win the war.
If the Antarians won that battle, then every Earthman on Antares would
die because there would be no more supplies. If Earth won that battle,
the Antarians would be beaten since they would have no way to stop
Earth from sending more men and more supplies.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the problem of saving
Hank's life. That was his habit: every time he went into combat, he
picked someone like Hank--a kid--and stuck with him. He would worry
about that kid, whoever he might be, and try to keep him out of tight
spots. It was his way of protecting himself. Whenever he worried about
his own life, his mind always froze. But worrying about someone else
was different.
"I think I'd rather die than be captured," Hank said. "I heard they
have ways of making a guy talk--ways of making a guy tell them
anything."
Murphy nodded his head in agreement. It would be better to die than to
be captured. The war with the Antarians was different from the World
Wars on Earth. Antarians were aliens and resembled lizards more than
men. There was no way for them to disguise themselves effectively and
they had no agents on Earth to learn the location of factories and
military installations. From a thousand miles in space--if one of their
ships were fast enough--they could photograph Earth's surface. Closer
than a thousand miles, rockets from Earth's interceptor system could
destroy a ship. Atomic rockets dropped from Antarian ships could zigzag
through Earth's atmosphere at tremendous speeds and fifty per cent got
through the interceptor system. But a ship containing enough fuel to
take it from Antares to Earth and back was large and unmanueverable,
and venturing closer than a thousand miles was fatal. And a photograph
taken from a thousand miles does not show factories and military
installations. Through magnification, the photograph will show rivers,
mountain ranges, land masses, and varicolored patches of land that
could be cities or _anything_. So the Antarians had been forced to hurl
atomic bombs aimlessly. Those that got through the defensive system
usually struck deserted areas.
The Antarians had only one choice: capture as many soldiers as possible
and make them tell where military targets were located. And to them,
men were an alien form of life. Their science was not adapted to the
human body; they had no drugs to affect the human mind. In the middle
of an interplanetary war, they could not spare the workers, time,
wealth, and effort to invent drugs that had taken mankind itself years
to produce. But it took them only a few minutes to make a whip....
As Murphy listened, the distant rumble of exploding shells grew in
volume. They were "walking" shells across the surrounded area. He
flattened himself against the bottom of the foxhole and covered his
ears with his hands. Even through his hands, the roar of explosions
was deafening, and he felt the ground shake while shell fragments
whistled through the air above.
That was Antarian tactics, he remembered. Whenever possible, they
surrounded an area; pounded it until there were only a few men left and
then charged with their infantry, taking as many prisoners as possible.
The roar of exploding shells diminished in volume as the barrage moved
farther away.
Silence.
Murphy checked his rifle and rose. He looked across a desolate terrain
covered with craters and smouldering shell fragments. The forest near
them--that weird forest of hundred-foot trees with green trunks and
yellow leaves--was almost gone. The barrage had left only a few trees
upright. Trees with their branches torn from them; trees that looked
like shadowy fingers pointing at the stars.
"I suppose they'll be coming now," Hank said.
"Any minute. They always follow a barrage."
"I won't surrender," Hank said as he checked his rifle. "I know that.
There wouldn't be anything to gain."
"You couldn't surrender if you wanted to."
"Huh?"
"The Army doesn't allow it. You see, the Army tells you what to do, how
to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. There's regulations in
the manuals to cover _everything_. If there aren't regulations about
something, that's because the Army doesn't allow it. There are no
regulations about how to surrender. That means you _can't_ surrender."
"Suppose you haven't got anything to fight with?"
"No dice. If you've only got one bullet, you fire that bullet. Then you
use your bayonet. If your bayonet breaks, then you pick up rocks and
throw them, and if there aren't any rocks around, then you attack with
your bare hands. In other words, you keep fighting until you kill them
or they kill you. If you surrender, you're a traitor."
Hank was silent for a while. "If that's so," he said, "why do they have
regulations about what to do _after_ you're captured? You know, that
'Give only your name, rank, and serial number' stuff."
"That," explained Murphy with mock impatience, "is for those cases when
a guy might be captured while unconscious. The Army's sensible. It
knows you can't fight if you've been knocked unconscious by something."
"Did you hear the rumor," Hank went on, "that every guy going into
combat has something done to him so he'll kill himself if he's
captured? Hypnotism or something?"
"Uh-huh." Murphy wished Hank hadn't mentioned that. He remembered,
there at Fort Hendricks, something strange had happened. Take a
battalion of men, line them up outside a hospital. One by one, as the
men enter a room, give them an injection that knocks them cold. Keep
them unconscious for days while you feed them through the veins, and
then revive them, put them in a formation and march them back to their
barracks without an explanation. Do something like that and you'll
cause all sorts of rumors. Those men will wonder what happened to them
while they were unconscious. The more they wonder, the more fantastic
the rumors will get....
"I doubt it," Murphy said. They had been whispering. No enemy
followed a barrage so close that they were killed by their own
shells, and Antarians could only move at a certain speed. That always
left--immediately after a barrage--a few minutes during which they
could talk or whisper in safety. But that time was limited and they
fell silent now.
Murphy thought, _Somewhere out there, lizard-like things are crawling
toward us. Any minute now, they'll be close enough to hear us if we
make a sound, and they'll be waiting, hoping to hear a sound. They'll
be holding their weapons with their tentacles as they move closer.
They should be in a zoo where you could see them on Sunday afternoons
and laugh. They're funny-looking, but it's hard to laugh at them while
they're trying to kill you--_
A rumble of sound.
Murphy swung his rifle, aiming through the sights. It was a tank. They
had no hand grenades, and it was impossible to knock one out with a
rifle. But, he reminded himself, he had explained to Hank. It was a
soldier's job to fight, even with rocks if necessary.
_No._ It was one of their tanks!
"Let's go! Maybe they'll give us a ride!"
They climbed out of the foxhole. Murphy ran toward the tank, raising
his arms above his head--not a gesture of surrender, but a means
of recognition. Antarians could walk on their hind legs but their
physiology did not allow them to raise their forelegs above their heads
as men could. At night, when nothing could be seen clearly, it was the
most effective password.
The tank stopped.