"Homework?" Hank repeated.
"It's the newest thing," Gregg explained. "They figure that men who've
been in combat with the Antarians can train recruits better than men
back on Earth who've never even seen the Antarians. The plan is to
train men like yourselves on the way back to Earth. No time wasted.
That is, they plan to teach you how to train others. We have a colonel
and a couple lieutenants aboard. You fill out those papers and they'll
judge your knowledge of military procedure. Then they'll know exactly
how much they'll have to teach you."
When Gregg left, Murphy examined the papers. As Gregg said, the papers
were a test of their knowledge of military procedure. There were yes
and no questions: questions such as _Describe procedure to infiltrate
enemy lines_, _Describe procedure for establishing night patrols_,
_Describe alternate code system_. Hundreds of questions.
And an aerial map. The question: _Give the approximate location of Fort
Johnson._ And in small print at the bottom, the notation that this was
a test of memory and ability to judge distance.
"Look at this, Hank."
Hank studied the map and question. "That's easy," he said. "I was
stationed at Fort Johnson. There's Salt Lake. See? Fort Johnson is
about--"
"I said _look_, not _talk_!" Murphy rose and glared at Hank. "You're
stupid," he added.
"What's the matter with you?" Hank inquired, his jaw sagging.
"You're stupid," Murphy repeated. "Don't you ever question anything?
This whole thing smells fishy." He paced the floor, glaring at the
metal walls. There was something wrong with the compartment. It was
like any compartment aboard any ship, but there was something _wrong_.
He knew there was something wrong, but he couldn't pinpoint it. "It
doesn't make sense. We were in a foxhole a few hours ago, and now we're
on a ship headed for Earth. It doesn't make sense."
"We're going to be instructors."
"And that map is fishy," Murphy continued. "That's the sort of thing
the Antarians would want to know. They have to photograph Earth from a
thousand miles out. They'd like to know exactly where Fort Johnson is."
"Well, so what?"
"So _what_? Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe we're prisoners of the
Antarians?"
"Are you serious?" Hank inquired. "How can we be prisoners?" He glanced
around the room and shrugged his shoulders. "We were picked up by one
of our own tanks and--"
"The Antarians capture our tanks now and then. It could have been a
trick."
"Our own men were aboard the tank!"
"We didn't _see_ them. It was too dark inside the tank to see anything."
"We heard them," Hank insisted.
"That doesn't mean anything." Murphy remembered that they had been
warned about Antarian "talkie" machines. The Antarians frequently
tricked or forced a prisoner to talk for hours. The conversation was
recorded, broken down according to individual sounds and recorded
in a "talkie" machine. The machine resembled a typewriter, and an
Antarian could reproduce any vocal sound by pressing one of its keys. A
skilled Antarian linguist could use one of the machines and carry on a
conversation with perfect English. They had been used during attempts
to infiltrate their lines at night but, Murphy realized, one _could_
have been used in the tank.
"Take it easy," Hank said. "You're imagining things. We're on one of
our own ships!"
"Are we? What have we seen of this ship except the corridor and this
compartment? It could be.... Well, this compartment could be like a
stage. It was so foggy outside, we couldn't see anything."
He paused to light a cigarette and continued, "Gregg gave me the idea.
I've seen Gregg before--at Fort Meade. I remember him but he doesn't
remember me. Of course, that's natural. You meet a lot of guys in the
army and you can't remember them all. But Gregg was in the Infantry
like he said, and now he's a ship's captain. Our Army doesn't work like
that. The Infantry doesn't take a man and train him to be a spaceship
captain! That's the sort of thing the Antarians would do. They have a
screwy theory about their soldiers being versatile."
Hank's eyebrows rose; there was a trace of doubt on his face. "We're
here," he said nervously. "We can hear the ship's engines."
Murphy listened. True, they could hear a ship's engines. "Could be a
recording," he said.
"If there's a possibility, maybe we shouldn't talk so damned much."
Hank rose to his feet, frowning. "If you're right, they may have hidden
microphones."
"What's the difference?" If they were prisoners, Murphy thought, there
was no reason to keep the Antarians from knowing that they knew.
There would be no chance to escape, no way out. Antarians took their
prisoners far behind their lines. A man, a creature who walked upright
on two legs, could not disguise himself and pass unnoticed among
creatures that resembled lizards and crawled on four legs. No, if they
were prisoners they would be well behind the lines; there would be no
way to escape. _But_, he wondered, _if we're prisoners, why are they
trying to keep us from realizing it?_ They had used a trick to get
information, but they could have gotten the same information through
torture. He knew: he was brave enough to die for his country, but not
strong enough to--
_What's wrong with this compartment?_ he interrupted the chain of
thought. There was _something_ wrong with the compartment. He could
sense the wrongness. But what could be wrong with cots, a table, four
walls, a ceiling, and a floor? There was nothing wrong with them, so
that meant there was something wrong that was not in the compartment;
a something that came in to the compartment from outside. _What_, he
thought wildly, _is not in here but comes in here from outside?_
"_I've got it!_"