"Vibrations," Murphy said. "There aren't any!"
Hank shrugged his shoulders.
"It's important," Murphy said. "Remember the troopship that took us to
Antares? I remember I had trouble sleeping because of the vibrations.
Every ship has vibrations. The engines kick up one hell of a fuss and
the vibrations travel all over the ship. Not so bad in some places, but
you can feel them anywhere."
He pressed his hands against a wall. Hank, some of the color draining
from his face, did the same. "See?" Murphy inquired. "There are no
vibrations. We're supposed to be in outer space, headed for Earth.
_There should be vibrations!_"
He hit the wall with his fist.
He hit it harder.
The wall didn't sound _right_.
Taking his bayonet, he jabbed the wall. The blade cut through a thin
layer of metal--a layer of metal no thicker than a sixteenth of an inch.
Laughing wildly, he cut a large rectangle; the section clattered to the
floor, exposing a layer of wood. He kicked at the wood--dry, crumbling
wood that gave way beneath his foot.
He climbed through the opening.
Hank followed him.
* * * * *
Colonel Donovan studied the papers before him with blank eyes. Lately
the Project had started to annoy his conscience, and the fact that it
was a logical move did not lessen the annoyance. There at Fort Meade,
he had faced the problem: How can you keep men from giving information
when captured? It had been a vital problem. Without a solution, the
Antarians could have learned countless military secrets and ultimately
won the war. Death had seemed the only solution, but it had not seemed
right to deliberately murder their own men. He had asked himself: How
can you kill a man without killing him? And he had come up with the
answer: Drive him insane.
They had placed him in charge of the Project, and he had organized
a group of psychologists, psychiatrists, chemists, doctors, and
sociologists. He had asked them: Can you install the seeds of
schizophrenia in a soldier--seeds that will bloom upon the realization
that he is a prisoner of the enemy and _only_ upon that realization?
The answer had been "Maybe"--and they had started on the Project.
The system had been developed after months of research and experiment.
It worked through a combination of surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric,
encephalographic, and chemical treatment. All given to a soldier while
under drugs and hypnosis.
Although the originator of the system, no one had told him exactly how
it worked. In such matters, it was the army's policy not to tell anyone
who did not _have_ to know. And, not being a scientist, he would not
have understood all the mechanics if explained to him.
But he had a vague concept: A soldier realizes that he is a prisoner
of the enemy, and the realization triggers a reaction planted in his
mind. A reaction placed there by surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric,
encephalographic and chemical treatment. The reaction forced the
soldier into a schizophrenic dream--entirely separated from the world.
A tight, permanent dream dissociated from all sensory perception. A
dream that not even Antarian whips could reach.
And it annoyed his conscience: he was responsible for the insanity of
thousands of their men. He could not help feeling that perhaps, if he
had tried harder, he could have thought of another way....
The door opened and Phillips burst into the room in his customary
manner. He threw some papers on Donovan's desk. "Our new project," he
said. "A tough one. Impossible, I should say."
While Donovan glanced at the papers, Phillips slumped in a chair
and lit a cigarette. "The Antarians have made a counter-move," he
explained. "We found a way to prevent them from torturing prisoners and
getting information, but our system depends upon the realization by a
soldier that he _is_ a prisoner. The Antarians learned that and now
they have a new approach. They use our tanks that they've captured and
pretend to be our troops while they trick information from our men.
You see, our men have the treatment, but they don't realize they're
prisoners, so the treatment doesn't work. Our new project is to find a
way that our men will realize they're prisoners despite any trickery."
He shrugged his shoulders as if the problem were a tangible thing and
he wished to thrust it aside. "Anyway, the war is almost over and the
Antarians are losing. I don't think it'll make any difference whether
we find a solution or not. The war will probably be over before--"
He hesitated when he noticed Donovan's expression. "What's the matter?"
he inquired. "You look sick."
"Nothing."
Phillips nodded his head. "I get it. The same old stuff. Your
conscience is bothering you again." He leaned back in the chair, placed
his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. "You're foolish
to let it bother you. You know what happened to me yesterday? On the
way home, I had a flat tire. It was raining, muddy as all hell and I
messed up my last clean uniform. The tire was ruined--now I haven't got
a spare and can't buy one because of this damned war. My wife's sister,
Louise, is staying with us now. Her husband was killed on Antares and
she cries all night, every night. Now and then, she gets Martha crying.
Last night I couldn't stand it so I went out and had a few drinks. I
got charged with drunken driving, and when I got home this morning, I
really caught it! Martha's talking about getting a divorce. She says
I--"
Donovan groaned. "Phil. I'm interested in your problems. Someday we'll
sit down together and cry on each other's shoulder, but--"
Phillips raised a hand. "I was trying to illustrate how we all have a
hundred big and little troubles every day. The fact that the system
prevented thousands of men from being tortured does not matter to
you. Your stupid conscience hurts because you're responsible for
driving men insane. But you don't understand. It's not a simple case
of schizophrenia that our men get. It's a schizophrenic _dream_. The
system blocks all sensory contacts and speeds up the mind. You know
how a person dreams only a few seconds before he wakes up and that
dream seems days or weeks long? Can you imagine how much a dream can be
speeded up and clarified by drugs, how much a dream can be controlled
by hypnotic suggestion, how much experience can be--"
* * * * *
Murphy saw that they were on a street, the tall, angular shadows of
strange buildings all around them. He heard a shuffling noise and
turned to see Antarians crawling toward them.
_They were prisoners!_ For some reason, the Antarians had kept them
from realizing it and--
A brief, intense pain ripped through his skull. He closed his eyes for
a few seconds, then opened them....
The Antarians were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. There at
the end of the street--_their troops!_
He looked up at the sky. There were no blinking pinpoints of light
among the stars. The war was over! They had won!
The years that followed were good ones for Murphy. Although he had
never written a line before, he wrote a novel about his war experiences
and it became a best-seller. He went to Hollywood when a motion picture
producer purchased the story and, unbelievably, became an actor. He
had never considered himself a handsome man but millions of viewers
considered him handsome and beautiful women were attracted to him.
He married and became the father of two children. Life seemed like a
dream ... a perfect dream in which, day after day, year after year,
everything was perfect....