"Nonsense."
"I can't stand things that scuttle and slither and crawl," said Ives.
His voice was suddenly womanish. "Don't let anything like that in here!"
From the quarters aft came a faint scratching, a squeak. Ives turned
pale. His wattles quivered.
"Snap out of it, Ives," said Paresi coldly. "There isn't so much as a
microbe on this ship that I haven't inventoried. Don't sit there like
little Miss Muffet."
"I know what I saw," said Ives. He rose suddenly, turned to the black
wall, and bellowed, "Damn you, send something I can fight!"
Two mice emerged from under the couch. One of them ran over Ives' foot.
They disappeared aft, squeaking. Ives leapt straight up and came down
standing on the couch. Anderson stepped back against the inboard
bulkhead and stood rigid. Paresi walked with great purpose to the
medical chest, took out a small black case and opened it.
Ives cowered down to his knees and began to blubber openly, without
attempting to hide it, without any articulate speech. Paresi approached
him, half-concealing a small metal tube in his hand.
A slight movement on the deck caught Anderson's eye. He was unable to
control a shrill intake of breath as an enormous spider, hairy and
swift, darted across to the couch and sprang. It landed next to Ives'
knee, sprang again. Paresi swung at it and missed, his hand catching
Ives heavily just under the armpit. The spider hit the deck, skidded,
righted itself and, abruptly, was gone. Ives caved in around the impact
point of Paresi's hand and curled up silently on the couch. Anderson ran
to him.
"He'll be all right now," said Paresi. "Forget it."
"Don't tell me he fainted! Not Ives!"
"Of course not." Paresi held up the little cylinder.
"Anesthox! Why did you use that on him?"
Paresi said irritably, "For the reason one usually uses anesthox. To
knock a patient out for a couple of hours without hurting him."
"Suppose you hadn't?"
"How much more of that scuttle-and-slither treatment do you think he
could have taken?"
Anderson looked at the unconscious communications man. "Surely more than
that." He looked up suddenly. "Where the hell _did_ that vermin come
from?"
"Ah. Now you have it. He dislikes mice and spiders. But there was
something special about these. They couldn't be here, and they were. He
felt that it was a deliberate and personal attack. He couldn't have
handled much more of it."
"Where did they come from?" demanded the Captain again.
"_I_ don't know!" snapped Paresi. "Sorry, skipper ... I'm a little
unnerved. I'm not used to seeing a patient's hallucinations. Not that
clearly, at any rate."
"They were Ives' hallucinations?"
"Can you recall what was said just before they appeared?"
"Uh ... something scuttled. A mouse."
"It wasn't a mouse until someone said it was." The doctor turned and
looked searchingly at Hoskins, who still sat quietly over his chess.
"By God, it was Hoskins. Hoskins--what made you say that?"
The engineer did not move nor answer. Paresi shook his head hopelessly.
"Another retreat. It's no use, Captain."
Anderson took a single step toward Hoskins, then obviously changed his
mind. He shrugged and said, "All right. Something scuttled and Hoskins
defined it. Let's accept that without reasoning it out. So who called up
the spider?"
"You did."
"_I_ did?"
In a startling imitation of the Captain's voice, Paresi quoted, "Don't
sit there like Miss Muffet!"
"I'll be damned," said Anderson. "Maybe we'd all be better off saying
nothing."
Paresi said bitterly, "You think it makes any difference if we _say_
what we think?"
"Perhaps...."
"Nup," said Paresi positively. "Look at the way this thing works. First
it traps us, and then it shows us a growing darkness. Very basic. Then
it starts picking on us, one by one. Johnny gets machines that don't
work, when with his whole soul he worships machines that do. Ives gets a
large charge of claustrophobia from the black stuff over there and goes
into a flat spin."
"He came out of it."
"Johnny woke up too. In another subjective time-track. Quite harmless
to--to Them. So they left him alone. But they lowered the boom on Ives
when he showed any resilience. It's breaking point they're after,
Captain. Nothing less."
"Hoskins?"
"I guess so," said Paresi tiredly. "Like Johnny he escaped from a
problem he couldn't handle to one he could. Only instead of regressing
he's turned to chess. I hope Johnny doesn't bounce back for awhile, yet.
He's too--Captain! He's gone!"
They turned and stared at Johnny's bunk. Or--where the bunk had been
before the black wall had swelled inwards and covered it.
V
"_... and there I was, Doctor, in the lobby of the hotel at
noon, stark naked!_"
"_Do you have these dreams often?_"
"_I'm afraid so, Doctor. Am I--all right? I mean_ ..."
"_Let me ask you this question: Do you believe that these
experiences are real?_"
"_Of course not!_"
"_Then, Madam, you are, by definition, sane; for insanity, in
the final analysis, is the inability to distinguish the real
from the unreal._"
Paresi and the Captain ran aft together, and together they stopped four
paces away from the bulging blackness.
"_Johnny!_" The Captain's voice cracked with the agonized effort of his
cry. He stepped to the black wall, pounded it with the heel of his hand.
"He won't hear you," said Paresi bleakly. "Come back, Captain. Come
back."
"Why him? Why Johnny? They've done everything they could to Johnny; you
said so yourself!"
"Come back," Paresi said again, soothing. Then he spoke briskly: "Can't
you see they're not doing anything to him? They're doing it to us!"
The Captain stood rigidly, staring at the featureless intrusion. He
turned presently. "To us," he parroted. Then he stumbled blindly to the
doctor, who put a firm hand on his biceps and walked with him to the
forward acceleration couch.
The Captain sat down heavily with his back to this new invasion. Paresi
stood by him reflectively, then walked silently to Hoskins.
The engineer sat over his chessboard in deep concentration. The far edge
of the board seemed to be indefinite, lost partially in the mysterious
sable curtain which covered the bulkhead.
"Hoskins."
No answer.
Paresi put his hand on Hoskins' shoulder. Hoskins' head came up slowly.
He did not turn it. His gaze was straight ahead into the darkness. But
at least it was off the board.
"Hoskins," said Paresi, "why are you playing chess?"
"Chess is chess," said Hoskins quietly. "Chess may symbolize any
conflict, but it is chess and it will remain chess."
"Who are you playing with?"
No answer.
"Hoskins--we need you. Help us."
Hoskins let his gaze travel slowly downward again until it was on the
board. "The word is not the thing," he said. "The number is not the
thing. The picture, the ideograph, the symbol--these are not the thing.
Conversely ..."
"Yes, Hoskins."
Paresi waited. Hoskins did not move or speak. Paresi put his hand on the
man's shoulder again, but now there was no response. He cursed suddenly,
bent and brought up his hand with a violent smash and sent board and
pieces flying.
When the clatter had died down Hoskins said pleasantly, "The pieces are
not the game. The symbols are not the thing." He sat still, his eyes
fixed on the empty chair where the board had been. He put out a hand and
moved a piece where there was no piece to a square which was no longer
there. Then he sat and waited.
Paresi, breathing heavily, backed off, whirled, and went back to the
Captain.
Anderson looked up at him, and there was the glimmer of humor in his
eyes. "Better sit down and talk about something different, Doctor."
Paresi made an animal sound, soft and deep, far back in his throat,
plumped down next to the Captain, and kneaded his hands together for a
moment. Then he smiled. "Quite right, skipper. I'd better."
They sat quietly for a moment. Then the Captain prompted, "About the
different breaking point...."
"Yes, Captain?"
"Perhaps you can put your finger on the thing that makes different men
break in different ways, for different reasons. I mean, Johnny's case
seemed pretty clear cut, and what you haven't explained about Hoskins,
Hoskins has demonstrated pretty clearly. About Ives, now--we can skip
that for the time he'll be unconscious. But if you can figure out where
you and I might break, why--we'd know what to look for."
"You think that would help?"
"We'd be prepared."
Paresi looked at him sharply. "Let's hypothesize a child who is afraid
of the dark. Ask him and he might say that there's a _something_ in dark
places that will jump out at him. Then assure him, with great authority,
that not only is he right but that it's about to jump any minute, and
what have you done?"
"Damage," nodded the Captain. "But you wouldn't say that to the child.
You'd tell him there was nothing there. You'd _prove_ there wasn't."
"So I would," agreed the doctor. "But in our case I couldn't do anything
of the kind. Johnny broke over machines that really didn't work. Hoskins
broke over phenomena that couldn't be measured nor understood. Ives
broke over things that scuttled and crawled. Subjectively real
phenomena, all of them. Whatever basic terrors hide in you and in me
will come to face us, no matter how improbable they might be. And you
want me to tell you what they are. No, skipper. Better leave them in
your subconscious, where you've buried them."
"I'm not afraid," said the Captain. "Tell me, Paresi! At least I'll
know. I'd rather know. I'd so _damn_ much rather know!"
"You're sure I can tell you?"
"Yes."
"I haven't psychoanalyzed you, you know. Some of these things are very
hard to--"
"You do know, don't you?"
"Damn you, yes!" Paresi wet his lips. "All right, then. I may be doing a
wrong thing here.... You've cuddled up to the idea that I'm a very
astute character who automatically knows about things like this, and
it's been a comfort to you. Well, I've got news for you. I didn't figure
all these things out. I was told."
"Told?"
"Yes, told," said Paresi angrily. "Look, this is supposed to be
restricted information, but the Exploration Service doesn't rely on
individual aptitude tests alone to make up a crew. There's another
factor--call it an inaptitude factor. In its simplest terms, it comes to
this: that a crew can't work together only if each member is the most
efficient at his job. He has to _need_ the others, each one of the
others. And the word _need_ predicates _lack_. In other words, none of
us is a balanced individual. And the imbalances are chosen to match and
blend, so that we will react as a balanced unit. Sure I know Johnny's
bugaboos, and Hoskins', and yours. They were all in my indoctrination
treatments. I know all your case histories, all your psychic
push-buttons."
"And yours?" demanded the Captain.
"Hoskins, for example," said Paresi. "Happily married, no children.
Physically inferior all his life. Repressed desire for pure science
which produced more than a smattering of a great many sciences and made
him a hell of an engineer. High idealistic quotient; self sacrifice.
Look at him playing chess, making of this very real situation a
theoretical abstraction ... like leaving a marriage for deep space.
"Johnny we know about. Brought up with never failing machines. Still
plays with them as if they were toys, and like any imaginative child,
turns to his toys for reassurance. He needs to be a hero, hence the
stars....
"Ives ... always fat. Learned to be easy-going, learned to laugh _with_
when others were laughing _at_, and bottling up pressures every time it
happened. A large appetite. He's here to satisfy it; he's with us so he
can eat up the galaxies...."