I came gradually out of a scarlet fog into a jet-black well. My head,
which was aching abominably, was pillowed on something soft and warm
and slightly moving. I heard mutters of guttural voices, the slap of
waves on metal. I licked my dry lips and tasted salt. Blood? No, ocean
salt. We were at sea. I was a little chilly. I shivered, tried to see
something, and made out the dim figure of a person above me. The sky
was moonless and inky. I was lying with my head in this person's lap. I
breathed deep and said quietly, "Nessa?"
"Yes, Ray."
I didn't have words. I reached up and touched her face with my fingers,
and she bent and we kissed. "You okay?" I said then.
"I'm okay," said Nessa. That was all. For now, that was enough.
"Anybody near us?" I looked up at her tense face.
"I am," said Skagarach. He moved into my vision, and I sat up, head
pounding, and stared at him until I could make out his foxy features.
"I'm sorry," he said under his breath. "Cuff is on the primitive side.
So are we all ... but there ought to be limits. There was no sense in
hitting you."
"I don't get it," I said. "Why is that big murder-machine the first
leader, and not you, Skagarach?"
"Ah," he said. "Ah, yes. Some of us wonder about that too." For all his
obvious intelligence, he was a sucker for a one-two compliment to the
jaw.
"That was an awful belt he gave me," I said. Something had just
occurred to me. "It kind of addled my brains. Lord, I'd like to hit him
back for that!"
"Ray?" said Nessa uncertainly. She knew me for a strictly
non-aggressive joe since I'd quit football.
"I feel--I feel furious," I said, and I hissed it low and aimed it at
Skagarach. "I never had so much yearning to pulverize someone."
Skagarach leaned over and peered into my eyes. "Don't sit on it," he
said. "Let it fume, let it rage. It may well be the primal anger. Let
it have its way. Only--I don't suggest you hit Cuff."
"Not with my fists, anyway," I agreed. "Maybe with a gun butt."
"Let the rage bubble," he said, laughing almost without sound. "You'll
do, Ray Rollins; I believe you'll do." He sat down, staring ahead.
I found Nessa's hand and squeezed it reassuringly. She must have been
baffled by the things I'd said. Then I took up with Skagarach where
I'd left off on the beach. "All this hand-to-hand combat rot," I said.
"Where will that get you--us? Dealing with rockets and space stations,
and doing it with submachine guns, after all. It's race suicide."
"You're thinking on the wrong tack. We are the primeval beings,
yes; and we're facing, and prepared to use, the farthest reaches of
scientific achievement. But look, Ray: if an intelligent caveman came
among a group of moderns, and saw a gun lying there, and was taught how
to use it, which would be the bright thing to do--snatch it and use it
on them, or wade in with his fists?
"We intend to blot out Homo sapiens and we shall do it. But not with
stone clubs, not with revolvers. No, we'll lay hands tonight on man's
greatest weapon, the only weapon which can be turned against the whole
globe: the space station. You object to our primitive methods. You're
not thinking deeply enough. The pure science of the station, the
rockets and the VTO tugs buffaloes you. You can't see a horde of men
with handguns and grenades capturing those awesome devices."
"That's right, I can't."
"Why not? There is no more problem here than there is attacking a bank
vault, or an outpost of soldiers. So far as the government knows, there
is no secret army within its borders! They haven't the faintest notion
that _we_ exist, an army of manlike non-men.
"It's the broad conception that stumps you, Ray. So picture each
operation by itself. The storming of the rocket ports--by quite
adequate troops of ours, well-armed and savage. Then the towing of the
rockets, by VTO tugs, to Pompey Island--this done by technicians and
scientists who are not men, but Neanderthals. Then the locking of the
space station to the rockets, and the takeoff for outer space. Sixty of
us in these boats, plus twenty waiting with other musters at the rocket
stations will man that moon. From attack on Pompey to blast-off from
Terra should take from one to three hours."
"You are insane," said Nessa in a shocked voice.
"No," said Skagarach seriously, "we are sane. But we have fought for
the existence of our race through too many thousands of years, in too
many lands and too many ages, to have mercy now that our hour is at
hand."
* * * * *
I felt as though I'd been dropped into icy water. Skagarach wasn't
kidding. And Bill Cuff was worse than he.
And I had lied to them. I could picture in brain-shattering detail what
they would do to Nessa when they discovered that; for my lie could blow
up their whole scheme. They'd torture her, not me, for they needed me.
I looked at the thought and I couldn't stand it.
I did the most cowardly thing a man could do: I stood up and betrayed
my country, my world, and my entire breed. But I did it because I knew
exactly how much I could take before I cracked--and while I might
withstand their worst for a little while, they would inevitably do
things to Nessa which I could not take.
"Skagarach," I said, "I won't try to fool you. I don't have any dawn
memory. As far as I know I never ranged the fens or slew the upstart
Man in the ages past." I was talking like him. He was an overwhelming
personality. "But I know this: I feel a terrible, inchoate anger
against almost everything. I think it must be what you call the primal
rage. And I also feel a hell of a strong kinship with you, if not with
Bill Cuff. I lied to you. My brother and the space station aren't on
Pompey. They're on Odo Island."
"Well," he said easily, "well, I thought you might have been trying
to outwit us. I thought we might have to flay your woman an inch at a
time to make you talk. But by God, that knock on the cranium fixed you!
Congratulations--and welcome to the Old Companions." He chuckled. "If
you wonder why we trusted your first word to such an extent, I'll say
that we knew the moon was on one of these islands. We knew that if it
wasn't Pompey, it wouldn't be too damned far." He started forward in
the boat. "I'll change our course," he said.
And it was at that moment that I realized something. I had turned
traitor because I couldn't let my wife be maltreated. I had counted on
a feeble plot, a one-in-a-thousand chance that I would be able to beat
the Old Companions; and I'd known quite well that I was only excusing
myself for my craven weakness. Only now did I remember that the real
answer, the only thing a _man_ could have honorably done, was to kill
Nessa and myself immediately--to grip her and leap into the sea, and
dive deep and deeper until we both drowned. Then my wife would have
been safe from them, and I would be dead with a clean conscience.
But it was much too late to think of that now.
I flung myself down beside her, put my arms around her waist, and began
softly and vividly cursing myself for the prize fool and the biggest
yellow-livered skunk of all time.