"You got to hand it to Temple's kid brother."
"Yeah. Cool as ice cubes."
"Are you guys kidding? He doesn't know what's in store for him, that's
all."
"Do _you_?"
"Now that you mention it, no. Isn't a man here who can say for sure
what kind of environmental challenges he'll have to respond to.
Hypno-surgery sees to it the guys who went through the thing won't talk
about it. As if that isn't security enough, the subject's got to be a
brand new arrival!"
"Shh! Here he comes."
The brothers Temple entered Earth City's one tavern quietly, but on
their arrival all the speculative talk subsided. The long bar, built to
accommodate half a hundred pairs of elbows comfortably, gleamed with
a luster unfamiliar to Temple. It might have been marble, but marble
translucent rather than opaque, giving a beautiful three-dimensional
effect to the surface patterns.
"What will it be?" Jason demanded.
"Whatever you're drinking is fine."
Jason ordered two scotches, neat, and the brothers drank. When Jason
got a refill he started talking. "Does T.A.T. mean anything to you,
Kit?"
"Tat? Umm--no. Wait a minute! T.A.T. Isn't that some kind of protective
psychological test?"
"That's it. You're shown a couple of dozen pictures, more or less
ambiguous, never cut and dry. Each one comes from a different stratum
of the social environment, and you're told to create a dramatic
situation, a story, for each picture. From your stories, for which you
draw on your whole background as a human being, the psychometrician
should be able to build a picture of your personality and maybe find
out what, if anything, is bothering you."
"What's that to do with this response to environmental challenge thing?"
"Well," said Jason, drinking a third scotch, "the Super Boys have
evolved T.A.T. to its ultimate. T.A.T.--that stands for Thematic
Apperception Test. But in E.C.R.--environmental challenge and response,
you don't see a picture and create a dramatic story around it. Instead,
you get thrust into the picture, the situation, and you have to work
out the solution--or suffer whatever consequences the particular
environmental challenge has in store for you."
"I think I get you. But it's all make believe, huh?"
"That's the hell of it," Jason told him. "No, it's not. It is and it
isn't. I don't know."
"You make it perfectly clear," Temple smiled. "The red-headed boy
combed his brown hair, wishing it weren't blond."
Jason shrugged. "I'm sorry. For reasons you already know, the E.C.R.
isn't very clear to me--or to anyone. You're not actually in the
situation in a physical sense, but it can affect you physically. You
_feel_ you're there, you actually live everything that happens to you,
getting injured if an injury occurs ... and dying if you get killed.
It's permanent, although you might actually be sleeping at the time. So
whether it's real or not is a question for philosophy. From your point
of view, from the point of view of someone going through it, it's real."
"So I become part of this--uh, game in about an hour."
"Right. You and whoever the Russians offer as your competition. No one
will blame you if you want to back out, Kit; from what you tell me, you
haven't even been adequately trained on Mars."
"If you draw on the entire background of your life for this E.C.R.,
then you don't need training. Shut up and stop worrying. I'm not
backing out of anything."
"I didn't think you would, not if you're still as much like your old
man as you used to be. Kit ... good luck."
* * * * *
The fact that the technicians working around him were Earthmen
permitted Temple to relax a little. Probably, it was planned that way,
for entering the huge white cube of a building and ascending to the
twelfth level on a moving ramp Temple had spotted many figures, not
all of them human. If he had been strapped to the table by unfamiliar
aliens, if the scent of alien flesh--or non-flesh--had been strong in
the room, if the fingers--or appendages--which greased his temples
and clamped an electrode to each one had not felt like human fingers,
if the men talking to him had spoken in voices too harsh or too
sibilant for human vocal chords--if all that had been the case whatever
composure still remained his would have vanished.
"I'm Dr. Olson," said one white-gowned figure. "If any injuries occur
while you lie here, I'm permitted to render first aid."
"The same for limited psychotherapy," said a shorter, heavier man.
"Though a fat lot of good it does when we never know what's bothering
you, and don't have the time to work on it even if we did know."
"In short," said a third man who failed to identify himself, "you may
consider yourself as the driver of one of those midget rocket racers.
Do they still have them on Earth? Good. You are the driver, and we here
in this room are the mechanics waiting in your pit. If anything goes
wrong, you can pull out of the race temporarily and have it repaired.
But in this particular race there is no pulling out: all repairs are
strictly of a first-aid nature and must be done while you continue
whatever you are doing. If you break your finger and find a splint
appearing on it miraculously, don't say you weren't warned."
"Best of luck to you, young man," said the psychotherapist.
"Here we go," said the doctor, finding the large vein on the inside of
Temple's forearm and plunging a needle into it.
Temple's senses whirled instantly, but as his vision clouded he thought
he saw a large, complex device swing down from the ceiling and bathe
his head in warming radiation. He blinked, squinted, could see nothing
but a swirling, cloudy opacity.
* * * * *
Approximately two seconds later, Sophia Androvna Petrovitch watched as
the white-gowned comrade tied a rubber strap around her arm, waited for
the vein to swell with blood, then forced a needle in through its thick
outer layer. Was that a nozzle overhead? No, rather a lens, for from
it came amber warmth ... which soon faded, with everything else, into
thick, churning fog....
Temple was abruptly aware of running, plunging headlong and blindly
through the fiercest storm he had ever seen. Gusts of wind whipped
at him furiously. Rain cascaded down in drenching torrents. Foliage,
brambles, branches struck against his face; mud sucked at his feet. Big
animal shapes lumbered by in the green gloom, as frightened by the
storm as was Temple.
His head darted this way and that, his eyes could see the gnarled
tree trunks, the dense greenery, the lianas, creepers and vines of
a tropical rain forest--but dimly. Green murk swirled in like thick
smoke with every gust of wind, with the rain obscuring vision almost
completely.
Temple ran until his lungs burned and he thought he must exhale fire.
His leaden feet fought the mud with growing difficulty for every stride
he took. He ran wildly and in no set direction, convinced only that he
must find shelter or perish. Twice he crashed bodily into trees, twice
stumbled to his knees only to pull himself upright again, sucking air
painfully into his lungs and cutting out in a fresh direction.
He ran until his legs balked. He fell, collapsing first at the knees,
then the waist, then flopping face down in the mud. Something prodded
his back as he fell and reaching behind him weakly Temple was aware for
the first time that a bow and a quiver of arrows hung suspended from
his shoulders by a strong leather thong. He wore nothing but a loin
cloth of some nameless animal skin and he wondered idly if he had slain
the animal with the weapon he carried. Yet when he tried to recollect
he found he could not. He remembered nothing but his frantic flight
through the rain forest, as if all his life he had run in a futile
attempt to leave the rain behind him.
Now as he lay there, the mud sucking at his legs, his chest, his
armpits, he could not even remember his name. Did he have one? Did he
have a life before the rain forest? Then why did he forget?
A sense not fully developed in man and called intuition by those who
fail to understand it made him prop his head up on his hands and squint
through the downpour. There was something off there in the foliage ...
someone....
A woman.
Temple's breath caught in his throat sharply. The woman stood half a
dozen paces off, observing him coolly with hands on flanks. She stood
tall and straight despite the storm and from trim ankles to long, lithe
legs to flaring loin-clothed hips, to supple waist and tawny skin of
fine bare breasts and shoulders, to proud, haughty face and long dark
hair loose in the storm and glistening with rain, she was magnificent.
Her long, bronzed body gleamed with wetness and Temple realized she was
tall as he, a wild beautiful goddess of the jungle. She was part of
the storm and he accepted her--but strangely, with the same fear the
storm evoked. She would make a lover the whole world might relish (what
world, Temple thought in confusion?) but she would make a terrible foe.
And foe she was....
"I want your bow and arrows," she told him.
Temple wanted to suggest they share the weapon, but somehow he knew in
this world which was like a dream and could tell him things the way
a dream would and yet was vividly real, that the woman would share
nothing with anybody.
"They are mine," Temple said, climbing to his knees. He remembered the
animal-shapes lumbering by in the storm and he knew that he and the
animals would both stalk prey when the storm subsided and he would need
the bow and arrows.
The woman moved toward him with a liquid motion beautiful to behold,
and for the space of a heartbeat Temple watched her come. "I will take
them," she said.
Temple wasn't sure if she could or not, and although she was a woman he
feared her strangely. Again, it was as if something in this dream-world
real-world could tell him more than he should know.
Making up his mind, Temple sprang to his feet, whirled about and ran.
He was plunging through the wild storm once more, blinded by the
occasional flashes of jagged green lightning, deafened by the peals of
thunder which followed. And he was being pursued.
Minutes, hours, more than hours--for an eternity Temple ran. A
reservoir of strength he never knew he possessed provided the energy
for each painful step and running through the storm seemed the most
natural thing in the world to him. But there came a time when his
strength failed, not slowly, but with shocking suddenness. Temple fell,
crawled a ways, was still.
It took him minutes to realize the storm no longer buffeted him, more
minutes to learn he had managed to crawl into a cave. He had no time to
congratulate himself on his good fortune, for something stirred outside.
"I am coming in," the woman called to him from the green murk.
Temple strung an arrow to his bow, pulled the string back and faced the
cave's entrance squatting on his heels. "Then your first step shall be
your last. I'll shoot to kill." And he meant it.
Silence from outside. Deafening.
Temple felt sweat streaming under his armpits; his hands were clammy,
his hands trembled.
"You haven't seen the last of me," the woman promised. After that,
Temple knew she was gone. He slept as one dead.
When Temple awoke, bright sunlight filtered in through the foliage
outside his cave. Although the ground was a muddy ruin, the storm had
stopped. Edging to the mouth of the cave, Temple spread the foliage
with his hands, peered cautiously outside. Satisfied, he took his bow
and arrows and left the cave, pangs of hunger knotting his stomach
painfully.
The cave had been weathered in the side of a short, steep abutment a
dozen paces from a gushing, swollen stream. Temple followed the course
of the stream as it twisted through the jungle, ranging half a mile
from his cave until the water course widened to form a water-hole. All
morning Temple waited there, crouching in the grass, until one by one,
the forest animals came to drink. He selected a small hare-like thing,
notched an arrow to his bow, let it fly.
The animal jumped, collapsed, began to slink away into the undergrowth,
dragging the arrow from its hindquarters. Temple darted after it,
caught it in his hands and bashed its life out against the bole of a
tree. Returning to his cave he found two flinty stones, shredded a
fallen branch and nursed the shards dry in the strong sunlight. Soon he
made a fire and ate.
* * * * *
In the days which followed, Temple returned to the water-hole and
bagged a new catch every time he ventured forth. Things went so well
that he began to range further and further from his cave exploring.
Once however, he returned early to the water-hole and found footprints
in the soft mud of its banks.
The woman.
That she had been observing him while he had hunted had never occurred
to Temple, but now that the proof lay clearly before his eyes, the
old feeling of uncertainty came back. And the next day, when he crept
stealthily to the water-hole and saw the woman squatting there in the
brush, waiting for him, he fled back to his cave.
The thought hit him suddenly. If she were stalking him, why must he
flee as from his own shadow? There would be no security for either of
them until either one or the other were gone--and gone meant dead. Then
Temple would do his own stalking.
For several nights Temple hardly slept. He could have found the
water-hole blindfolded merely by following the stream. Each night he
would reach the hole and work, digging with a sharp stone, until he
had fashioned a pit fully ten feet deep and six feet across. This he
covered with branches, twigs, leaves and finally dirt.
When he returned in the morning he was satisfied with his work. Unless
the woman made a careful study of the area, she would never see the
pit. All that day Temple waited with his back to the water-hole, facing
the camouflaged pit, the trap he had set, but the woman failed to
appear. When she also did not come on the second day, he began to think
his plan would not work.
The third day, Temple arrived with the sun, sat as before in the tall
grass between the pit and the water-hole and waited. Several paces
beyond his hidden trap he could see the tall trees of the jungle with
vines and creepers hanging from their branches. At his back, a man's
length behind him was the water-hole, its deepest waters no more than
waist-high.
Temple waited until the sun stood high in the sky, then was fascinated
as a small antelope minced down to the water-hole for a drink. _You'll
make a fine breakfast tomorrow, he thought, smiling._
Something, that strange sixth sense again, made Temple turn around and
stand up. He had time for a brief look, a hoarse cry.
The woman had been the cleverer. She had set the final trap. She stood
high up on a branch of one of the trees beyond the hidden pit and
for an instant Temple saw her fine figure clearly, naked but for the
loincloth. Then the soft curves became spring-steel.
The woman arched her body there on the high branch, grasping a stout
vine and rocking back with it. Temple raised his bow, set an arrow to
let it fly. But by then, the woman was in motion.
Long and lithe and graceful, she swung down on her vine, gathering
momentum as she came. Her feet almost brushed the lip of Temple's pit
at the lowest arc of her flight, but she clung to the vine and it began
to swing up again like a pendulum--toward Temple.
At the last moment he hunched his shoulder and tried to raise his arms
for protection. The woman was quicker. She gathered her legs up under
her, still clutching the vine with her slim, strong hands. The vine's
arc carried her up at him; her knees were at a level with his head and
she brought them up savagely, close together striking Temple brutally
at the base of his jaw. Temple screamed as his head was jerked back
with terrible force.
The bow flew from his fingers and he fell into the water-hole, flat on
his back.
Sophia let the vine carry her out over the water, then dropped from it.
Waist deep, she waded to where the man lay, unconscious on his back,
half in, half out of the shallowest part of the water. She reached him,
prodded his chest with her foot. When he did not stir, she rocked her
weight down gracefully on her long leg, forcing his head under water.
With a haughty smile, she watched the bubbles rise....
* * * * *
In the small room where Temple's body lay in repose on a table the
white-smocked doctor looked at the psychotherapist questioningly.
"What's happening?"
"Can't tell, doctor. But--"
Suddenly Temple's still body rocked convulsively, his neck stretched,
his head shot up and back. Blood trickled from his mouth.
The doctor thrust out expert hands, examined Temple's jaw dexterously.
"Broken?" the psychotherapist demanded in a worried voice.
"No. Dislocated. He looks like he's been hit by a sledge hammer,
wherever he is now, whatever's happening. This E.C.R. is the damndest
thing."
Temple's still form shuddered convulsively. He began to gasp and cough,
obviously fighting for breath. An ugly blue swelling had by now lumped
the base of his jaw.
"What's happening?" demanded the psychotherapist.
"I can't be sure," said the doctor, shaking his head. "He seems to have
difficulty in breathing ... it's as if he were--drowning."
"Bad. Anything we can do?"
"No. We wait until this particular sequence ends." The doctor
examined Temple again. "If it doesn't end soon, this man will die of
asphyxiation."
"Call it off," the psychotherapist pleaded. "If he dies now Earth will
be represented by Russia. Call it off!"
Someone entered the room. "_I_ have the authority," he said, selecting
a hypodermic from the doctor's rack and piercing the skin of Temple's
forearm with it. "This first test has gone far enough. The Russian
entry is clearly the winner, but Temple must live if he is to compete
in another."
The racking convulsions which shook Temple's body subsided. He ceased
his choking, began to breathe regularly. With grim swiftness, the
doctor went to work on Temple's dislocated jaw while the man who had
stopped the contest rendered artificial respiration.
The man was Alaric Arkalion.
* * * * *
The Comrade Doctor was exultant. "Jupiter training, comrade, has given
us a victory."
"How can you be sure?"
"Our entrant is unharmed, the contest has been called. Wait ... she is
coming to."
Sophia stretched, rubbed her bruised knees, sat up.
"What happened, Comrade?" the doctor demanded.
"My knees ache," said Sophia, rubbing them some more. "I--I killed
him, I think. Strange, I never dreamed it would be that real."
"In a sense, it _was_ real. If you killed the American, he will stay
dead."
"Nothing mattered but that world we were in, a fantastic place. Now I
remember everything, all the things I couldn't remember then."
"But your--ah, dream--what happened?"
Sophia rubbed her bruised knees a third time, ruefully. "I knocked him
unconscious with these. I forced his head under water and drowned him.
But--before I could be sure I finished the job--I came back.... Funny
that I should want to kill him without compunction, without reason."
Sophia frowned, sat up. "I don't think I want anymore of this."
The doctor surveyed her coldly. "This is your task on the Stalintrek.
This you will do."
"I killed him without a thought."
"Enough. You will rest and get ready for the second contest."
"But if he's dead--"
"Apparently he's not, or we would have been informed, Comrade
Petrovitch."
"That is true," agreed the second man, who had remained silent until
now. "Prepare for another test, Comrade."
Sophia was on the point of arguing again. After all it wasn't fair. If
in the dream-worlds which were not dream worlds she was motivated by
but one factor and that to destroy the American and if she faced him
with the strength of her Jupiter training it would hardly be a contest.
And now that she could think of the American without the all-consuming
hatred the dream world had fostered in her, she realized he had been a
pleasant-looking young man, quite personable, in fact. _I could like
him_, Sophia thought and hoped fervently she had not drowned him.
Still, if she had volunteered for the Stalintrek and this was the job
they assigned her....
"I need no rest," she told the doctor, hardly trusting herself, for she
realized she might change her mind. "I am ready any time you are."