They won of course. One ship against a world, but they won easily.
The Regents would be pleased. Another planet for colonization—even a few specimens for the labs. Earthmen, who had incredibly lived through the attack.
Forward, in a part of the great ship where the complex control panels whirred and clicked, two of the Arcturians conferred together.
"How are the Earth specimens, Doctor?" the older one asked, his voice indifferent. He touched his splendid purple pants, straightening the already precise creases.
"They stare at the walls, Captain. They do not eat what we give them. They seem to look through the guards, say very little and use their bodies feebly. I do not think that all of them will live through the trip."
"They are weak. It only shows the laboratories are wrong. Our people are not related to them—despite the similarity in appearance. No, we are cast in a stronger mold than that." He drummed his desk with impatient fingers. "Well—we can't let them die. Force-feed them if necessary. Our scientists demand specimens; we are lucky that some of them lived through the attack. I don't see now it was possible—it was such a splendid attack."
"They have no real sickness, not even a radiation burn in the lot of them," the doctor said. "But they are weak and morose."
"Keep them alive and well, Doctor."
The doctor searched the captain's metallic face. "Captain, do you ever have dreams?"
"Eh—dreams?" It took the captain a moment to comprehend. "Dreams are forbidden by the Regents! They show instability."
"The men. Sir… some of the crew have been complaining."
"Complaining! Complaining's expressly forbidden in the rules. You know that, Doctor. Why haven't I been informed?"
"It was such a little thing, something psychological, I think. I've had a few in who've had nightmares." The doctor made a deprecatory gesture. "Space fear, I think. Most of the men complaining were first trippers."
"Make a list of the names and submit it to me. We have to eliminate such types, as you should know."
"Yes, Sir." The doctor got up to leave.
"Uh—Doctor—did they tell you what the dreams were about?"
"Blood, Sir." The doctor shook his head and clenched his antiseptic, scoured hands. "Skulls and bats and old women around a bubbling pot; bony shadows that trapped them when they ran."
"Rot."
"Yes, Sir."
The doctor walked down the gleaming passageway, seeing the men like well oiled machines; the talented men, each in his own technical job, each uniform precisely the same, the teeth, clean and white, each face and body cut from the same matrix, even the boots alike, dark shiny mirrors. Unlined faces—young, unlike the skeleton faces in the hold.
The first guard brought hand to forehead in a snappy salute. "Yes, Sir?"
"Prisoner inspection."
The door whined open and the doctor started through.
"Sir!" The urgency in the guard's voice detained him.
"Yes?" He remembered the man as one of the ones who had been at sick call that morning.
"May I be relieved? I feel ill. I've been sick since—since last sleep period."
The doctor looked impassively at the too-white eyes. Better not let it start, he thought.
"Stand your duty. I can't have you relieved. You know the rules."
"But, Sir!"
"Report to sickbay after you are relieved. For psychoanalysis—and I mean after you are regularly relieved!" The doctor again looked into the frightened eyes and considered making an exception this one time. No, there'll be more then, he thought.
The automatic salute reassured him. "Yes, Sir."
"Your name?" He wrote it in his prescription book and walked on.
First cell, second cell, the fifteenth; all the same. The listless faces, the hungry deadmen's eyes watching him. Eyes cut from coffins. Twenty-two cells—two to a cell, women segregated as they should be. Forty-four prisoners in all.
Eighty-eight eyes watching him. He shivered inwardly.
How many were there? he thought. Forty-four individuals left out of a billion or two?
He read the guards' notebooks. "Man in cell fourteen, Name: Alexander Green. Was observed drawing strange patterns on the deck with chalk. Chalk taken away from Kim. No resistance."
"Woman in cell three, Name: Elizabeth Gout. Talking to herself and to the walls. Was quieted by her cellmate, Meg Newcomb, on orders of Corporal of the Guard."
The shadows were thick in the prisoners' hold; the lights dim, the only sounds were the thrum of the rhythmic atomic engines and the click of the guards' heels as each one came to attention and presented his book for inspection.
The Corporal of the Guard walked silently behind him and took the orders down at the end of the cell block.
"Force-feed them. Brine the vitamin lights down here. Give them injections." The doctor paused and stared coldly. "The guard at cell four was inept in his salute. Place him on report."
"Yes, Sir."
"Anything else to report, Corporal?"
The man hesitated; then said, "Some of the guards are jumpy."
"And the prisoners?" the doctor asked caustically.
The corporal was flustered. "They seem stronger. Sir."
"They're getting acclimated to the conditions of the trip."
"They still haven't eaten anything."
"I said—in case you misunderstood me, Corporal—that they are getting acclimated to the trip. You may consider yourself on report too." The doctor enunciated each word savagely.
The corporal clicked his heels and the doctor went quickly back up the line of cells. He averted his head, not looking into the cells. An electronic device scanned him and opened the door as it read his identity.
He went through the hatch, felt it close quickly behind him, and disregarded the guard who had wanted to be relieved. He went on to his own office in the small, efficient sickbay. He slumped over his desk exhausted.
There was a sound of running feet outside. Then the door to his office was almost torn from its hinges as a soundless blast of energy struck it. The doctor leaped to his feet and flung open the metal door.
The sick guard stood there, weaving drunkenly on boneless legs. "Stand back, Doctor. I see one over by the wall. See it over there?" the man screamed. "It's coming for me. Can't get away—can't." He raised the pistol as the doctor watched.
"Stop—You damned fool!"
The man lay on the floor, gun pointed at his own shapeless body, his torso a mass of torn, charred tissue. His eyes were still open and they stared sightlessly at the small porthole, beyond which the luminous stars reeled.
The sight was not revolting to the doctor, but the implications were. He had seen too many dead, both of his own race and others, to care particularly about one more. It was what this death might mean to him personally that worried him—what the Regents might say.
He called the guard on watch and gave orders automatically until the task of examining and disposing was done. There were necessary papers to fill out and sign, the personal effects to be inventoried—and the report to the captain. And all the time he was engaged in the routine, his mind flashed the question: I wonder what it will mean to me when we get back? The Regents will want to examine me. They'll say it was my fault. He felt the panic begin to rise, but his body made the necessary responses and his face was imperturbable.
He went to the captain's office.
"Why did he do it, Doctor?" The captain was more perplexed than angry.
The doctor stonily replied, "We're in space."
"We have a hundred million men in space!" the captain exclaimed. "Few of them ever commit suicide. It's been bred out of the race. It just doesn't happen." He pounded his hand against his plastic desk, the almost muted sound incongruous with the angry gesture. "I want to know why. It's against the rules—you know that."
The doctor did not flinch. "He was a first tripper. First time away from home. A guard? No—a farmboy in uniform, that's what he was." The doctor found himself almost homicidally angry at the dead guard. What right does he have to cause me all this trouble?
The captain watched him strangely. "That's what most of our men are—men from farms. I'm from a farm myself." The captain eyed him dubiously while the insidious sounds of the machines rocked and jolted around them. "You're tired, Doctor. You need some rest."
The doctor ignored the remark. "Maybe it's the prisoners. All the guards who have complained have been standing prisoner watches."
"I've seen the prisoners." The barking voice was contemptuous.
Have you seen them? Have you seen the way they look at you? the doctor thought, but aloud he said, through regulated teeth: "Yes, Sir."
"Find out what's wrong."
"Yes, Sir. I'll do my best." Spit and polish and everything according to the rules.
"Report to me on everything."
"Of course, Captain."
"Do an autopsy—look at his brain."
"I did, Sir." He fought to keep his voice rational. "We kept his head. We always do in a case like this."
"Do it again." The captain stared penetratingly at him. "Find out what was wrong with his head, so that we can eliminate it from the race. Something was wrong with his head—that was it. Find out!"
"Yes, Sir!" Feet together, salute, turn—keep your back straight. Be a soldier, be a spaceman, be an Arcturian, be strong—be a conqueror.
The doctor went back to his own office and sat down shakily at his plastic desk. Then he fought his way upright again and looked in the room's small mirror.
Still the same. I'm still the same—but so tired—why am I so tired?
He touched his face. "Same face." But it was more deeply marked and harsh now.
His hair "like always." Is that a streak of gray?
His eyes: "They see." What do they see? What? What?
And then, for the first time, his tightly held mind barrier let down and he admitted the dreams and the long sleepless periods to himself. Remembered them for what they were. Knew he could no longer fool himself.
Insects crawling on him; a great gray rat with canine teeth at his throat, while bats eyed him evilly—and curious women who plied their trade around a bubbling pot, their thin-edged voices plotting more horrors. And always the shadows, shadows that leaped and tore at his unprotected body, shadows that had a definite form—shadows which faded disconcertingly just as he seemed to be able to make out the faces that were sickeningly familiar.
The nightmares became real to him.
Quite suddenly, the nightmares came close to him as he sat at the plastic desk and together they planned the ghastly joke, while they laughed together. He nicked, with surgical care, the arteries in his wrists and groins and smiled as he bubbled away on the metal desk.
"Goodby, Doctor," said a voice.
Goodby, Voice. And the sound echoed while the uniform became discolored, the boots greasy with death, the face too white—smiling and staring.
And the others—the many others—soon.
For three sleep periods the machines sighed as the carnage went on. The captain put out directives and took the guns away. After that they found other ways. Crewmen jumped out the escape hatches and into the atomic convertors—or smashed their heads against the steel bulkheads.
For three sleep periods.
Each time he heard the clicking of the guard's heels, the captain almost screamed. In his imagination, he was seeing the Arcturian Regents. They were pointing accusing fingers at him, while the extermination chambers waited.
"Your ship," they said.
"My ship," he admitted.
"The doctor, half of your crew dead. How—why did they die?"
"Suicide." He trembled under the blanket.
"It's against the rules, Captain," the voices said calmly, convicting him.
"I told them."
"But you are the captain. The captain is responsible. The rule says that."
"Yes—the doctor said it was the prisoners."
The Regents laughed. "For the good of the race, we have no choice but…"
The captain pulled the covers tighter over his aching head and lay stiffly on his cot. He drowned the voices in a sea of his own making, smiling as he saw each hand disappear under the stormy waves. For a while he lay that way, while the juggernaut shadows slippered carefully about the room, hovering and watchful.
And then, once again, he could hear the whine of the great engines. He sat up.
The old man—the one listed on the rolls as Adam Manning, one of the specimen Earthmen—sat on one of the stiff chairs by the captain's desk.
"Hello," the old man said.
"Guards!" screamed the captain.
But no one answered. Only the machines roared on, replying softly in their unhearing way.
"Guards!" the captain screamed again as he watched the old man's face.
"They can't hear you," the old man said.
The captain knew instinctively that it was true. "You did it!" He strained to leap from his cot at the old man. He could not move. His hands clenched as he fought against invisible bonds.
He began to cry. But the Regents' voices came, stopping it. "Crying's against the rules," they said stiffly, without pity.
The old man smiled at him from the chair. The shadows murmured softly, conferring in myriad groups, dirtying the aseptic bulkheads. They drew closer to the captain and he could only half-stifle a scream.
"What are you?" he managed.
"Something you've trained out of your people. You wouldn't understand even if we told you, because you don't believe that there ever was anything like us." The old man smiled. "We're your new Regents." The shadows smiled hideously, agreeing, and revealing their long, canine teeth.
"It was a wonderful attack, Captain," the old man said softly. The shadows nodded as they formed and faded. "Nothing human could have lived through it—nothing human did. Some of us were deep underground where they'd buried us long ago—the stakes through our hearts—they knew how to deal with us. But your fire burned the stakes away."
He waved a scaly hand at the shadows. They came down upon the Captain relentlessly.
The captain began to scream.
Then, there was only the automatic sound of the machines.
The ship roared on through space.