“I might as well go over to the Nijinsky and scout it out,” I said to George. I turned to the two women. “Either of you know your cargo manifest?”
“A little of everything,” Marsha responded. “Why not read it yourself?”
I turned and faced her. “Look at my eyes. See?”
She’d been looking at all our eyes for some time, but they must have seemed like a disguise, I suppose.
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“You’re blind!” she gasped. “But thenhow … ?” I shook my head. “Not blind. We just see differently, by sound rather than light waves. Your system is bet-ter for humans, ours better for Choz. The more I use it, the better I like it.”
I turned and was partway up the ramp when Eve
screamed.
“George! Watch out! She’s going to”
I whirled, and saw Nadya pick up something, probably a piece of the smashed sample panel, and rush at George, whose back was turned toward the bioscreen.
George whirled and suddenly I experienced something I’d never experienced before as man or Choz.
Vision blurred, there was a tremendous, high-pitched screech, the sound waves so penetrating that they maoe the whole lounge look like a mass of crackling
electricity.
I adjusted to it quickly, editing it down so that my own frequency worked around the all-encompassing one. It produced a strange sort of visionthe lounge, the humans and Choz in it in strange outline beneath a fiery haze. The soundthe sound was coming from George, from George and from Ham! They were staring hard at Nadya; who seemed frozen, mouth open in shock and surprise, a statuehand raised, a nasty piece of plastic still in her hand, poised to
strike.
And I saw she was moving, but slowly, so slowly
that you could hardly see it. The whole room seemed to be operating in slow motion, except for George,
who sidestepped.
Marsha, still sitting in the grass, had just begun turning, a puzzled expression on her face, and was starting to bring her hands up to her ears, mouth open. It would take her some time to do that.
Suddenly Ham jumped, knocking Nadya down in
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real time. The piece of plastic flew from her still outstretched hand. Eve saw it and stepped on it, not once, but again and again, until it was ground up into little pieces.
And then, just as suddenly, the sound diminished by half, then left entirely.
The two humans reverted to normal speed as well. Nady, sprawled and bleeding from Ham’s kick, completed the downstroke of her outstretched hand, while Marsha, hands over her ears, snapped her head around.
To say that I was stunned was an understatement. And, as interesting as my own shock and those of the two women, was the bewilderment on the part of George, Ham, and Eve.
“I’ll be damned!” I managed.
“Probably,” George responded drily. “Now what in the world caused that?”
“That incredible sound wave,” I managed, “it came from youand from Ham. How’d you do that?”
George seemed genuinely puzzled. “I haven’t the slightest idea. I heard Eve cry out, turned, and saw the woman coming for me. Then she just seemed to slow down, and my vision blurred for an instant.”
“You must have had to clear Ham’s signal,” I noted. “If you saw her slow down you didn’t even realize your whatever-it-was was on.”
George nodded. “Ham? Do you know how we did what we just did?”
Ham was busy picking himself up, and he exhibited an angry hue. He glared at the wounded, groaning woman.
“Humans!” he spat. “All alike!” Suddenly hearing George, he seemed to snap out of it. His tone softened, changed. “No, I don’t know what happened. I justwell, I heard Eve, and then the whole place exploded. As soon as my vision came back I went for her.”
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“Sound waves,” George mused, “can do all sorts of things. Break glass, tumble big buildings, given the right intensity, and pitch. This one seems to paralyze the human nervous system, but not ours. Fascinating.”
I frowned. “So how come we never heard it before?” I asked. “I still can’t imagine how you did it, let alone do it myself.”
“It’s got to be a defensive weapon,” the biologist replied. “We never had anything to defend against be-fore. It’s obviously automatic, a reflex action. And it’s specifically keyed to humans! Well, well!”
I considered for a moment. “Sure!” I said excitedly, mind racing. “Old Moses was going to drop some of us on human worlds. He was a religious machine, remember. He didn’t want to kill people! So he built in passive defense mechanisms!”
“I wonder how many?” George mused. “I wonder if we really do know ourselves?”
“We’re not defenseless, anyway,” I pointed out with some satisfaction. “That alone makes me feel a lot better and more confident.”
He nodded, and looked at Nadya. She was still sprawled out, sobbing now. The blood had already dried, but she had broken several bones, that was clear. Ham had spared nothing in his jump.
I sighed, and looked at Marsha, who still seemed stunned, frozen. She was only now taking her hands from her ears, looking scared and bewildered.
I patched into the computer, realizing that she hadn’t heard a word of our conversation. To her, the action had been just another manifestation of our alien power. She couldn’t know it stunned us as much as
them.
“Marsha?” I called to her. At first she didn’t answer.
“Marshal” I called again, sharper. She started, and shook her head slowly up and
down.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
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Again the nod; the expression, as near as I could read it, was still blank.
“We had to do that,” I said as gently as I could. “I’m sorry.” And I was sorry, genuinely sorry.
“Why did she do it?” Marsha asked me, blindly bewildered. “What could she have been thinking of?” She turned slowly to Nadya, still groaning nearby. “Why?” she said.
“Monsters!” Nadya sobbed. “They’ll eat us when we’re fattened! We have to kill the monsters.” The last was in such a matter-of-fact tone that it chilled all of us, Marsha included.
“She’s mad,” George said, and I had to agree.
“Web her down,” I ordered the biologist. “This shouldn’t happen again.”
George complied, practically wrapping the woman in a silvery cocoon as Marsha watched with a mixture or horror and fascination.
George finished quickly; it wasn’t an artistic job, but it was thorough. He glanced at Marsha. “What about her?” he asked.
I sighed, thinking a bit. “Marsha?” I called hesitantly. Since the voice came from above and George and I looked alike to her, I realized she didn’t know which was me.
“On the ramp,” I said. She turned and looked at me, saying nothing.
I considered my speech carefully. “Nadya’s made her choice. I’m sorry about it, but there it is. What is yours?”
She still looked to be in shock, but she was thinking now.
“II don’t want what you offer,” she began, and my heart sank, “butbut I don’t want to die. Bar Holliday. I don’t want to die now.”
I exhaled audibly, feeling a little better.
“Then join us,” I invited. “It is not really so terrible. It isn’t. In many ways it’s beautiful.”
“I’ll try,” she managed.
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We emerged from the L-jump on schedule, and I still hadn’t made a survey of the Nijinsky. Marsha was recovering a bit, but she still refused to eat, even though I knew that hunger must be obsessing her. It’s natural to put off the inevitable as long as possible.
I scanned the neighborhood we were in. It took a moment while the computer matched location and quadrant. The freighter didn’t have those things in its memory; it knew only the right routes, and the bea-con stations. My own computer, however, placed us as still within known space, but well outside any lines of trade or commerce. There were no settled planets this far out, and it was three light-years to the nearest beacon. I could barely detect its wail.
I was satisfied. This was good enough for now. No-body would be likely to stumble across us, and there were no solar systems in the area to make me use a lot of fuel in the next jump. We had travel options.
One option we didn’t have was Nadya.
She was completely gone, mad as they come, gibbering and foaming and screaming about monsters
and being eaten.
It took some trouble to figure out how to move her. Finally we managed to turn and web until she was reliable, then we pushed her, with great difficulty, up the ramp, positioned her and tugged her back into the Nijinsky. George kept watch over Marsha; Ham and Eve assisted with the nasty task. I didn’t like do-ing it, but I didn’t trust Eve alone with Marsha; and I didn’t trust Ham not to do something drastic.
“We should do this to the other one, too,” he grunted as he pushed and maneuvered the unfortu-nate madwoman. “No humans should be allowed to join us. Even as Choz they’re still human underneath.”
“Easy with that talk!” I cautioned him. “Would you dump me out the refuse hatch, too? I started out the
same way, remember.”
He looked startled. When your whole world was
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two decks of a ship and four people, you didn’t include them in your pet theories about outsiders.
“Oh, Lord! Of course not. Bar! You’re different!”
“No I’m not,” I told him. “I’m just like her, only a little more experienced, a little better trained. It’s never the outside that counts. Ham, it’s the inside.” , Eve glared at Ham. “See?” she taunted. “You never think! That’s your whole trouble! Besides, remember! If she doesn’t work out…”
She left it hanging, but she’d said it.
Marsha was on probation. As an outsider, she wasn’t like one of our own children, really. She could be taken by us at any time, dumped at any time. I hoped notthis job was unpleasant as it was, and I was beginning to like the woman. She had that little spark that differentiated her from the herd that Nadya and the others belonged to. She was still capable of thought, of adaptation to new circumstances.
And she was a trained pilot, with skills we needed.
We did the deed, not without a lot of reservations and a little guilt on my part. But she was better off out there, dead, gone; gone, if George was right, to some better place. No longer suffering, in any event.
Ham and Eve wanted to explore the new placeit was hundreds of times bigger than anything they’d ever seen or experienced. I told them they could, but only together, and cautioned them against the catwalks and long drops and warned them not to interfere with the cargo. I would be back to join them in a little bit.
I went back to the ship. Marsha was still there, holding her head in her hands. George grazed, watching her idly.
“Has she eaten yet?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied. “And look at herhow thin she’s getting! You can sound some of the bone structure! The Change is working with what it has, and that isn’t enough. If she doesn’t eat soon she’ll be dead of starvation.”
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“Marsha?” I said gently. She looked up at me. “You’ve got to eat something. Try the tubers. They aren’t bad. If you don’t, you’ll kill yourself.”
“Nadya …” she said hesitantly “She’sshe’s
gone?”