“I do not understand the question.”
“I mean, how is it that you discover that a Tosok has this particular aberration? Can you determine it just by looking at the Tosok?”
“No.”
“Would a normal Tosok psychological test—say, the kind your crew might have undergone before being assigned to this mission—reveal this predilection?”
“I doubt it.”
“In fact, in most such cases, a Tosok would not know that he found this pleasurable until circumstance forced him to actually expose the internal organs, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, I suspect that is probably true.”
“And if a Tosok did find itself stimulated by this action, he or she might be as surprised as anyone, no?”
“It would certainly shock me to discover it about myself,” said Kelkad.
“I’m sure it would,” said Ziegler. “Psychologically speaking, do individual Tosoks desire to repeat experiences they have found stimulating?”
“Possibly.”
“You’re hedging, Kelkad. The answer is surely more direct.”
“Objection,” said Dale. “Badgering.”
“Overruled.”
“Yes, they may well desire to repeat pleasurable experiences.”
“So,” said Ziegler, “if Hask had found himself enjoying the act of removing the organs from—”
“Objection! Your Honor, counsel is arguing her case.”
“Sustained.”
“Very well,” said Ziegler. She looked at the jury. “Very well. Your witness, Mr. Rice.”
Dale rose. “Mr. Kelkad, in your experience, has Hask ever exhibited signs of sadism?”
Kelkad’s translator beeped. “Sadism?”
“Deriving satisfaction from inflicting pain on others.”
“No, Hask never exhibited any such thing.”
“Did he demonstrate an unnatural fondness for the gory?”
“No.”
“Any bloodthirstiness?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen him cause deliberate injury to other Tosoks?”
“No.”
“What about animals on your world?”
“Hask in fact had a pet kogloo he was quite fond of; he treated it extremely well.”
“Thank you,” said Dale, returning to his seat. “No further questions.”
*22*
A number of lesser witnesses occupied the next two weeks—other Tosoks, experts on deviant human psychology, and a variety of individuals who tried to shore up the State’s shaky case for premeditation, which seemed to hinge on two facts: first, that Hask had arranged to stay back at the dorm while the others went to the Stephen Jay Gould lecture, knowing Calhoun was also staying back, and, second, that to induce his skin shedding, he must have thought in advance to bring the chemical agent down from the mothership.
Finally, though, it was time for the People’s most compelling bit of evidence. Linda Ziegler rose from her place at the prosecution table. “If it pleases the Court,” she said, “the People would now like to introduce a segment of the videotape made by the decedent while he was aboard the Tosok mothership.”
“Mr. Rice?”
Dale had fought long and hard before the trial began to get this suppressed, but Judge Pringle had ruled it admissible, and the appeals court had agreed with her. “No objection.”
“Please proceed.”
Two large color-television monitors were mounted on the walls of the courtroom, one facing the jury box, the other facing the spectators. In addition, Judge Pringle had a smaller TV on her bench, as did the prosecution and the defense. The bailiff dimmed the lights in the room…
All the still pictures of the Apollo 11 crew walking on the moon have one thing in common: they all show Buzz Aldrin, for the simple reason that it was Neil Armstrong who was holding the camera. Although Armstrong was the first man on the moon, there are, in fact almost no pictures of him there.
The videos shot in microgravity aboard the Tosok mothership were taken by Cletus Calhoun, and except for the occasional glimpse of one of his gangly limbs, he himself was therefore completely absent from the footage. Dale Rice was pleased by this. The more the jury forgot about Calhoun—the amiable hillbilly who could trade jokes with Jay Leno—the better.
Still, Clete’s drawling voice was heard loud and clear throughout the videotape. The tape began with him chatting with a floating Hask, who was plainly visible; Dale had forgotten just how blue Hask’s old hide had been.
“But you guys,” Clete was saying in that rich Tennessee accent, “being able to shut down for centuries, having that ability built right into y’all. You can fake gravity in space, ’course, through centrifugal force or constant acceleration. But there ain’t nothing you can do about the time it takes for interstellar travel. With a natural suspended-animation ability, y’all sure got us beat. We might have been destined to go into planetary orbit, but your race seems to have been destined to sail between the stars.”
“Many of our philosophers would agree with that statement,” remarked Hask. Then, after a second: “But not all, of course.” They were both quiet for a time. “I am hungry,” said Hask. “It will take several hours for the others to revive. Do you require food?”
“I brought some with me,” said Clete. “Navy rations. Hardly gourmet vittles, but they’ll do.”
“Come with me,” said Hask. The alien folded his three-part legs against a bulkhead and kicked off. Clete started off with a hand push—his long arm darted into the shot for a moment—but then apparently kicked off the wall as well. They floated down another corridor, large yellow lights overhead alternating with small orange ones.
Soon they came to a door, which slid aside for Hask. They floated into the room. As they did so more lights came on overhead.
There was a sound of Clete sucking in his breath. No way to know what he’d been thinking, but Dale Rice always felt like vomiting when he saw this part of the tape. In the dimmed light of the courtroom, he could see several jurors wincing.
There was a great bloody mass in the middle of the picture. It took several seconds for the shape of the thing to register as Clete panned the camera.
It seemed to be an enormously long tube of raw meat, its surface glistening with pinkish-red blood. The tube wound around itself like a pile of spilled intestines. Its diameter was about five inches, and its length—well, if it were all stretched out, instead of coiled up, it might have run to fifty feet, a great, gory anaconda stripped of its hide. One end was plugged into one of the room’s walls; the other end, which terminated in a flat circular cross section, was propped up by a Y-shaped ceramic support.
“God a’mighty!” said Clete voice. “What is it?”
“It is food,” said Hask.
“It’s meat?”
“Yes. Would you like some?”
“Ah—no. No, thanks.”
Hask floated over to the tube’s free end. He reached into one of the pouches on his dun-colored vest and removed a small blue cylinder about ten inches long and two inches in diameter. He took one end of it in the fingers of his front arm and the other in his back arm, then bent it. It split down the middle into two five-inch cylinders. He then moved his hands as if he were drawing an invisible loop of string stretched between the two cylinders around the great tube of meat, about four inches from its end. He pulled the two blue handles away from each other, and to the jury’s amazement, the last four inches of the great meat sausage separated from the rest. It just floated there, but the picture clearly showed a receptacle attached to the Y-shaped support that obviously would have caught it had the ship been undergoing acceleration.
“How did you do that?” said Clete, off camera.
Hask looked at him, puzzled. Then he seemed to realize. “You mean my carving tool? There is a single, long, flexible molecular chain connecting the two handles. The chain cannot be broken, but because of its thinness, it cuts easily through almost anything.”