The mess, Mrs. Kri announced, was cleaned up and now she was going down into the vault to Sleep. She would leave the house open for their convenience, she said, but she hoped that when she awoke she wouldn’t find everything too dirty, that they would wipe their feet before they came in and would empty the ashtrays and wash their dishes. Then she insisted upon giving each of them a peace-kiss, and broke down and cried, saying she might never see any of them again, and she asked Skelder’s forgiveness for her attack upon him. He was quite gracious about it and gave her his blessing.
Five minutes later, Mrs. Kri, having injected herself with the necessary hibernatives, slammed the big iron door of the basement vault and locked herself in.
Tand bade them good-bye. “If I’m caught before I get to my own vault, I’ll have to go through the Night, willy-nilly. And once started, there’s no holding back. It’s all black and white then; you either get through or you don’t. At the end of the seventh day, you are god, corpse, or monster.”
“And what do you do with the monsters?” asked Carmody.
“Nothing, if they’re harmless, like Mrs. Kri’s husband. Otherwise, we kill them.”
After a few more remarks, he shook hands, knowing this was an Earth custom, wishing them, not luck, but a suitable reward. He said good-bye to Carmody last, holding his hand the longest and looking into his eyes. “This is your last chance ever to become anything. If the Night does not break up the frozen deeps of your soul, if you remain iceberg from top to bottom, as you now are, then you are done for. If there exists the least spark of warmth, of humanity, then let it burst into flame and consume you, no matter what the pain. The god Yess once said if you would gain your life you must lose it. Nothing original in it—other gods, other prophets, everywhere there are sentient beings, have said so. But it is true in many ways, unimaginable ways.”
As soon as Tand had left, the three Earthmen silently walked upstairs and took from a large trunk three helmets, each with a small box on its top, from which nodded a long antenna. These they put over their heads, then turned a dial just above the right ear.
Skelder smacked his thin lips doubtfully and said, “I certainly hope the scientists at Jung were correct in their theory. They said that the moment an electromagnetic wave is detected by this device, it will set up a canceling wave; that no matter how vast the energies of the magnetic storm, we will be able to walk through them unaffected.”
“I hope so,” said Ralloux, looking downcast. “I see now that in thinking I could conquer what better men than I have found invincible, I was committing the worst sin of all, that of spiritual pride. May God forgive me. I thank Him for these helmets.”
“I thank Him, too,” said Skelder, “though I think that we should not have to have recourse to them. We two should put our full trust in Him and bare our heads, and our souls, to the evil forces of this heathen planet.”
Carmody smiled cynically. “There is nothing holding you back. Go ahead. You might earn yourself a halo.”
“I have my orders from my superiors,” Skelder replied stiffly.
Ralloux rose and began pacing back and forth. “I don’t understand it. How could magnetic storms, even if of unparalleled violence, excite the atomic nuclei of beings on a planet eighty million miles away, and at the same time probe and stir the unconscious mind, cause it to fasten an iron grip upon the conscious, provoke inconceivable psychosomatic changes? The sun turns violet, extends its invisible wand, rouses the image of the beast that lives in the dark caves of our minds, or else wakens the sleeping golden god. Well, I can understand some of that. Changes in electromagnetic frequencies on Earth’s sun not only influence our climate and weather, they control human behavior. But how could this star act upon flesh and blood so that skin tension lessens, bones grow soft, bend, harden into alien shapes that are not found in the genes...?”
“We still don’t know enough about genes to say what shapes are implicit in them,” interrupted Carmody. “When I was a medical student at Hopkins, I saw some very strange things.” He fell silent, thinking about those days.
Skelder sat upright and thin-lipped on a chair, his helmet making him look more like a soldier than a monk.
“It won’t be long,” said Ralloux, still pacing, “before the Night will start. If what Tand says is true, the first twenty hours or so will put everybody who has stayed up—except us, who are protected by our helmets—into a deep coma. Seemingly, the bodies of the sleepers then build up a partial resistance so that they later wake up. Once awakened, they are so charged with energy or some sort of drive, that they cannot sleep until the sun is over its violent phase. It is while they are sleeping that we—“
“—shall do our dirty work!” said Carmody joyfully.
Skelder rose. “I protest! We are here on a scientific investigation, and we are allied with you only because there is certain work that we—“
“—don’t want to soil our lily-white hands with,” said Carmody.
At that moment the light in the room became dark, a heavy violet. There was dizziness, then a fading away of the senses. But it lasted only a second, though long enough to weaken their knees and send them crashing to the floor.
Carmody got up shakily on all fours, shook his head like a dog struck by a club, and said, “Wow, what a jolt that was! Good thing we had these helmets. They seem to have pulled us through.”
He rose to his feet, his muscles aching and stiff. The room seemed to be hung with many violet veils, it was so dark and silent.
“Say, Ralloux, what’s the matter with you?” he said.
Ralloux, white as a ghost, his face twisted with agony, leaped to his feet, screamed, tore the helmet off his head, and ran out the door. His footsteps could be heard pounding down the hall, down the steps. And the front door banged hard.
Carmody turned to the other monk. “He... now what’s the matter with you?”
Skelder’s mouth was open and he was staring at the clock on the wall. Suddenly, he whirled on Carmody. “Get away from me,” he snarled.
Carmody blinked, then smiled and said, “Sure, why not? I never thought you had the skin I loved to touch, anyway.”
He watched amusedly as Skelder began to edge along the wall towards the door. “Why are you limping?”
The monk did not reply but walked crabwise from the room. A moment later the front door banged again. Carmody, quite alone, stood a moment in thought, then examined the clock at which the monk had been staring. Like most Kareenan timepieces, it told the time of the day, the day, month, and year. The attack of violet had taken place at 17:25. It was now 17:30.
Five minutes had elapsed.
Plus twenty-four hours.
“No wonder my every muscle aches! And I’m so hungry!” Carmody said aloud. He took the helmet off and dropped it on the floor.
“Well, that’s that. Noble experiment.” He went downstairs into the kitchen, half- expecting to be struck in the face with more blood. But there was nothing untoward. Whistling to himself, he took food and milk from the refrigerator, made himself sandwiches, ate heartily, then checked the action of his gun. Satisfied, he rose and walked toward the front door.
The telephone rang.
He hesitated, then decided to answer it. Wothehell, he said to himself.
He lifted the receiver. “Hello!”
“John!” said a lovely female voice.
His head jerked away as if the receiver were a snake.
“John?” repeated the voice, now sounding far away, ghostly.
He sucked in a deep breath, squared his shoulders, resolutely put the phone to his ear again.