“We volunteered for vivisection,” she told him pitifully, the day after their recovery of consciousness, “and we’re safe for a while, anyhow. And—we’ve got each other—”
“It’s time for Alstair to communicate again,” said Jack harshly. It was nearly thirty hours after the last signing off. Centaurian routine, like Earth discipline on terrestrial space ships, maintained a period equal to the planet’s daily rotation as the unit of time. “We’d better go listen to him.”
They did. And Aistair’s racked voice came from the queerly shaped speaker. It was more strained, less sane, than the day before. He told them of the progress of the Things in the navigation of the Adastra. The six surviving officers already were not needed to keep the ship’s apparatus functioning. The air-purifying apparatus in particular was shut off, since in clearing the air of carbon dioxide it tended to make the air unbreathable for the Centaurians.
The six men were now permitted to live that they might satisfy the insatiable desire of the plant men for information. They lived a perpetual third degree, with every resource of their brains demanded for record in the weird notation of their captors. The youngest of the six, a subaltern of the air department, went mad under the strain alike of memory and of anticipation. He screamed senselessly for hours, and was killed and his body promptly mumified by the strange, drying chemicals of the Centaurians. The rest were living shadows, starting at a sound.
“Our acceleration’s been changed,” said Alstair, his voice brittle. “You’ll land just two days before we settle down, on the planet these devils call home. Queer they’ve no colonizing instinct. Another one of us is about to break, I think. They’ve taken away our shoes and belts now, by the way. They’re leather. We’d take a gold band from about a watermelon, wouldn’t we? Consistent, these—”
And he raged once, in sudden hysteria: “I’m a fool! I sent you two off together while I’m living in hell! Gary, I order you to have nothing to do with Helen! I order that the two of you shan’t speak to each other! I order that—”
Another day passed. And another. Alstair called twice more. Each time, by his voice, he was more desperate, more nerve-racked, closer to the bounds of madness. The second time he wept, the while he cursed Jack for being where there were none of the plant men.
“We’re not interesting to the devils, now, except as animals. Our brains don’t count They’re gutting the ship systematically. Yesterday they got the earthworms from the growing area where we grew crops! There’s a guard on each of us now. Mine pulled out some of my hair this morning and ate it, rocking back and forth in ecstasy. We’ve no woolen shirts. They’re animal!”
Another day still. Then Aistair was semihysterical. There were only three men left alive on the ship. He had instructions to give Jack in the landing of the egg-shaped vessel on the uninhabited world. Jack was supposed to help. His destination, was close now. The disk of the planet which was to be his and Helen’s prison filled half the heavens. And the other planet toward which the Adastra was bound was a full-sized disk to Alstair.
Beyond the rings of Proxima Centauri there were six planets in all, and the prison planet was next outward from the home of the plant men. It was colder than was congenial to them, though for a thousand years their flesh-hunting expeditions had, searched its surface until not a mammal or a bird, no fish or even a crustacean was left upon it. Beyond it again an ice-covered world lay, and still beyond there were frozen shapes whirling in emptiness.
“You know, now, how to take over when the beam releases the atmospheric controls,” said Alstair’s voice. It wavered as if he spoke through teeth which chattered from pure nerve strain. “You’ll have quiet. Trees and flowers and something like grass, if the pictures they’ve made mean anything. We’re running into the greatest celebration in the history of all hell. Every space ship called home. There won’t be a Centaurian on the planet who won’t have a tiny shred of some sort of animal matter to consume. Enough to give him that beastly delight they feel when they, get hold of something of animal origin.
“Damn them! Every member of the race! We’re the greatest store of treasure ever dreamed of! They make no bones of talking before me, and I’m mad enough to understand a good bit of what they say to each other.
Their most high panjandrum is planning bigger space ships than were ever grown before. He’ll start out for Earth with three hundred space ships, and most of the crews asleep or hibernating. There’ll be three million devils straight from hell on those ships, and they’ve those damned beams that will fuse an earthly ship at ten million miles.”
Talking helped to keep Aistair sane, apparently. The next day Jack’s and Helen’s egg-shaped vessel dropped like a plummet from empty space into an atmosphere which screamed wildly past its smooth sides. Then Jack got the ship under control and it descended slowly and ever more slowly and at last came to a cushioned stop in a green glade hard by a forest of strange but wholly reassuring trees. It was close to sunset on this planet, and darkness fell before they could attempt exploration. They did little exploring, however, either the next day or the day after. Alstair talked almost continuously.
“Another ship coming. from Earth,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Another ship! She started at least four years ago. She’ll get here in four years more. You two may see her, but I’ll be dead or mad by tomorrow night! And here’s the humorous thing! It seems to me that madness is nearest when I think of you, Helen, letting Jack kiss you! I loved you, you know, Helen, when I was a man, before I became a corpse watching my ship being piloted into hell. I loved you very much. I was jealous, and when you looked at Gary with shining eyes I hated him. I still, hate him, Helen! All, how I hate him!” But Alstair’s voice was the voice of a ghost, now, a ghost in purgatory. “And I’ve been a fool, giving him that order.”
Jack walked about with abstracted, burning eyes. Helen put her hands on his shoulders and he spoke absently to her, his voice thick with hatred. A desperate, passionate lust to kill Centaurians filled him. He began to hunt among the machines. He became absorbed, assembling a ten-kilowatt vortex gun from odd contrivances. He worked at it for many hours. Then he heard Helen at work, somewhere. She seemed to be struggling. It disturbed him. He went to see.
She had just dragged the last of the cages from the Adastra out into the open. She was releasing the little creatures within. Pigeons soared eagerly above her. Rabbits, hardly hopping out of her reach, munched delightedly upon the unfamiliar but satisfactory leafed vegetation underfoot.
She browsed. There were six of them besides a tiny, wabbly-legged lamb. Chickens pecked and scratched. But there were no insects on this world. They would find only seeds and green stuff. Four puppies rolled ecstatically on scratchy green things in the sunlight.
“Anyhow,” said Helen defiantly. “They can be happy for a while! They’re not like us! We have to worry! And this world could be a paradise for humans!”
Jack looked somberly out across the green and beautiful world. No noxious animals. No harmful insects. There could be no diseases on this planet, unless men introduced them of set purpose. It would be a paradise.
The murmur of a human voice came from within the space ship. He went bitterly to listen. Helen came after him. They stood in the strangely shaped cubbyhole which was the control room. Walls, floors, ceiling, instrument-cases—all were made of the lusterless dark brown stuff which had grown into the shapes, the Centaurians desired. Aistair’s voice was strangely more calm, less hysterical, wholly steady.