‘It would,’ said Griswold heavily. ‘You begin to understand, I see. That’s what happened to all of you at the colony. You weren’t criminals - except that, in the eyes of the skulls, it’s a crime to be human at all.’
Not criminals! No forgotten crime to expiate! Hardee could scarcely believe it. But Griswold was still talking:
‘They want our planet,’ he explained. ‘One shipload came, to get things ready, an advance party. I don’t know when the rest of them will be here - but they’re on their way. Perhaps a year or two. And they need to have the human race under control by then.’
He rubbed his arm and stared up at the sky. ‘So some of us are helping them,’ he said flatly. ‘Call us traitors - we are! But what else is there to do? The skulls gave us a very simple alternative. Either we help them study us so that they can learn to rule the human race ... or they go back out into their ship and spray the Earth with another ray. Not a sleep ray, but one that will wipe out all life entirely.’
Griswold spread his hands. ‘It’s a choice that isn’t any choice,’ he said. ‘What else was there? So when they woke me - I was one of the first few hundred; now there must be tens of thousands - they learned, after we established communication, that I was a psychologist. It was exactly what they needed. They set me the problem of contriving an experimental colony - a test farm, if you like, where the human animal could be kept in conditions as close to natural as possible.
‘It was their ship, orbiting out there, that made me think of Mars - it does look like a second moon. Luna was no real problem. A simple post-hypnotic command and none of you could focus on it enough to recognize the features. But I couldn’t erase knowledge of Mars, if it existed in any of you. There is no invention, of course, that causes partial - and selective - amnesia in criminals. That was a lie to make you accept this plateau as a penal colony on Mars.’
‘But what in hell for?’ Hardee asked angrily.
‘So nobody would try to escape. Thinking you were on Mars, you wouldn’t hope to get to Earth. Knowing you were on Earth, you’d do anything to reach civilization - not realizing there wasn’t any left. Skitterbugs wouldn’t get harvested. Skulls would be killed. The colony would be trouble instead of useful - and it would then be wiped out.
‘I wanted to keep as many people alive for as long as I could.’ said Griswold. ‘There was no other chance for humanity.’
‘What do we do now?’ Hardee grimly demanded.
Griswold hesitated. ‘There are a few free humans,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Not many. They live in the woods in hiding, some of them in the cities themselves. Mostly they are ignored by the skulls - because there are so few. If there weren’t, the skulls would take the easy way out. The Earth is their new home, you see, and they regard it as you would your house. You might tolerate a few vermin - but if there are too many, you’ll call in the exterminators. But there are these few, and if we can somehow make our way to them, we might have a chance to -’
‘Hush!’ breathed Joan Bunnell.
She caught the boy to her, pointing. Out of the woods at the side of the field raced a posse of skitterbugs, each with its bronze death’s-head rider.
Hardee tried to fight, though there were hundreds of the creatures. If Wakulla had not been so profligate with his bullets
But he had been; and the single bullet in the gun was more frustrating than none at all.
‘Too late,’ groaned Griswold, his tortured face sagging with fear. ‘Give up, Hardee! Otherwise they’ll kill us right here!’
They were marched down a road and into the environs of a city, the skitterbugs with their bright bronze riders a disorderly rabble around them.
None of them recognized the city; it might have been anywhere. It was a silent city, a city of death. Even from the streets, they could see men and women who had been struck down in the middle of life. A mother with three children around her sprawled in a Laocöon down porch steps; a postman with his two-wheeled cart beside him, his letters long since blown away.
And there were living, waking humans too. Chuck shivered and caught his father’s arm as they rounded a corner and saw a work gang - ten or twelve men, in rags of clothing, clearing rubble from a tumbled house that lay across a side street; they looked up as Hardee and the rest passed, but there was no emotion in their eyes, only weariness.
‘Those others,’ whispered Joan. ‘Are they dead?’
‘No,’ said Tavares heavily, ‘not if what Griswold tells us is true. But they might as well be. Unless -’
‘Don’t even think it!’ begged Griswold. ‘Some of the skulls can understand English!’
‘Let them understand!’ cried Hardee. He stopped and faced them. ‘We’ll fight you!’ he shouted. ‘You can’t have our planet - not now or ever! The human race isn’t going to be taken over by a bunch of bugs from another planet!’
Incuriously, the blank-eyed bronze skulls stared at him; almost as incuriously, the ragged men looked on.
The skulls prodded Hardee on, and the ragged men went back to their work.
The prisoners were taken to a big building that bore on it a sign, Hotel Winchester. Once it had been a commercial hotel; now it seemed to be headquarters for the skitterbugs and the skulls that rode them.
Without a word, they were put in a room on a gallery that overlooked the lobby. The floor of the lobby was a seething mass of skitterbugs with their riders - and some skulls which had found a different sort of mount, for they perched on the shoulders of ragged men.
The door was closed, and they were left alone.
It was a partly glass door; Hardee peered out. ‘They must have come from a light-gravity planet,’ he guessed. ‘They move badly without the skitterbugs. They can’t be very strong.’
‘They don’t need to be,’ said Griswold somberly. ‘Not with their weapons.’
‘What about at night?’ asked Hardee. ‘Surely the skitterbugs can’t operate very well without light. Can’t we -’
But Griswold was shaking his head. ‘They keep all the areas of the city where they move about well lighted. No, Hardee. The skulls are way ahead of you.’ He sat down and sighed. ‘I think they’ll kill us,’ he said without emotion. ‘It’s either that or the labour gangs.’
Old man Tavares said something incandescent in Spanish. ‘You may die, Griswold, but I’ll fight. Look, why can we not get away? Soon it will be dark, as Hardee says, and it is then only a matter of getting away from the lighted areas. Why not?’
‘Wait,’ Hardee interrupted, staring out the glass of the door. ‘Someone’s coming.’
They crowded around.
Down the long gallery that surrounded the lobby, a tall man with angry eyes approached.
Hope surged - a human, and free!
But then they saw that on his shoulder rode one of the bronze skulls, motionless, the hollow eyes emptily staring.
‘He is probably our executioner,’ said Griswold, as though announcing the time of day.
‘Not without a fight,’ said Hardee tensely. ‘Tavares, you stand over here. I’ll wait on the other side. Joan, you take Chuck to the far side of the room. See if you can make the skull look at you! And Griswold -’
‘It won’t work,’ said Griswold stubbornly, but he went with Joan and the boy.
The door opened.
As soon as the man and his rider were inside, Hardee lunged against the door, slammed it shut. ‘Now!’ he shouted, and leaped towards the pair.
The angry eyes of the man opened wide in astonishment. Hastily he stepped back. ‘Wait!’ he cried, stumbling-
And the bronze skull toppled from his shoulder.