So matters progressed. Normally, Johnny was to have been used when he was a grown man. But he was almost fourteen, now, and the Khasr couldn't wait any longer. His tutors began to feed him carefully calculated bits of information. They delicately fanned his hatred of humankind to high pitch. And within a month of his fourteenth birthday Johnny thought he'd invented the idea for which he'd been captured in the first place, and for which he'd been nurtured and trained.
At that, he improved it considerably on the idea the Khasr had had in the first place.
When he outlined the scheme—he trembled with eagerness—the Khasr seemed to be astonished at its brilliance. But, they objected, he was the only Khasr who could carry it out. It would call for special study on his part. It would even require, they told him—and the Khasr seemed to shudder—plastic operations to make him resemble men physically. He would have to pass for a human being!
Of course, they added hastily, plastic surgery improved all the time. When his task was done they could restore him to his present appearance. In fact, though they hadn't told him before, they now told him they believed they could graft on his body the four extra legs he didn't have because of what men had done to him when he was young. Yes. If Johnny could carry out his stratagem, and destroy the very nucleus of the unspeakably revolting human race, he would be the greatest hero of the Khasr race!
And the Khasr were really pleased. Their original scheme had seemed plausible. Johnny's improvements seemed to doom the human race to extermination. With Earth wiped out, the scattered human colonies could be murdered one by one.
So during the next two or three months furry horrors of Khasr came and lectured to Johnny on the manners and customs of human beings, using human speech because Johnny didn't know there was any other. Other Khasr set up phoney surgical apparatus, and anesthetized Johnny, and later told him they had changed his appearance. Presently they showed him pictures of himself. He went sick. He looked human! When they thought he could stand the sight, they gave him a mirror looted from an Earth colony before its destruction, and set up vision-records so Johnny could see how humans walked and acted and their ways of using clothing, and how they used instruments to eat with. Johnny learned. He hated it. He was bitterly ashamed. He hated mankind the more because he had to learn to pass for human. One thing that was bitter humiliation was that he could no longer wear the plastic sheaths, suitably furry, which they had provided for him to hide his soft white skin and let him look as much like a normal Khasr as possible. When Khasr saw him at the task of trying to cease to imitate their stilt-legged gait, and wearing human garments, and acting like the humans in the vision-records, the feeling of degradation was intolerable. But he ground his teeth and went on. He would be the greatest hero in the Khasr race!
He was all burning impatience after the Battle of Andromeda Two. After that, no true Khasr would hesitate at anything!
The battle was the aftermath of the human capture of two Khasr battleships intact. The humans had studied them and refitted their fleets with instruments to detect the Khasr drive. They'd found out how to nullify the Khasr coagulator-field, and they'd adapted a few new devices to work efficiently upon the technical apparatus the Khasr used.
And ultimately human ships discovered a Khasr murder-fleet near Andromeda Two. What seemed a suicide-ship dived into it. The Khasr delayed to murder it. And that suicide-ship had a very nice blowout beam which burned out the Khasr interspace coils so they couldn't get away in faster-than-light escape. They had to stand and fight. And they didn't know how to fight, but only murder. Yet no Khasr could imagine surrender.
It wasn't really a battle but a very satisfying massacre, with the Khasr on the receiving end for a change. Not one ship, not one Khasr got away. Yet the Khasr did blow up most of their ships before the humans could board them.
WITHIN a month, Johnny took off from the Khasr planet. He carried with him the foaming hatred of the Khasr race. They didn't show that they hated Johnny too, of course. There was a field turned black—the normal vegetation was purple, but it was hidden by the monstrous shapes gathered there—with a crowd of furry monsters assembled to see him off. They had carefully been trained to make human-seeming noises, and they cheered Johnny. And he rose toward the yellow sky with an inspiring memory of their clawed legs waving in farewell.
He began what he believed would be the most splendid war-feat of the Khasr race.
He could have been right.
The interspace field folded about his spaceship in the peculiarly deliberate manner of interspace fields. The stars and the twin suns of the Khasr planet gave place to a view of mere gray chaos which is all the viewplates show when a ship is in faster-than-light drive. And Johnny was alone. It was his first trip in space, but the ship—a huge one—was very nearly automatic. He didn't need to worry about astronavigation. He had only to pass for a human being, and the ship would be landed on Earth as a trophy, and then Johnny would press one small button and that would be that. So he believed.
For the best part of a day he simply exulted in the splendid feat which he, a Khasr, would perform for the Khasr race. But then a very peculiar fact turned up. Not only was this his first trip in space. It was the first time he had ever been alone so long as he could remember. The Khasr had never left him in solitude. They were busy supervising his mind: conditioning him to remember that he was a Khasr and that he hated men.
But he suddenly discovered that he was lonely. He'd never known the sensation before.
Days passed. His ship went on and on through that nothingness in which speed beyond the speed of light is achieved. The ship's transmitter sent out a purposely crude imitation of a human recognition-signal as it went past the stars and planets of the void. The signal went back into normal space, of course, and was picked up. It was analyzed. Eyebrows raised at its characteristics. Humans have eyebrows. Khasr do not.
A message went on ahead of him, faster than light and even faster than .Johnny's ship. The message said, "A human recognition-signal, unofficial, is heading for Earth from a Khasr ship. Get him!"
Action was taken upon that signal. In interspace a ship can gain speed or it can decelerate, but it must always be gaining kinetic energy or losing it. If it tries to achieve stasis it pops back into normal space again. It is not wholesome to pop back into normal space at several light-speeds. So nobody tried to intercept Johnny in interspace. Ships leaped to meet him where he would come out.
And Johnny grew lonely. He had never been alone for as much as five minutes. Now there was nobody to talk to and nothing to do for days. For weeks. For more weeks.
There was nothing to do. The ship was automatic. There were no vision-records, because it was a Khasr ship and human ones didn't belong in it, and Khasr ones would have had Khasr speech on them—which might have caused Johnny to think. There were no books. For the same reason. It was solitary confinement. It was worse. It was solitary confinement in a ship in that unreality which is not a cosmos, which is not actuality, which is not anything at all and which is called interspace. Technically, Johnny and his ship were unrealities. And Johnny was alone.
After the first week—his ears ringing, dizzy with the silence about him—he tapped the recognition-signal. Then he heard, over and over and over again, the message it broadcast.