The prickling did not stop. He twisted faintly. It got worse. He took another deep breath.
The ribs sandpapered again.
This time, blessedly, he fainted from the pain.
“Well, Terrence, how do you like your first look at a Kyben?”
Ernie Terrence wrinkled his forehead and ran a finger up the side of his face. He looked at his Commander and shrugged. “Fantastic things, aren’t they?”
“Why fantastic?” asked Commander Foley.
“Because they’re just like us. Except of course the bright yellow pigmentation and the tentacle-fingers. Other than that they’re identical to a human being.”
The Commander opaqued the examination-casket and drew a cigarette from a silver case, offering the Lieutenant one. He puffed it alight, staring with one eye closed against the smoke. “More than that, I’m afraid. Their insides look like someone had taken them out, liberally mixed them with spare parts from several other species, and jammed them back in any way that fitted conveniently. For the next twenty years we’ll be knocking our heads together trying to figure out their metabolic raison d’ être.”
Terrence grunted, rolling his unlit cigarette absently between two fingers. “That’s the least of it.”
“You’re right,” agreed the Commander. “For the next thousand years we’ll be trying to figure out how they think, why they fight, what it takes to get along with them, what motivates them.”
If they let us live that long, thought Terrence.
“Why are we at war with the Kyben?” he asked the older man. “I mean really.”
“Because the Kyben want to kill every human being they can recognize as a human being.”
“What have they got against us?”
“Does it matter? Maybe it’s because our skin isn’t bright yellow; maybe it’s because our fingers aren’t silken and flexible; maybe it’s because our cities are too noisy for them. Maybe a lot of maybes. But it doesn’t matter. Survival never matters until you have to survive.”
Terrence nodded. He understood. So did the Kyben. It grinned at him and drew its blaster. It fired point-blank, crimsoning the hull of the Kyben ship.
He swerved to avoid running into his gun’s own backlash. The movement of the bucket seat sliding in its tracks, keeping his vision steady while maneuvering, made him dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, the abyss was nearer, and he teetered, his lips whitening as they pressed together under his effort to steady himself. With a headlong gasp he fell sighing into the stomach. His long, silken fingers jointed steely humming clankingly toward the medicine chest ever over the plate behind the bulkhead.
The robot advanced on him grindingly. Small fine bits of metal rubbed together, ashing away into a breeze that came from nowhere as the machine raised lead boots toward his face.
Onward and onward till he had no room to move and then
The light came on, bright, brighter than any star Terrence had ever seen, glowing, broiling, flickering, shining, bobbing a ball of light on the chest of the robot, who staggered, stumbled, stepped.
The robot hissed, hummed and exploded into a million flying, racing fragments, shooting beams of light all over the abyss over which Terrence again teetered, teetering. He flailed his arms wildly trying to escape but at the last moment, before the fall
He awoke with a start!
He saved himself only by his unconscious. Even in the hell of a nightmare he was aware of the situation. He had not moaned and writhed in his delirium. He had kept motionless and silent.
He knew it was true, because he was still alive.
Only his surprised jerking, as he came back to consciousness, started the monster rolling from its niche. He came fully awake and sat silent, slumped against the wall. The robot retreated.
Thin breath came through his nostrils. Another moment and he would have put an end to the past three days-three days or more now? how long had he been asleep?-days of torture.
He was hungry. Lord how hungry he was. The pain in his side was worse now, a steady throbbing that made even shallow breathing tortuous. He itched maddeningly. He was uncomfortably slouched against a cold steel bulkhead, every rivet having made a burrow for itself in his skin. He wished he was dead.
He didn’t wish he was dead. It was all too easy to get his wish.
If he could only disable that robot brain. A total impossibility. If he could only wear Phobos and Deinlos for watch fobs. If he could only shack-up with a silicon-deb from Penares. If he could only use his large colon for a lasso.
It would take a thorough destruction of the brain to do it enough damage to stop the appendage before it could roll over and smash Terrence again.
With a steel bulkhead between him and the brain, his chances of success totaled minus zero every time.
He considered which part of his body the robot would smash first. One blow of that tool-hand would kill him if it was used a second time. With the state of his present wounds, even a strong breath might finish him.
Perhaps he could make a break and get through the lock into the decompression chamber...
Worthless. (A) The robot would catch him before he had gotten to his feet, in his present condition. (B) Even allowing a miracle, even if he did get through the lock, the robot would smash the lock port, letting in air, ruining the mechanism. (C) Even allowing a double miracle and it didn’t, what the hell good would it do him? His helmet and gloves were in the hutch itself, and there was no place to go on the planetoid. The ship was ruined, so no signal could be sent from there.
Doom suddenly compounded itself.
The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that soon the light would flicker out for him.
The light would flicker out.
The light would flicker...
The light...
...light...?
Oh God, is it possible? Can it be? Have I found an answer? He marveled at the simplicity of it. It had been there for more than three days waiting for him to use it. It was so simple it was magnificent. He could hardly restrain himself from moving, just out of sheer joy.
I’m not brilliant, I’m not a genius, why did this occur to me? For a few minutes the brilliance of the solution staggered him. Would a less intelligent man have solved the problem this easily? Would a more intelligent man have done it? Then he remembered the dream. The light in the dream. He hadn’t solved the problem, his unconscious had. The answer had been there all the time, but he was too close to see it. His mind had been forced to devise a way to tell him. Luckily, it had.
And finally, he didn’t care how he had uncovered it. His God, if he had had anything to do with it, had heard him. Terrence was by no means a religious man, but this was miracle enough to make him a believer. It wasn’t over yet, but the answer was there-and it was an answer.
He began to save himself.
Slowly, achingly slowly, he moved his right hand, the hand away from the robot’s sight, to his belt. On the belt hung the assorted implements a spaceman needs at any moment in his ship. A wrench. A packet of sleep-stavers. A compass. A geiger counter. A flashlight.
The last was the miracle. Miracle in a tube.
He fingered it almost reverently, then unclipped it in a moment’s frenzy, still immobile to the robot’s “eyes.”
He held it at his side, away from his body by a fraction of an inch, pointing up over the bulge of his spacesuited leg.
If the robot looked at him, all it would see would be the motionless bulk of his leg, blocking off any movement on his part. To the machine, he was inert. Motionless.
Now he thought wildly, where is the brain?