Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Paresi returned the smile. "Drug addicts ... Catatonics ... illusionaries ... and saints. I guess it's up to us to add to the category."

  "How about dead people?"

  "Ives! How long have you been awake?"

  The big man shoved himself up and leaned on one arm. He shook his head and grunted as if he had been punched in the solar plexus. "Who hit me with what?" he said painfully, from between clenched teeth.

  "You apparently decided the bulkhead was a paper hoop and tried to dive through it," said Paresi. He spoke lightly but his face was watchful.

  "Oooh...." Ives held his head for a moment and then peered between his fingers at the darkness. "I remember," he said in a strained whisper. He looked around him, saw the engineer huddled against his chessboard. "What's he doing?"

  They all looked at the engineer as he moved a piece and then sat quietly.

  "Hey, Hoskins!"

  Hoskins ignored Ives' bull voice. Paresi said, "He's not talking just now. He's ... all right, Ives. Leave him alone. At the moment, I'm more interested in you. How do you feel?"

  "Me, I feel great. Hungry, though. What's for chow?"

  Anderson said quickly, "Nick doesn't want us to eat just now."

  "Thanks," muttered Paresi in vicious irony.

  "He's the doctor," said Ives good-naturedly. "But don't put it off too long, huh? This furnace needs stoking." He fisted his huge chest.

  "Well, this is encouraging," said Paresi.

  "It certainly is," said the Captain. "Maybe the breaking point is just the point of impact. After that the rebound, hm?"

  Paresi shook his head. "Breaking means breaking. Sometimes things just don't break."

  "Got to pass," said a voice. Johnny, the pilot, was stirring.

  "Ha!" Anderson's voice was exultant. "Here comes another one!"

  "How sure are you of that?" asked the doctor. To Johnny, he called, "Hiya, John?"

  "I got to pass," said Johnny worriedly. He swung his feet to the deck. "You see," he said earnestly, "being the head of your class doesn't make it any easier. You've got to keep that and pass the examinations too. You've got two jobs. Now, the guy who stands fourth, say--he has only one job to do."

  Anderson turned a blank face to Paresi, who made a silencing gesture. Johnny put his head in his hands and said, "When one variable varies directly as another, two pairs of their corresponding values are in proportion." He looked up. "That's supposed to be the keystone of all vector analysis, the man says, and you don't get to be a pilot without vector analysis. And it makes no sense to me. What am I going to do?"

  "Get some shuteye," said Paresi immediately. "You've been studying too hard. It'll make more sense to you in the morning."

  Johnny grinned and yawned at the same time, the worried wrinkles smoothing out. "Now that was a real educational remark, Martin, old chap," he said. He lay down and stretched luxuriously. "That I can understand. You may wear my famous maroon zipsuit." He turned his face away and was instantly asleep.

  "Who the hell is Martin?" Ives demanded. "Martin who?"

  "Shh. Probably his roommate in pre-pilot school."

  Anderson gaped. "You mean he's back in school?"

  "Doesn't it figure?" said Paresi sadly. "I told you that this situation is intolerable to him. If he can't escape in space, he'll escape in time. He hasn't the imagination to go forward, so he goes backward."

  Something scuttled across the floor. Ives whipped his feet off the floor and sat like some cartoon of a Buddha, clutching his ankles. "What in God's name was that?"

  "I didn't see anything," said Paresi.

  The Captain demanded, "What was it?"

  From the shadows, Hoskins said, "A mouse."

  "Nonsense."

  "I can't stand things that scuttle and slither and crawl," said Ives. His voice was suddenly womanish. "Don't let anything like that in here!"

  From the quarters aft came a faint scratching, a squeak. Ives turned pale. His wattles quivered.

  "Snap out of it, Ives," said Paresi coldly. "There isn't so much as a microbe on this ship that I haven't inventoried. Don't sit there like little Miss Muffet."

  "I know what I saw," said Ives. He rose suddenly, turned to the black wall, and bellowed, "Damn you, send something I can fight!"

  Two mice emerged from under the couch. One of them ran over Ives' foot. They disappeared aft, squeaking. Ives leapt straight up and came down standing on the couch. Anderson stepped back against the inboard bulkhead and stood rigid. Paresi walked with great purpose to the medical chest, took out a small black case and opened it.

  Ives cowered down to his knees and began to blubber openly, without attempting to hide it, without any articulate speech. Paresi approached him, half-concealing a small metal tube in his hand.

  A slight movement on the deck caught Anderson's eye. He was unable to control a shrill intake of breath as an enormous spider, hairy and swift, darted across to the couch and sprang. It landed next to Ives' knee, sprang again. Paresi swung at it and missed, his hand catching Ives heavily just under the armpit. The spider hit the deck, skidded, righted itself and, abruptly, was gone. Ives caved in around the impact point of Paresi's hand and curled up silently on the couch. Anderson ran to him.

  "He'll be all right now," said Paresi. "Forget it."

  "Don't tell me he fainted! Not Ives!"

  "Of course not." Paresi held up the little cylinder.

  "Anesthox! Why did you use that on him?"

  Paresi said irritably, "For the reason one usually uses anesthox. To knock a patient out for a couple of hours without hurting him."

  "Suppose you hadn't?"

  "How much more of that scuttle-and-slither treatment do you think he could have taken?"

  Anderson looked at the unconscious communications man. "Surely more than that." He looked up suddenly. "Where the hell did that vermin come from?"

  "Ah. Now you have it. He dislikes mice and spiders. But there was something special about these. They couldn't be here, and they were. He felt that it was a deliberate and personal attack. He couldn't have handled much more of it."

  "Where did they come from?" demanded the Captain again.

  "I don't know!" snapped Paresi. "Sorry, skipper ... I'm a little unnerved. I'm not used to seeing a patient's hallucinations. Not that clearly, at any rate."

  "They were Ives' hallucinations?"

  "Can you recall what was said just before they appeared?"

  "Uh ... something scuttled. A mouse."

  "It wasn't a mouse until someone said it was." The doctor turned and looked searchingly at Hoskins, who still sat quietly over his chess.

  "By God, it was Hoskins. Hoskins--what made you say that?"

  The engineer did not move nor answer. Paresi shook his head hopelessly. "Another retreat. It's no use, Captain."

  Anderson took a single step toward Hoskins, then obviously changed his mind. He shrugged and said, "All right. Something scuttled and Hoskins defined it. Let's accept that without reasoning it out. So who called up the spider?"

  "You did."

  "I did?"

  In a startling imitation of the Captain's voice, Paresi quoted, "Don't sit there like Miss Muffet!"

  "I'll be damned," said Anderson. "Maybe we'd all be better off saying nothing."

  Paresi said bitterly, "You think it makes any difference if we say what we think?"

  "Perhaps...."

  "Nup," said Paresi positively. "Look at the way this thing works. First it traps us, and then it shows us a growing darkness. Very basic. Then it starts picking on us, one by one. Johnny gets machines that don't work, when with his whole soul he worships machines that do. Ives gets a large charge of claustrophobia from the black stuff over there and goes into a flat spin."

  "He came out of it."

  "Johnny woke up too. In another subjective time-track. Quite harmless to--to Them. So they left him alone. But they lowered the boom on Ives when he showed any resilience. It's breaking point they're after, Captai
n. Nothing less."

  "Hoskins?"

  "I guess so," said Paresi tiredly. "Like Johnny he escaped from a problem he couldn't handle to one he could. Only instead of regressing he's turned to chess. I hope Johnny doesn't bounce back for awhile, yet. He's too--Captain! He's gone!"

  They turned and stared at Johnny's bunk. Or--where the bunk had been before the black wall had swelled inwards and covered it.

  V

  "... and there I was, Doctor, in the lobby of the hotel at noon, stark naked!"

  "Do you have these dreams often?"

  "I'm afraid so, Doctor. Am I--all right? I mean ..."

  "Let me ask you this question: Do you believe that these experiences are real?"

  "Of course not!"

  "Then, Madam, you are, by definition, sane; for insanity, in the final analysis, is the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal."

  Paresi and the Captain ran aft together, and together they stopped four paces away from the bulging blackness.

  "Johnny!" The Captain's voice cracked with the agonized effort of his cry. He stepped to the black wall, pounded it with the heel of his hand.

  "He won't hear you," said Paresi bleakly. "Come back, Captain. Come back."

  "Why him? Why Johnny? They've done everything they could to Johnny; you said so yourself!"

  "Come back," Paresi said again, soothing. Then he spoke briskly: "Can't you see they're not doing anything to him? They're doing it to us!"

  The Captain stood rigidly, staring at the featureless intrusion. He turned presently. "To us," he parroted. Then he stumbled blindly to the doctor, who put a firm hand on his biceps and walked with him to the forward acceleration couch.

  The Captain sat down heavily with his back to this new invasion. Paresi stood by him reflectively, then walked silently to Hoskins.

  The engineer sat over his chessboard in deep concentration. The far edge of the board seemed to be indefinite, lost partially in the mysterious sable curtain which covered the bulkhead.

  "Hoskins."

  No answer.

  Paresi put his hand on Hoskins' shoulder. Hoskins' head came up slowly. He did not turn it. His gaze was straight ahead into the darkness. But at least it was off the board.

  "Hoskins," said Paresi, "why are you playing chess?"

  "Chess is chess," said Hoskins quietly. "Chess may symbolize any conflict, but it is chess and it will remain chess."

  "Who are you playing with?"

  No answer.

  "Hoskins--we need you. Help us."

  Hoskins let his gaze travel slowly downward again until it was on the board. "The word is not the thing," he said. "The number is not the thing. The picture, the ideograph, the symbol--these are not the thing. Conversely ..."

  "Yes, Hoskins."

  Paresi waited. Hoskins did not move or speak. Paresi put his hand on the man's shoulder again, but now there was no response. He cursed suddenly, bent and brought up his hand with a violent smash and sent board and pieces flying.

  When the clatter had died down Hoskins said pleasantly, "The pieces are not the game. The symbols are not the thing." He sat still, his eyes fixed on the empty chair where the board had been. He put out a hand and moved a piece where there was no piece to a square which was no longer there. Then he sat and waited.

  Paresi, breathing heavily, backed off, whirled, and went back to the Captain.

  Anderson looked up at him, and there was the glimmer of humor in his eyes. "Better sit down and talk about something different, Doctor."

  Paresi made an animal sound, soft and deep, far back in his throat, plumped down next to the Captain, and kneaded his hands together for a moment. Then he smiled. "Quite right, skipper. I'd better."

  They sat quietly for a moment. Then the Captain prompted, "About the different breaking point...."

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "Perhaps you can put your finger on the thing that makes different men break in different ways, for different reasons. I mean, Johnny's case seemed pretty clear cut, and what you haven't explained about Hoskins, Hoskins has demonstrated pretty clearly. About Ives, now--we can skip that for the time he'll be unconscious. But if you can figure out where you and I might break, why--we'd know what to look for."

  "You think that would help?"

  "We'd be prepared."

  Paresi looked at him sharply. "Let's hypothesize a child who is afraid of the dark. Ask him and he might say that there's a something in dark places that will jump out at him. Then assure him, with great authority, that not only is he right but that it's about to jump any minute, and what have you done?"

  "Damage," nodded the Captain. "But you wouldn't say that to the child. You'd tell him there was nothing there. You'd prove there wasn't."

  "So I would," agreed the doctor. "But in our case I couldn't do anything of the kind. Johnny broke over machines that really didn't work. Hoskins broke over phenomena that couldn't be measured nor understood. Ives broke over things that scuttled and crawled. Subjectively real phenomena, all of them. Whatever basic terrors hide in you and in me will come to face us, no matter how improbable they might be. And you want me to tell you what they are. No, skipper. Better leave them in your subconscious, where you've buried them."

  "I'm not afraid," said the Captain. "Tell me, Paresi! At least I'll know. I'd rather know. I'd so damn much rather know!"

  "You're sure I can tell you?"

  "Yes."

  "I haven't psychoanalyzed you, you know. Some of these things are very hard to--"

  "You do know, don't you?"

  "Damn you, yes!" Paresi wet his lips. "All right, then. I may be doing a wrong thing here.... You've cuddled up to the idea that I'm a very astute character who automatically knows about things like this, and it's been a comfort to you. Well, I've got news for you. I didn't figure all these things out. I was told."

  "Told?"

  "Yes, told," said Paresi angrily. "Look, this is supposed to be restricted information, but the Exploration Service doesn't rely on individual aptitude tests alone to make up a crew. There's another factor--call it an inaptitude factor. In its simplest terms, it comes to this: that a crew can't work together only if each member is the most efficient at his job. He has to need the others, each one of the others. And the word need predicates lack. In other words, none of us is a balanced individual. And the imbalances are chosen to match and blend, so that we will react as a balanced unit. Sure I know Johnny's bugaboos, and Hoskins', and yours. They were all in my indoctrination treatments. I know all your case histories, all your psychic push-buttons."

  "And yours?" demanded the Captain.

  "Hoskins, for example," said Paresi. "Happily married, no children. Physically inferior all his life. Repressed desire for pure science which produced more than a smattering of a great many sciences and made him a hell of an engineer. High idealistic quotient; self sacrifice. Look at him playing chess, making of this very real situation a theoretical abstraction ... like leaving a marriage for deep space.

  "Johnny we know about. Brought up with never failing machines. Still plays with them as if they were toys, and like any imaginative child, turns to his toys for reassurance. He needs to be a hero, hence the stars....

  "Ives ... always fat. Learned to be easy-going, learned to laugh with when others were laughing at, and bottling up pressures every time it happened. A large appetite. He's here to satisfy it; he's with us so he can eat up the galaxies...."

  There was a long pause. "Go on," said the Captain. "Who's next? You?"

  "You," said the doctor shortly. "You grew up with a burning curiosity about the nature of things. But it wasn't a scientist's curiosity; it was an aesthete's. You're one of the few people alive who refused a subsidized education and worked your way through advanced studies as a crewman on commercial space-liners. You became one of the youngest professors of philosophy in recent history. You made a romantic marriage and your wife died in childbirth. Since then--almost a hundred missions with E.A.S., refusing numerous
offers of advancement. Do I have to tell you what your bugaboo is now?"

  "No," said Anderson hoarsely. "But I'm ... not afraid of it. I had no idea your ..." He swallowed. "... information was that complete."

  "I wish it wasn't. I wish I had some things to--wonder about," said Paresi with surprising bitterness.

  The Captain looked at him shrewdly. "Go on with your case histories."

  "I've finished."

  "No you haven't." When Paresi did not answer, the Captain nudged him. "Johnny, Ives, Hoskins, me. Haven't you forgotten someone?"

  "No I haven't," snarled Paresi, "and if you expect me to tell you why a psychologist buries himself in the stars, I'm not going to do it."

  "I don't want to be told anything so general," said the Captain. "I just want to know why you came out here."

  Paresi scowled. The Captain looked away from him and hazarded, "Big frog in a small pond, Nick?"

  Paresi snorted.

  Anderson asked, "Women don't like you, do they, Nick?"

  Almost inaudibly, Paresi said, "Better cut it out, skipper."

  Anderson said, "Closest thing to being a mother--is that it?"

  Paresi went white.

  The Captain closed his eyes, frowned, and at last said, "Or maybe you just want to play God."

  "I'm going to make it tough for you," said Paresi between his teeth. "There are several ways you can break, just as there are several ways to break a log--explode it, crush it, saw it, burn it.... One of the ways is to fight me until you win. Me, because there's no one else left to fight you. So--I won't fight with you. And you're too rational to attack me unless I do. That is the thing that will make it tough. If you must break, it'll have to be some other way."

  "Is that what I'm doing?" the Captain asked with sudden mildness. "I didn't know that. I thought I was trying to get your own case history out of you, that's all. What are you staring at?"

  "Nothing."

  There was nothing. Where there had been forward viewports, there was nothing. Where there had been controls, the communication station, the forward acceleration panels and storage lockers; the charts and computers and radar gear--there was nothing. Blackness; featureless, silent, impenetrable. They sat on one couch by one wall, to which was fixed one table. Around them was empty floor and a blackness. The chess-player faced into it, and perhaps he was partly within it; it was difficult to see.