All Judgment Fled

by James White

  "This is a stupid plan," gasped McCullough as he knocked away a spear which was coming at his face.

  "Since it was your plan," said Berryman from the other side of the cage, "I must decline to comment."

  "Hold still, everyone," said Drew. "I want to try something . . ."

  During the few minutes' pause while he explained and demonstrated his idea, the mesh, particularly the places which had been patched and reinforced, took a savage beating. Reinforcing cable stretched and snapped, lengths of piping buckled and began slipping out of position, and it would be only a matter of time before the Twos were inside the cage with them.

  Following Drew's instructions, they launched themselves like ungainly swordfish from the panel of the dispenser, arms extended stiffly before them and hands gripping their weapons. They jumped in unison so as to minimize the danger of spearing each other, the idea being to aim themselves in the general direction of their target and at the last moment guide the tip of their spears through the mesh. The creatures possessed enough weight and inertia not to be pushed away before a deep wound was inflicted and, since the combined length of arms and spear was much greater than that of the e-t's horn or tentacles, there would be little danger of retaliation.

  It worked.

  After the first few abortive attempts it became a drill. They each chose a target, kicked themselves away from the food dispenser cabinet, and the three targets died. But there were always more to take their places, squeezing tentacles through the wire, jabbing with that long, obscene horn and gobbling like frantic turkeys. For McCullough it became a continuing nightmare of killing the same Two over and over again. He had lost count of the times they had launched themselves from the dispenser, now slippery with a scummy mixture of food, water and e-t blood, to dive through air that was like a thick soup of the same recipe, to kill that Two once again.

  A number of the white-furred Threes had squeezed between the Twos and were clinging to the wire and absorbing -- McCullough could not see exactly how -- the streamers and gobbets of water and food drifting toward them. There were even two of them inside the cage, having wriggled through a loosened patch, flapping and undulating through the air like great furry sting-rays. All the men had been careful not to kill the type Three aliens -- after seeing how one of them had dealt with a Two they considered them allies rather than enemies. In addition, not killing them introduced a certain amount of discrimination into the exercise so that they could think of it as being something less than a brutal, bloody massacre.

  McCullough tried to think of other things while the slaughter proceeded.

  Between mealtimes the animal enclosure had been surprisingly clean, so that the dispenser cabinet must also fulfill the duty of a waste-disposal unit. But while the waste water and food would no doubt be reprocessed, the material which could not be reclaimed would be pumped to the outer hull and disposed of, which meant that the plumbing associated with the waste-disposal system would be metal piping which, because it did not have to carry an electrical current, would not have to be insulated at any point between the dispenser and the hull outlet. As soon as this was all over they would be able to hook onto it with their suit antennae and contact Walters.

  He felt rather pleased with himself for being able to reason things out like this while engaged in the not quite routine job of killing Twos. Then suddenly there were no more targets. The still-living Twos were retreating along the corridors, dragging the bodies of their dead friends with them when they could so that they would not go hungry, and the dispenser, which had ceased producing half an hour since, went dramatically into reverse.

  Heavy protective panels slid aside to reveal large openings covered with safety grills. Drifting food, water and other debris moved toward the openings, picking up speed as they went. So great was the force of suction that the air made a high-pitched whistle as it went through the grill and within a few minutes the cage was clear. But there was more to come. From the eight corners of the enclosure a thin, foaming, sharp-smelling liquid spurted out, immediately followed by eight high-pressure sprays of water. By the time the dispenser had shut itself off, the men and the two furry Threes inside the cage were like the air, clean, fresh and slightly damp.

  Outside the cage dead Twos drifted and spun slowly, stiff-tentacled, like fossilized starfish. Above, below and all around them the mesh was thick with them, as if it was some kind of alien flypaper which had not been changed for too long a time.

  Berryman linked his antenna to the dispenser plumbing and made contact with Walters. He tried to speak but obviously could not get a word in edgeways. Watching, McCullough saw him close his eyes tightly as if there was something he did not want to see, something much worse than the ghastly spectacle all around them. Finally he spoke.

  "We're in trouble," he said dully. "Walters is -- upset. Brady has been working on him again, and that girl. She sounds a nice girl, he says, but she confuses him. The first supply rocket is off course. She didn't actually tell him that we were bad boys and if we didn't start doing as we were told again the other two might miss as well. It was just that public opinion was touchy and it was difficult to make promises when the men at the Ship kept messing things up. He says she mentioned some very personal stuff, material he never expected to hear mentioned, privileged information. He's thinking of all the people who have heard everything she said -- the men on the Venus station and all their people in Russia. Everybody will soon know. He's very unhappy about it."

  Berryman stopped and took a deep breath. Fatigue and tension made it into a tremendous, ludicrous yawn, but nobody laughed. He went on, "So he blabbed everything to Brady. Your new theory, our plans, everything. He says he couldn't help it. He says he wants to be a good boy again so's they'll let him go home . . ."

  chapter eighteen

  For three days they barricaded themselves inside the dispenser cage during mealtimes and killed Twos. As expected, the number of e-t casualties diminished sharply each day. This was, of course, due to the fact of there being ample food available outside the cage in the form of previously slain animals. On the fourth day they tried a different approach.

  A series of food caches were built up in compartments opening off the corridors leading from the enclosure to one of the hull airlocks. By this time they had discovered how to turn off the food dispensers at will and they had towed the dead e-t's to the nearest lock and dumped them into space, so that the Twos which remained in the Ship were becoming very hungry.

  The operation of placing a trail of food between the enclosure and the lock chamber, during the few minutes before mealtimes when it would have its maximum effect, was a dangerous one but well worth the risks. The end result was a lock chamber crowded with Twos fighting over a small food cache so fiercely that they were usually oblivious of the fact that they had suddenly been sealed in and that Hollis or McCullough were outside the hull, opening the compartment to space.

  They bagged as many as six Twos at a time that way.

  On the ninth day McCullough decided that their original purpose of drastically reducing the numbers of Twos roaming the Ship had been accomplished and they could all return to more constructive forms activity.

  The decision on what to do about Walters was not so easily taken, but McCullough could not put off making it any longer.

  Punishment or retribution of any kind was ruled out, of course, since that would involve varying degrees of criticism or rejection by his friends. Alone, as he had been on the P-ship for weeks on end, the pilot was particularly sensitive to this form of punishment, and he had already soaked up more than enough of it from General Brady. Dirty fighting and psychological warfare, so far as McCullough was concerned, were becoming synonymous.

  "I should have come to see you sooner," he told Walters as he opened his visor after passing through the inner seal. He waved vaguely toward the port and the frigid, decompressed Twos drifting outside and added, "We were very busy."

  "Yes," said the pilot, smiling. "I t
ook some very good pictures of the spring-cleaning . . ."

  Walters' voice was quiet and pleasant, his features relaxed and his hands and fingers yellow and bloodless, so tightly was he gripping the sides of his couch.

  Awkwardly, McCullough said, "I won't say that we don't blame you, not again. Telling the truth too often can make it sound like a lie. And, well, don't worry if it happens to you again. You are aware of what they are trying to do to you so it won't be so easy for them next time, and they might even change their approach."

  "They have," said Walters. "Just before you arrived, that girl told me they would not divert the other supply rockets no matter what fool stunt we pulled or how much trouble we caused them. Obviously this news is supposed to make us all break down and weep out of sheer gratitude that mamma still loves us even when we've been naughty.

  "I wish I hadn't read so many psychology books," he ended bitterly. "It has made me cynical."

  McCullough laughed. He said, "Cynicism is a very good defense. Throw in a little sympathy for the enemy -- Brady, that is, not the Twos -- while a good, hefty shot of megalomania might help as well. You start by doubting everything they tell you and questioning all their motives, at the same time trying to appreciate the general's position, but not to the extent that you fail to realize the true importance of the part we have to play in all this. So you doubt Brady, you feel sorry for him and, in your quiet, respectful fashion, you also feel superior to him. Get the idea?"

  "Of late," said Walters doubtfully, "I have become much less quiet and respectful."

  "That is because you haven't been feeling superior enough," said McCullough drily. He went on, "We are the experts in this particular situation. It is ridiculous to expect us to obey people who know less about it than we do -- people who, if they were to regain complete control over us, are under so much pressure from so many different directions that they are incapable of giving proper orders anyway."

  McCullough waited then, without appearing to wait, wondering if the pilot would seize the bait or even if he was aware of it. He was and he did.

  "You mentioned them regaining complete control over us," said Walters quickly. "Other than the control, which is as you know far from complete, imposed by service discipline and the habit of obedience, how can they influence us?"

  "This is rather awkward for me," said McCullough, preparing to slide imperceptibly from questionable, rule-of-thumb psychology into outright fiction, "because I didn't want to talk about this until I was surer of my facts. But it seems to me that we may have been the subjects of a form of conditioning which was designed to support and guide us as well as furnishing Prometheus with a large measure of control. By this I mean that it was subtle enough not to interfere with mentation and at the same time leave us unaware that we were being helped and controlled. How exactly this conditioning was implanted I don't know, although I suspect that the hours we spent listening to canned lectures in the simulator may have had something to do with it. But the method used to reinforce the conditioning and at the same time control us is, I'm fairly sure, the radio transmissions from the Cape.

  "The mechanics of the process," McCullough went on seriously, "might involve the use of certain key words and phrases but would, I'm pretty sure, be more likely to depend on the tonal quality of voice used -- they could heterodyne their AF with sub- or ultrasonics to obtain a kind of subliminal effect on the audio frequency. But for various reasons, the conditioning broke down or was considerably weakened and they lost a large measure of their control over us."

  Natural radio interference with the signal could have been one factor, McCullough went on to explain, and the constant relaying of transmissions through the suit radios had probably attenuated the effect even more. It was not surprising, therefore, that the men who had Control's orders relayed to them from the P-ship had been able to exercise discretion in the matter of obeying orders, while Walters, who was in direct radio contact, had never had a chance of resisting them.

  "That makes me feel much better," said the pilot when McCullough had finished talking. "It even gives me an excuse for future misdemeanors, if any. But surely Brady's psychological weapon is two-edged. It caused to be made public information which he would have preferred to remain secret; namely, the extermination -- massacre, he calls it -- of the Twos. Rather than risk the chance of the listening world hearing something even more unpleasant, he might leave me alone."

  "I doubt it," said McCullough.

  "But if he goes on," said Walters angrily, "it means he is pushing a psychological abort button! He will be softening us up until, instead of being able to think and carry out complex technical activities, we'll be just so many jellies unable to think or act at all, much less obey orders. Is he trying to wreck the Project? Isn't it also possible that he could push a button and ignite our return fuel supply? Was provision made for this in case the e-t's turned out to be baddies and threatened the security of the world?

  "All of a sudden I don't trust Brady, and I dislike being treated like part of the hardware."

  He broke off as he became aware of McCullough's expression, then said quickly, "I don't really believe any of that, but there is an easy way to deal with the possibility. Next time we're in contact I'll tell the listening world that if there is an unexplained explosion out here it will have been caused by Brady." He laughed suddenly. "But your real danger is me! With this information and all the spare time at my disposal I might analyze and reproduce this conditioning effect. My word would be law then, and I could wrap you all around my little finger!"

  "As I said," McCullough smiled as he turned to go, "a little megalomania is a good thing . . ."

  On the way back to the Ship, McCullough found himself questioning some of his own motives. He had been telling lies to the pilot, suggesting that Walters had not been really responsible for his apparent treachery, by blaming everything on a form of conditioning which might not even be workable; and not solely as an act of kindness. McCullough himself needed support and reassurance. He wanted as many people on his side as possible, which meant that he could not risk Walters going over to Brady. If the pilot sided actively with Control instead of the men in the Ship, McCullough could not bear to think of the consequences. In the frighteningly simple world of emotional relationships and physical survival, Walters' friendship could be assured only if he was to become completely and utterly hostile to the general.

  And so McCullough himself was guilty of pressing psychological push buttons and treating a human being as part of the hardware. Worse, he was pressing them without fully understanding what he was doing or what the end result might be. Worst of all was the fact that what he was doing did not trouble McCullough's conscience as much or as often as it should.

  His conscience seemed to be developing thick and widespread calluses. He wondered how long it would be before he became completely decivilized.

  Progress within the Ship during the next few days was erratic. Berryman came out in a livid, itching rash which lasted for one whole day and caused McCullough to have horrible visions of everyone going down with the e-t equivalent of bubonic plague carried by dead Twos, before it faded completely. It was only then that Hollis, Drew and Berryman admitted smugly to eating a few ounces of alien porridge every day for the past week. McCullough warned them of the possibility of dangerous long-term cumulative effects -- the fact that Berryman's allergy symptoms had cleared up in so short a time did not necessarily mean that the food was completely nontoxic. But then McCullough realized that he was beginning to sound like General Brady and that the three men were expecting compliments instead of criticism, so he added gravely that the cumulative effect of the toxins would probably take the form of a long, wasting, ultimately fatal disease indistinguishable from old age.

  Spurred on by this act of moral cowardice they immediately announced plans for domesticating the Threes . . .

  They did it by first using the porridge to gain their trust, by punishment to teach them not to wrap t
heir furry bodies around a human being's head -- although there was no real danger here as they could be peeled off easily with human fingers, and the punishment was very light -- and by petting, particularly when it took the form of combing their fur with stiffened fingers. Several of the Threes became attached, literally, to Berryman and Drew, and Hollis and McCullough began picking out Threes and trying to make friends with them.