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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..38fade5 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63997 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63997) diff --git a/old/63997-0.txt b/old/63997-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7cafac1..0000000 --- a/old/63997-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2208 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Martian Nightmare, by Bryce Walton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: Martian Nightmare - -Author: Bryce Walton - -Release Date: December 09, 2020 [EBook #63997] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIAN NIGHTMARE *** - - - - - MARTIAN NIGHTMARE - - A novelet by BRYCE WALTON - - Three tough, cynical fighting-men of - Earth--Danton, Keith, Van Ness--rose - from their tomb of forgetfulness ... to - find themselves space-wrecked on Mars, - the last hope of mankind against the - evil and immortal Oligarchs. It was - weird, incredible, it was a horrible - dream ... but it was real. Or was it? - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories January 1951. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -_His name was Burton. John R. Burton._ - -_He was as happy as anyone could expect to be. His wife loved him and -he loved his wife. Their children were very well adjusted, as was -everyone of course in the New World system._ - -_Burton worked ten hours a week in a coal mine, though the job was -merely one demanding the overseeing of machines. The rest of the week -was one of leisure devoted to gardening, hobbies, play, music. There -was no more hate, no violence, no feelings of insecurity. It wasn't -that everyone loved everyone else particularly. It was just that no one -was afraid of the future anymore._ - -_Sometimes though, Burton had bad dreams. Sometimes they were very bad. -In these dreams it seemed that he was somebody else. Someone who--_ - -_But after he woke up he never remembered the dreams, so, he thought, -maybe they didn't matter._ - -_Burton guessed that what he was in the dreams was too horrible to -remember._ - - * * * * * - -Danton sat in the chair before the control bank and stared at his hands -until they seemed to stop shaking. It had been a long, long way to -Mars. A long, long time in which to think. - -Of, for example, who had he been for the last hundred years? He had -been someone, someone with a name, a job, a ritual, a wife, kids, -everything. A valuable worker, a nice round peg in one of countless -millions of nice round holes. Who and what you had been for the past -hundred years was certainly a question that could bother you, he -thought. - -He glanced at Keith and Van Ness. It wasn't bothering them now. They -had been two other people for a century also--but they weren't bothered -now. They had passed out cold on pre-New World bourbon. - -They had better snap out of it, Danton thought a little desperately. -The ship had about reached Mars. They had better get up from there. - -His hands started shaking again. He got a cigarette lighted and -the opiate stuff crawling in his throat. He closed his eyes. For -an instant it felt better, hiding in there behind the darkness of -his closed lids. But then the thoughts came faster, like schools of -irritated fish. - -A final war like the last one, destructive beyond memory anyway, was -one most of the survivors had been more than happy to forget. They had -welcomed reconditioning, the moving into the PLAN, into the New World -system of non-violence. People became, largely, depending on the amount -of reconditioning necessary, someone else. You can't change solidly -laid foundations of thought and still be the same person. - -So it was a New World. In it the people were New. Everything starting -over again from scratch. A small decentralized population. Beneficent -leaders, masters of psychology. No weapons, not even in museums, no -conception of war, no fears of tomorrow. There were no enemies on -Earth. In fact, the mind was conditioned so that the concept of an -enemy was impossible. Outer space was merely a region of lovely stars -on clear nights. - -Of the few New System soldiers left, most were willing to be -reconditioned. Three of them hadn't been willing. Richard Danton, Don -Keith, Dwight Van Ness. They had degenerated into drunken pariahs, -people without a group with which to identify themselves, lonely, lost, -aging and ailing. Finally they did accept reconditioning. Not because -they wanted to. But because they had to or go completely insane. Seers, -Secretary of Social Security, said this was bad, but that they might -be able to bring about an adjustment. It would be difficult, he said, -because of involuntary conditioning, but he would see what he could do. - -Evidently he had done all right. Danton couldn't remember the -subsequent hundred years. But he had been someone. They had blotted him -out, fixed him up with another name, twisted ganglia, altered synapsis, -probed lobotomy here and there. Everything went, name, identity, the -entire business inside and out. - -But all the time, Richard Danton had been there, a pattern. A circuit -disconnected. When they had needed him, they had merely twisted ganglia -back, altered synapsis, probed lobotomy again. And after a hundred -years here he was again, resurrected, like a ghost. And when they were -done with him, after his assignment was finished, he would go back into -the grave, and that someone else would go on living. - -But maybe not this time. Maybe not again. This could be a dangerous -assignment for him and Keith and Van Ness. They might never get back to -Earth, and that might be all right--for them. - -He would rather die fighting, as a soldier, than keep on living as -someone else, someone he didn't even know. - -According to Seers there was a chance that the final war had not been -quite so final. The Oligarch Council had evidently escaped Earth -in secretly constructed spaceships, destined for Mars. If they had -actually gotten to Mars, and had survived, they were there still, and -it would be only a matter of time until they returned to Earth and -destroyed it. - -Other factors made it even more complicated. Earth couldn't defend -itself, for one thing. It had no weapons. It had no human being capable -of manning a weapon if it had one. Seers had said that the sanity of -the world depended on absolute secrecy. The population was never to -know anything at all, never to suspect that they might be threatened. -Such knowledge, Seers said, would destroy the New System. The people -weren't psychologically capable of receiving knowledge of insecurity, -not for a long time yet. - -But what bothered Danton was--_who have I been for the last hundred -years?_ - - * * * * * - -Keith was crawling across the floor, gasping at an oxygen inhalor. The -small, thin-faced and cynical soldier got up and sat down. He grinned. -"Are we in Valhalla yet, Captain?" - -"You still take this whole thing as a joke, Keith?" - -"The psyche boys are good," Keith said. "Plenty good. And I still say -this is just delusion they're feeding us, on suggestion tape, after -good shots of hypnosene." - -"Why would they do that?" - -"They tried to recondition us, make good little workers out of us. -But it didn't take. We don't remember, sure--but that's no sign we -were successfully changed. I say we weren't. I got it all figured out, -Captain. They're killing us. Mercifully, of course, making us die -happy. But we're dying just the same, dying in a dream. A dream of -soldiering, of heroics, of sacrifice and high honor. Just the way we'd -want it. And instead of waking up, we'll really die, in the line of -duty. Like a good soldier should." - -"But--" - -"I'm not blaming them. I think it's a fine idea. For one thing, we -aren't sure it's not really happening, so we'll have to accept it as -truth. It's the real thing any way you look at it." Danton saw the -grin fade slowly across the mask of Keith's face. "Are we really here, -Captain?" - -Danton peered into the scope again. "Yes," he whispered. - -"Mars, the god of war," Keith said, "awaits his favorite sons." - -A big dull reddish ball, like an eyeball, a blood-shot eye. The cone -of its giant shadow streaming out, a quadrant of the heavens. And then -all at once, as if the eye were closing, it darkened except where the -sun splattered down on its far half, a pool of sickly light radiating -outward into dissipating orange and brown. - -Danton thought of the Oligarchs down there, or what remained of them. -The Oligarchs and the slaves they would have brought with them in their -ships. In a hundred years they could have multipled considerably. -And the Oligarchs themselves, the last of the old world type of -faithless human madness--essentially amoral, no empathy, tremendous -egotism--filled with the old ideas of class superiority. They destroyed -with utter casualness. What advanced stage had their paranoid culture -reached in a century? It wasn't something one wanted to think about. - -The planet was reaching up like a clenched red fist. He felt the -impulse to duck. Sweat ran down his face, itched along his ribs. A -hundred years was a long time to be someone else, and now Danton was -wondering if he dared trust himself anymore as a soldier. His hands -moved again over the controls. - -The wrecked Oligarch ship had been found off the Mindanao Deeps by a -sub-sea exploring party, brought up, reconditioned, studied. There were -records and documents in it, and from these Seers made his decision. -He brought back Danton. In secret, of course; send them to out of -living graves. They were trained, made into astrogators, cosmologists. -Everything in absolute secrecy, of course. And after the ship blasted -off for Mars, only the three of them and Seers retained any knowledge -that there had been a ship at all. The reconditioners had fixed that -up. Those who had found it, the scientists who had studied it, no one -remembered a thing. - -"Find out what you can, then come back," Seers had said. "Don't fight. -If you fight, you might never come back. We would never know then -what to do. We can prepare ships like this one, Danton. In secret, of -course, send them to Mars. But we don't want to take a chance like that -unless we have to. If activity like that ever leaked out to the people, -that would be the end of the New System. A sudden blast of insecurity -would wreck our delicately balanced new order." - -It was a fine ship, Danton thought. The Oligarchs knew machines. They -worshiped them. The ship was also a monstrous arsenal, a hurtling -fountain of destruction, loaded with hydrogen bombs and something -called a proton cannon that could curl a planet up in space like a moth -in a flame. - -Power, death, throbbing around him, hot and terrible ... the ordnance -console key inches from his fingertips. Keith had said he didn't want -to go back to Earth. Not and face all that business again. Why not let -go, blast, die right here when the attack came? That was a soldier's -way! - -"I'm going to throw her into an orbit," Danton said. - -He saw the weird swirling light of the moons then, the moons of Mars, -as the ship slowed in its orbit. Heavy cloud-banks drifting low in -colossal valleys. And then he saw the ships. Three of them rising like -giant silver beetles. - - * * * * * - -He didn't know whether he deliberately bungled and failed to lift the -ship out of its orbit in time, or whether--but psychologically there -weren't such things as accidental blunders. Anyway, now it was too -late. Maybe everyone on earth would be wiped out because of it, but -Danton blundered, moved too slowly. From the ships a white cloud of -released energy flashed, blinded, billowed. His ship bucked and swerved -and lurched. - -Keith whispered tensely, "I'll take that ordnance, Captain. _I'll take -it!_" - -Van Ness weaved upright, sucking at an oxygen capsule, mumbling. - -Danton said, "They're not firing now. They're curious, maybe. Let them -get in close. They'll come in, try to identify us. It must have just -occurred to them that this is one of their old ships. Then we fire, -clear our course, and run." - -"Run, run, get your gun!" Van Ness mumbled. - -Danton swung the view-plate. The ships hovered behind, slightly above, -coasting, waiting, watching. Danton laughed aloud. For a hundred years -he had been dead. Now he was alive. Really alive. His fingers were -hot and wet as he gripped the T-bar, and he saw that the ships were -improved types. He couldn't escape back to earth now, even if he wanted -to. And he didn't have time now to figure out whether he wanted to or -not. It was too late now for thinking. He preferred it that way. He -said, "They're coming in close now. Keith, this is it!" - -Keith nestled into the ordnance chair like a bird. His body was tight -with anticipated pleasure. His fingers hooked, spread, began to tremble -individually. Death was there, all around. - -Without looking up, seemingly without reason, he asked, "You were -engaged to marry a very pretty girl when the war ended, weren't you, -Captain? Someone named Mara?" - -Danton hadn't forgotten. "That's right. I couldn't explain it to -her--why I wouldn't be reconditioned. She married someone else. A -cybernetics engineer, named George." - -"The hell with them, all of them!" Keith said. "You wouldn't want to go -back there. That's what they all think about us, Captain. While they -need us we're great guys, and afterwards--don't touch. No, Captain, -whether this is delusion or the real thing, this is how we were meant -to go. We're lucky, Captain!" - -Keith manipulated the ordnance keys. Danton's eyes went blind before -the incredible flash of kinetic energy release. His eyes closed. Music, -lifting, whirling round and round and he was rocking with gentle joyous -softness in a cradle of death.... - -But Danton got his hands up against the darkness, held on to it, pushed -it this way and that, got it away from his eyes. He crawled back into -the chair, blinked into the viewer. He didn't see the ships now, -anywhere. Only the great clenched fist of the war-world, the red world, -rushing up, growing with a silent onrushing fury, looming, broadening. - -Keith's fingers dug into Danton's shoulder. "I got 'em, Captain! Burned -them out like ants on a hot plate. They burned so beautiful...." - -The ship had suffered from the repercussion; nothing responded right. -Danton shoved more intensifier units into the stern tubes, straightened -her a little with a couple of bursts from the steering jets, then -power-dived with the tubes roaring. - -He fought the controls. The numbness, the roaring, the intolerable -rising temperature of the walls. Fighting for some sort of balance -to get the ship hurtling in at least a low-level orbit. The walls -quivered, then the whining, sighing, falling through a dense sea of -twisting vapor. - -Danton watched the altimeter, the power gauges, manipulated the -power-tube stops. His body was an unfeeling, unconscious circuit of -responses. Somehow he got the ship at vertical. The plate brought -the landscape up to him, presented it to him like the unveiling work -of a mad artist. Up-pushing violence of mountain walls, a valley, -forest, dense alien looking stuff, thick and high and entangled and -phosphorescent with a pinkish glow drifting like the reflection of a -vast roaring furnace. - -And--a senseless glimpse of something archaic, too primitive to be -real. Only a glimpse, so that immediately after, he decided he must -have seen something else. A long trail of armored cars. Amtracs, it -seemed, bristling with ancient types of guns. Armored cars. Amtracs. A -few hundred years ago they had had them in Earth museums. - -The ship roared and shook. The scream of metal penetrated Danton's -skull, became part of an iron ball grinding in his head.... - -No sentience possessed him now, no mind, no body, no hate or joy or -hope or confused indecision about his twisted motivations. He thought -simply, death possesses me. - - * * * * * - -But death was only nearby. Life was a power-tube, dimming to a dull -yellow, flickering dangerously. Movement was without real substance. -Shapes, voices vague and distant. He heard Van Ness and Keith talking -once. Someone yelled. There was the burning sigh of the electronic -rifles they had evidently been able to salvage. - -The light brightened slowly. He sat up. Keith and Van Ness stood -beside him. Clothing torn, faces scratched and bleeding. Keith's mouth -was tight, his jaw muscles rigid and pale. He turned, held his rifle -steady. Van Ness wanted to know if Danton felt all right now, anything -else wrong besides the knock on the head. - -Danton said he didn't know. "I thought it would be cold here." He was -sweating. The air was muggy, quiet. The lake was huge before him, the -mountains beyond it gigantic and blue-misted. The lake was glassy and -still. Behind him was thick forest, reddish leaves, high trees, thickly -entangled, odd flowers, shadows. A feeling of things alive--but of -a cautious kind of living. Little eyes waiting and watching in the -bushes, on the fringes. - -"Out of this valley, on the desert, it would be plenty cold," Keith -said. - -Danton asked then, "What happened?" - -Keith watched the forest warily. "We hit the lake out there, had to -swim in." - -"So now what?" Van Ness wanted to know. - -"We still have a kind of advantage," Danton said. "They don't know who -we are, or where. They know nothing." - -"Neither do we," Keith said. "There's a chance Seers was wrong about -the Oligarchs. Maybe their culture has changed. Maybe they don't intend -to attack Earth." - -"Their ego couldn't stand to forget their defeat," Danton said. "They -had a highly advanced technology that could conceivably control any -environment, rather than the other way round. In some ways they were -ahead of the rest of the world." - -Keith grinned. "That's right, Captain. You're so right." - -Danton looked Keith in the eyes. "You mentioned earlier, something -about sometimes thinking you should be an Oligarch. You really feel -that way, Keith?" - -"Why not? We didn't have a choice whose side we would fight on. We were -conditioned from the time we were old enough to think, and we fought -the Oligarchs for fifty years. Three-quarters of the world's population -rubbed out. And then we had a world that didn't want us--unless we were -three other people. We fought to destroy the old values, help build a -new society. But let's face it, Captain--those old values we destroyed -were our own! We helped destroy our own kind of world. So what does it -mean? It means we should have fought _for_ the Oligarchs, and that we -really sympathize with them. Their system is a war system, probably -still is. With them, there would always be a place for a fighting-man. -A soldier among the Oligarchs could expect honor and privilege." - -Danton had nothing to say. He had thought in a similar way more than -once. - -Van Ness said, "Wrong, Keith. We've committed ourselves, and now we -have to go on to the end of the road." - -The words drifted with the wind across the glassy lake. You walked -along the road, Danton thought, while the road was visible and you -walked it to the end. And neither road nor the end was your own -choice. Maybe the only glory was in walking it bravely. But maybe, as -Keith had said, they had been on the wrong road. The Oligarchs, had -they conquered, would have always provided an honorable place for a -soldier. Banners, flags, women, the rise of battle fever, the ecstatic -explosions of power, the enemy dead. - -Keith fired once into the forest wall. A shape fluttered away over -the tops of the trees, then fell, crying at first, then screaming -like a woman. "We've been followed by those things for about a mile -along the shore edge," Keith said. "They don't seem friendly. They're -intelligent. Big, with wings, and old-style weapons. Very old. -Explosive powder stuff." - -"Martians," said Van Ness. - - * * * * * - -Danton said, "I caught a look at some human beings just before we hit -the lake. Maybe I was seeing things that weren't, but there seemed to -be ancient amtracs, old-style cannon, marching men." - -Keith nodded. "This whole business is crazy. A highly advanced -technology with spaceships in the air--and centuries-old amtracs and -gun-powder on the ground! If this is all a dream and we're really on -earth in a psyche-cell, somebody's got a devil of an imagination!" - -An explosion, then the whine of steel missiles sent the three on their -stomachs among the small sharp shells. Danton raked the forest with -flash-gun fire. - -Finally Danton said, "We have to move." - -"Without a plan of action?" Keith said. - -"No. Our plan is the same. Find out all we can and return to Earth. -Seers has to know. He doesn't want to prepare a secret attack unit to -send up here unless he's absolutely sure it's necessary." - -"Even if we live long enough to find out something, how do we get back -to Earth? By teleportation?" - -"We'll have to get a ship, or try," Danton said. - -The sound of explosions drifted to them, the flat reverberating roar of -bombs. Van Ness looked to the right and said, "That way. And not so far -either." - - * * * * * - -Ten miles from the lake, the three crawled into the dense brush beside -the trail. They could hear now the approach of laboring gasoline -motors, the shouts of men. Danton waited. He waited tensely, as though -somewhere inside of him was a knowledge of what he waited for. - -The moons moved across the high valley. The light was clear, still, -with a reddish cast. Purple shadows bent and swayed in the slight and -cooler wind. Through the odd light, a column of wheezing amtracs came. -Broad wheels grinding, coughing engines, voices murmuring, bodies -wearily slogging, humans, weary ghosts. - -Van Ness whispered, "Looks as though they're in retreat." - -Danton nodded. Van Ness said, "The wounded, the dead and the dying. I -guess you could say we've come home again." - -Danton slowly licked his lips. The fifty-years war against the -Oligarchs hadn't been like this. His war had been swift and clean and -shiny as the metal cities that went with the bright hot flames of -atomic fission. Now the smells of sweating men drifted to him, the -smell of blood and of death. - -Weary, white-faced, shabbily-uniformed men filing by. Many hobbled, -wounded, swinging along in a freakish dance. Crude stretchers carrying -others, somewhat resentfully. Amtracs hauled still others, some -wounded, others dying, some already dead. The sounds of bombardment -edged nearer through the moonlight. The column moved faster. And -Danton noticed then that the women were there, uniformed, hardly -distinguishable from the men. - -The ground jarred. Projectiles screamed. An amtrac rose up in a -blossoming cone, fell apart, metal shining and bodies disintegrating. A -small detachment swung in squarely toward Danton's position. The three -men faded back into deeper concealment. - -A tired, thickly-bearded line-officer barked an order. "Thomas! Rennin! -Take the bodies away at once. According to the map, there's a disposal -mart half a mile east!" - -The torn bodies were rolled onto stretchers and carried into the -shadows. - -Danton thought: some pestilence probably. They have to get rid of the -bodies fast. But why under the stress of immediate attack? - -The line-officer was saying, "Men. We've been under constant attack -for eighty-five days. Our survival depends on orderly retreat until we -combine forces with Rudolph's Second Army." - -A woman stopped walking. Her face was streaked with dirt. She yelled, -"Why doesn't the Power give us some real weapons? With a real power gun -we could kill every Redbird that--" - -The line-officer brought his revolver up, fired. The back of the -woman's head exploded as the flattened bullet came out. The officer's -face twitched. "Barrows! Select a man, take her to the disposal mart." - -"Yes, sir." - -After the body was gone, Danton stared dazedly at the spot where -the woman had fallen. The officer was saying, "Any reference to the -Powers other than that necessitated by duty and reverence, is punished -immediately by execution." Then the officer sat down and looked blankly -into the moonlight. That was a quotation from a manual, Danton thought. -But the officer--hadn't meant it. He hadn't wanted to shoot the woman. -That might be very important to consider. - -Presently the officer stood up. "Men. The Redbirds will follow up this -bombardment with a winged attack. They always do when the moons are -right. We'll remain hidden along the trail and take them as they come -in. They've never learned the strategy of ambush. Make ready for the -attack. Be alert!" - - * * * * * - -Danton motioned and the three of them retreated slowly, as silently as -possible. They had crawled probably a hundred yards when the attack -came. - -The Redbirds were red. They also might be considered birds, with a -reptilian dominance. Their wingspread was enormous, and their bodies -were very nearly human to look at--with an alien deviation that made -them seem grotesque when they really weren't grotesque at all. In a way -they were beautiful. Red feathers and gold-flecked eyes. - -And then the air was torn apart. Explosions, rushing bodies, breaking -wings, burning feathers and singeing flesh and hissing screams. The -moonlight fluttered with winged shadows. - -"This is real war," Danton heard Van Ness yell. "Hand to hand. The real -thing." - -Danton couldn't see either Van Ness or Keith. He fought, firing wildly -at shadows and substance. The real thing. It was strange, he thought, -but in that fifty years of the bloodiest war, the most destructive in -history--he'd never killed anything hand to hand. It had been coldly -impersonal, that war. A million here, a million there. Nine million at -once. And nothing remaining except charred craters. No bodies around. -No one crying either. Nothing at all. But this-- - -Van Ness's fading scream chopped down like hot steel. Danton couldn't -fire, afraid of burning Van Ness, who was being lifted up by a Redbird. -Van Ness was gone almost before Danton realized that he was being -carried up and away over the tree tops. - -Danton crawled around in the flame-blasted clearing. His rifle was -gone. The Redbird's powerful wings had slammed it into shadows and -brush. He looked for Keith. - -Keith! - -He didn't find Keith either. - -He lay still, very still. Several soldiers were poking around in the -tangled debris of bodies and blood and torn brush. It was so still all -at once. No sounds at all except the hard breathing of men. No wings -threshing, or screams penetrating. - -Danton played dead. He was surprised at how easy it was. - -He recognized the officer's voice. "Load everything that looks human in -a couple of amtracs and drag them to the disposal mart." - -"Yes, sir." - -Motors idling. Men lifting and grunting and cursing. Danton opened his -eyes just a little, stared upward into the broad river of sky far up -between the mountains: - -"How many casualties?" - -"Not bad. We lost a quarter maybe. We probably burned down a thousand -Redbirds." - -"Where do they all come from? We'll never kill them all. They keep -coming and they'll always keep coming." - -"They're supposed to come from across the white desert. We'll never -find out. Anyone striking out across that desert never comes back." - -The officer. "On the double, men!" - -"Why does it go on?" - -"Who knows?" - -"Will we win?" - -"No one can win. The Redbirds will keep coming. We keep killing!" - -"The Powers are happy though. Fifty bodies to the marts. Counting -yesterday's casualties, that's over three hundred to the marts since -this battle started." - -"And how many since the war started?" - -"Who knows? When wasn't there a war, pal? What the hell would a guy do -around here if there wasn't a war on?" - -Danton felt hands on his ankles and wrists. He forced limpness down his -body and felt himself tossed among the dead. He was hardly noticed at -all, dead or otherwise. His uniform was torn, covered with blood and -dirt until it looked like any other uniform. He must look pretty bad to -be taken for dead. - -Swarms of insects, drawn by the blood, settled in clouds. The amtrac -jerked forward. Danton saw the drivers sitting up there like gray -plaster figurines. One of the men started to mumble a song, a kind of -chant, more like a dirge. - -"Shut up! You'll get us shot!" - -"Borkan's back there. He can't hear." - -Danton listened. His stomach went hollow and icy at the song. It was -old. It was full of ghosts, ghost treads, and ghost shadows marching -out of the past, out of the present. - - "The men of the tattered battalion, which fights 'till it stumbles - and dies, - Dazed with the scream of the battle, the din and damned glare and - the cries, - The men with the broken heads backward, and the blood running out - of their eyes!" - -"Shut up!" - - "The Powers have all of the music, the glory and color and gold; - Ours be a handful of ashes, a bountiful mouthful of mould." - -"Shut up, I tell you! We'll be shot! If you--" - - "Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the - cold--" - -The song faded slowly, died out. It seemed to die of weariness, to run -down. And Danton kept on hearing it--circling mournfully through his -head like swirling muddy water round a stake. - -One thing he was seeing now, graphically so that he would never -forget: Wars weren't all the same. Sometimes fighting-men hated war. -He had known only the swift clean war, the septic war, a gigantic -street-cleaning machine with a ray gun in front and a rotary brush in -the back, with individuals turned abruptly into the earth from which -they had come, and no one knowing the difference. - -But in different times and places, wars could be different. - - * * * * * - -The amtrac stopped. "Let's get 'em out of here!" - -Danton was thrown up, over, out and down, and other forms fell around -him. He heard a moan from something not quite dead. Metal clanged. -Machinery whirred. He thought of the mart, disposal mart. He thought -of dropping through a hole maybe into a pit of fire, or into a vat of -something. All through him as from an intravenous injection--horror. - -He looked. A mound of metal, as though a bald giant had been buried up -to his eyebrows. Metal corroded with green slime. And there, an opening -appearing as heavy metal doors slid open. A railcar with a spherical -truck bed emerging from the opening and waiting with an eery suggestion -of eager sentience in its cold metal. - -The men throwing the bodies into the railcar. - -"What happens to them?" - -"Who knows? No one ever hears of them again. Morlan mentioned it the -other day. He said the Powers demand sacrifice, like gods maybe. I'm -not superstitious or anything, but--" - -"Why not? Something's taking care of us, making us move around, dance -on the invisible wires. Maybe the Powers are gods. Why not? They're -supposed to live forever. Never grow old." - -"Push the button! Push it! Get them out of here. Wait, here's another -one." - -Danton felt himself plunging, striking, rolling among the other dead -logs. He didn't move. Some of the horror was dissolving, because this -whole disposal system was too elaborate. There was something basic and -symptomatic about it, and Danton felt that it was a key. Van Ness and -Keith were gone. He couldn't think about them now. Their disappearance -had seemed so very final. He was alone. He still had his duty, and he -was curious. He wanted to find out what he could, although the idea of -somehow getting a ship and returning to Earth with what information -he could garner was no longer part of his thoughts. You could take -advantage of the impossible if it happened perhaps. You couldn't -anticipate it as a basis for action. - -But he was still curious, and that was part of his duty. The Oligarchs, -the Powers, seemed interested in gathering in the blossoms of death -from the fields. Very interested. One of these soldiers had said the -Powers would be happy. Surely then the bodies wouldn't simply go into a -vat or a flame. - -"Here she goes!" - -Darkness. Silent movement whirring, rapidly accelerating speed, hot -wind sighing dry past his face. The body of the dead girl, her body -tight up against him in the darkness, moved a little. She sighed -brokenly. - -Danton felt around, found the belt, holster, ancient revolver he had -spotted earlier. He removed it, buckled it around his own waist. He -was careful not to raise his head. Above him, close, he felt a ceiling -rushing back. - -Feeling the girl beside him, the girl soldier, still alive somehow, he -thought of Mara who had found him unbearable because he still had the -mind of a soldier and had refused to be reconditioned. She had grown -to hate him--no, not hate, revulsion. It was natural. She had been -reconditioned to hate anything suggesting violence. - -Well, that was long ago and far away. Further away than long ago. - -The car slowed, tilted. Doors slid open and a soft blue radiance -filtered through. Danton clung to the metal and stared down a gleaming -metal chute. He began to hear incoherent sounds coming out of his -own throat, uncontrollably, as the car tilted further. He grabbed -desperately, hung on as the car dumped its load into the chute, down, -down into a giant pit. The pit was surrounded with high mesh walls and -a steel rail. And behind the rail a circular walkway, with panels, or -doors, spaced at regular intervals. Maybe a hundred or more doors. - -And cranes, cranes lifting metal mouths full of the squirming mass in -the pit, lifting them to the railing and onto moving belts that carried -them through the walls and out of sight. - -To what? _God, to what?_ Danton thought. - - * * * * * - -Danton clung frantically to the empty car. Sweat made a stream down his -chest, though the pit was refrigerated. Cold. The metal was frosted, -it shone like ice. And in the pit some of the bodies moved and made -sounds. The girl soldier. She got to her knees. - -Danton tried to crawl back, back up the slippery metal of the railcar. -He sought darkness back there, a place to hide. Then he stopped trying -and felt his fingers loosening as he watched the girl. Her face was -unrecognizable behind a mask of blood and dirt. But she was standing -up now. She raised one hand. She looked up at the many expressionless -doors. - -The strength with which she forced the keening death-song from her body -was not the strength of her body. It came from someplace else. From -outside, from memory, from a last defiance that could no longer suffer -punishment, from the buried ghosts of thousands of years that had died. - - "You sing of the great clean guns, that belch forth death at will. - Oh, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!" - -Danton's hands let go, and he slid down the chute. - - "... sing the songs of the billowing flags, the bugles that cry - before. - Oh, but the skeletons flapping rags, the lips that speak no more." - -He scarcely felt the bodies under him. He looked at the woman singing -and he listened. - - "... sing the clash of bayonets and sabres that flash and hew, - Will you sing of maimed ones, too, who die and die anew?" - -Danton stumbled. He reached her side. - - "Sing of feted generals who bring the victory home. - Oh ... but the broken bodies that drip like honey-comb!" - -Danton touched her shoulder. Her uniform hung in tatters. A line of red -ran down her torn arm. She sank to her knees. He could barely hear the -last two lines of her song. - - "... sing of hearts triumphant, long ranks of marching men. - And will you sing of the shadowy hosts that never march again?" - -He lifted her and stood, holding her like a child. Now her eyes were -closed. She would have a pretty face, he thought. The army uniform cap -fell away and her hair tumbled down over his hand and arm like red -dust. Her lips moved. She whispered: "No one hears. No one--ever hears." - -"I hear you," Danton said. - -But you don't hear me, he thought. Her body was limp. She's dead, he -thought. - -The crane dipped, steel jaws champing, steel-thewed neck stiff and -superior, now lifting. - -Danton put the girl down, leaped, caught the metal lips, clung as the -crane lifted, swung, caught the rail, pulled himself over onto the -walkway. His breath was hot and his lungs burned. - -He slid the ancient revolver free and examined it quickly. Its -mechanism was simple enough. He twirled the cylinder, removed the -safety catch. Doors? Where did they go? None of the doors seemed -inclined to tell him; nothing moved around him except the crane and the -conveyor belt. - -He walked round the circular way once, came back. It would seem -that he must crawl onto the belt to escape the pit. That would take -him--somewhere. It seemed that he was destined to follow the dead -wherever the dead went in this place where the dead seemed to have lost -the last faint tinge of dignity or honor. - -Silently, simultaneously, the doors slid open. A man was born from -the darkness of each black rectangle. Bronze giant men in tunics that -glittered like finely-woven metallic-silk. There was some variation, -yet they were amazingly alike, expressionless, cold, removed. Far -removed. - -Danton heard the conveyor belt moving softly, swiftly behind him, -carrying its macabre load. The revolver felt heavy in his hand. Then, -from somewhere, a voice crackled in the pit like ice shifting. - -"Bring this soldier to the Council Room." - -A man's voice, without any particular characteristic other than one of -detachment. It might have been the voice of a machine, or something on -a tape. - -[Illustration: _Danton fired seven times ... after that he stopped, -because the gun was empty...._] - -Danton fired seven times. After that he stopped because the gun was -empty of cartridges. Each time he fired, a man fell soundlessly, -without dramatics, calmly. Each time, the man next in line stepped -forward to receive the next bullet. After the last bullet was gone, -three other men lifted the fallen bodies and placed them on the -conveyor belt. Five others surrounded Danton. They did not touch him. -If the episode had had any emotional significance at all for these men, -Danton hadn't seen it. Further resistance was futile; the firing of the -revolver had been only token defiance anyway. - -Danton felt the refrigerated air of the pit clinging to him as the men -marched him down a long tubular hall walled in dull metal. - - * * * * * - -The room was large, metal-vaulted, brittle. Mesh grid screens -surrounded him at a distance, and the useless revolver hung cold and -damp in his hands. Three men and three women sat behind a half-moon of -bright silver suspended from the high ceiling by shimmering strands of -silver, like very fine wire. - -As architecture, the things he had seen were the final stage in -constructivism. An elimination of the sense of weight and solidity of -traditional forms. Everywhere were space constructions of metal sheets, -glass, plastic, beams of angular light, some vaguely related to human -figures, largely as abstracts of geometrical shapes, technological -forms. - -Environment and people were each a balanced projection of the other. -The general effect was one of machine-like precision, brittle coldness -in which man and machine had reached emotionless synthesis. - -One of the men said, "Rhone, will you question this?" - -The woman's voice was musical, but without warmth, like a nicely -constructed music-box. "What is your name?" - -He did not answer. - -"You should answer, soldier. Voluntarily. I can assure you that we have -ways to force your mind to give up all of its secrets." - -She waited. He did not answer. - -"Your actions have been peculiar, soldier. We are interested." - -Danton thought fast. They had spaceships. Three of them he had seen, -the three they no longer had, thanks to Keith. If he admitted being -from Earth it would certainly incite immediate reprisal, and Seers -wasn't ready. He wouldn't be ready for a long time. He would never be -ready to receive an attack from Mars. His idea was to send a secret -force to attack Mars, so that the New World populace would never know -about it. - -A well-planned series of lies, elaborate, complex, provoking. Find out -facts. Try to postpone or avert any immediate attack on Earth. Reduce -things to as individual a level as possible. He had one advantage: -from his observations to this point, the Oligarch culture seemed not -to have changed its basic pattern. Evolution had merely moved that -pattern forward a hundred years, solidified its static essence. Cold -efficiency, egomania, class superiority--the system supported by -scientific method and a fanatical, one-track dogma based on paranoia. - -He had fought this force a long time. He thought he understood it. - -"Your name, soldier. Your unit and rank." - -"Danton West," he said. He remembered the line-officer's words, a quick -frame of reference. "Captain. Second Army. That was a while back. More -lately of the Revolutionary Forces." - -"Revolutionary--" - -Danton saw their expressions alter, almost imperceptibly, but alter -they did under the masks. When that fifty-years war had ended, none of -the central ruling clique, the Oligarch Council, had been found. And -one thing seemed incredible to Danton as he stood there: - -These three men and women seemed to be the same individuals who had -made up that Oligarch Council on Earth a hundred years before. - -That was logical enough. Except-- - -They hadn't aged at all. There had been no sign of change. - -That soldier back there had said, "... _They're supposed to live -forever. They never grow old._" - -"That is impossible, of course," the woman Rhone said. "Now--explain -your uniform. It is unorthodox. In fact it is a duplication of the -uniforms worn by officers of a certain army of another time and place -of which you should know nothing. Can you explain this?" - -"I can and will. We do know about those certain armies in another time -and place. A hundred years ago. Earth. You think we have forgotten?" - - * * * * * - -Silence. The woman's eyes widened, only slightly, though a tremendous -inner emotional surge was obvious. One of the men leaned forward. -Danton was relieved. He felt a bit more secure, seeing even this slight -degree of individuality and emotion. There was the psychological -effect, he knew, of feeling a subtle lessening of the unification of -forces against him. - -They hadn't aged, he thought. The same ones, without grayness, without -wrinkles, without any sign of physical degeneration. - -The woman said, not to him, voicing her thoughts, "Impossible. No one -beyond the Walls can possibly know of the past. We took great pains -to assure that--Mars is the only world they have ever known, the only -world that ever was. Our world." - -"We know," Danton said. "Others know too. The Revolutionists know. I'm -telling you this much because nothing you can do can stop it. It's -developed too far. Revolt. Did you think it would ever be stamped out?" - -Beneath the masks, Danton could see concern, incredulous concern. -Maybe they had thought they had set up an impervious regime. And maybe -they actually had. But there was doubt here. Just enough of a doubt to -play upon. One thing he knew, and that was that there was resentment -out there beyond the Walls, whatever the Walls were, and those songs, -hopeless as they were, had been songs of revolt against oppression. The -germ was out there.... - -"You have a choice," the woman said. "Tell us everything you know. -That, or suffer the kind of pain we cannot describe to you, a kind you -will find out for yourself." - -He could imagine. The Oligarchs had been efficient at everything. -That had been their god--efficiency, mastery of the machines, the -maintenance forever of the master-elite over the rabble. - -Like an amoeba, the social forces of the world had split, the old -values solidifying, the new values pulling away, coming back again, -overrunning, defeating. But the Oligarchs had fled and here they had -developed their particular systems to some final state. - -Whatever they had waiting for him, to open his mind, it would be -efficient. - -She said, "You entered our Walls voluntarily. Why?" - -She said it as though it were totally inconceivable that anyone beyond -the Walls should seek to enter voluntarily. Maybe it was inconceivable. - -"Curiosity," Danton said. He managed to smile at each of them in turn. -"There have been so many rumors growing old, becoming legends and -myths. I came in to find out for myself." - -"You do not expect to escape?" - -Danton shrugged. "I don't care one way or the other. I had hoped to -remain here." He waited. He thought. Finally he added, "I had hoped to -become one of you." - -"What?" one of the men said in a whisper. - -The man on Rhone's right said, "A curious type. Obviously he has -insight. One might almost think--" - -The woman said, "We can speculate later, if we have to, Weisser. Right -now we are interested in facts. Facts!" - -She kept looking into Danton's eyes. Her own eyes had a curious green -quality. She was beautiful, of course, physically. No one had ever -denied the physical beauty of the Oligarchs. Hereditary physical beauty -was important to them. They developed it by selective breeding and--no -one had figured out by what other means. - -There was the indication of an edge to the woman's voice now. "Three of -our ships vanished. Do you know anything about those ships, soldier?" - -Danton smiled. "Yes," he said, and paused for perhaps five seconds. "We -destroyed them." - -The silence then was longer than five seconds. It was very long. It -lengthened until it was painfully heavy. The woman's voice was a -whisper. "How could the rabble do that? It isn't true, of course. It -couldn't be true." - -"You'll never find the ships," Danton said. "There aren't any ships -now. We blew them to pieces. Our scientists did it. I don't know where -the scientists and their secret laboratories are. I don't know too much -about the inner workings of the revolt. But I know some things you -might find very valuable." - -"But, Weisser, it is impossible, isn't it?" - -"Of course. The man is obviously lying. They couldn't possibly have -evolved any such weapon. They couldn't even have developed the concept -of revolt. Their cultural patterns, their attitudes and hereditary -capabilities are set. They can't change." - -"Then how do we classify this soldier?" - -"Why bother? Some sort of crazy deviant. We put him under the Scanners -now, then dispose of him. His body has some value." - -The woman said, "There still remains the question of what happened to -our ships." - -Danton thought: the Oligarch Council operates on a strictly top-down -principle. Who is the extreme top? The woman, Rhone? Or the man, -Weisser? One of them certainly. That might be important to know. - -Danton dipped into the small supply packet at his waist, lifted a -food-capsule to his mouth. He looked first at Weisser, then at the -woman. "I can tell you a lot. And if you don't find out what is -happening out there very soon, you'll be destroyed. Like those ships. -I'll bargain with you. Let me remain here, enjoy certain privileges -I've thought about often when I was crawling around out there in the -mud. Show me what you have here, let me understand. For that, I'll give -you valuable information you need to survive." - -Weisser said coldly, "_We_--bargain with a mongrel?" - -"This capsule is poison, and it isn't partial to blue-blood," Danton -said easily. "A few seconds after putting it into my mouth, I'll be -dead. I'll be silent then. I can tell you how the ships were destroyed, -the weapons used, some things about the planned revolt. If I don't tell -you, you'll never find out. And if you don't find out what is happening -out there in a short time, it will be too late--for you." - -The woman pointed. "Take that door out, soldier. Perhaps you'll be -contacted later." - -Danton smiled. "Don't wait too long. You don't have much time, -beautiful." - - * * * * * - -A corridor led into a circular room, one section paneled entirely in -glass. Furnishings were suspended at odd angles, the concepts of an odd -structural art, from various lengths of silver strands. He stood there, -then tried the door. He couldn't open it. He was locked in. He felt -eyes on him. - -Later he turned, moved back until he was facing the door through which -he had entered. He kept the food-capsule near his mouth as the door -opened and she stood there looking at him strangely. - -Then she strode toward him, long slim legs and an easy imperious -stride. The metallic-silk skirt that came half-way to her knees tinkled -like a thousand infinitely tiny bells. - -She said, "The records have been checked. One of our ships failed to -get out of Earth's atmosphere when we came here a century ago. We had -assumed the ship had burned up. It has been suggested that you are from -Earth, that you found that ship. It would be odd if you were one of the -Equalitarian soldiers who fought against us a hundred years ago." - -Danton shrugged. Self control was difficult now. He had to resist -an urge to reach out, put his fingers around her throat. She seemed -weaponless, and it could be accomplished rapidly enough. There would be -a great deal of personal satisfaction. But he still clung to the shreds -of his duty. His duty to Seers, to Earth millions who could so easily -die under the bombs of an enemy they had never been allowed to know -even existed. Or was that the real reason? _Maybe I don't really want -to kill her._ - -"Think whatever you wish. I've told you the facts. I know nothing about -such a ship. If you believe such a fantastic idea, then where is this -ship now?" - -"You'll answer that," she said. She moved nearer, nearer than necessary -for conversation. How ageless and smooth her face was, he thought. -Smooth and pale. And her eyes like exotic books, concealing strange and -terrible secrets. - -He shrugged again. "It doesn't matter much to me," he said. "My offer -still stands. Take it or leave it. As I said, this capsule will kill me -in seconds. After that the troubles are all yours. You won't be able -to escape. Those mongrels out there, as you call them, they don't need -Earth. They have minds of their own." - -"That's impossible! They're mongrels." - -"You think you have them set solidly and forever in a static mold, -just the way you want them? The perfect slavery--culturally molded, -so they don't even realize they're slaves. That's the idea? It isn't -working out that way. They're human, with minds too complex--they can -never be wholly predictable. Of course you could send an agent to Earth -to find out. It would reduce the odds against us." - -"Us? But you've asked to become one of the Oligarchs." - -"Yes. I would prefer that, frankly. But it isn't too important. I'm -interested in your system for only one reason--because you never grow -old. You will notice that I am growing old, hair graying, wrinkles -creeping in around my eyes. I don't like that. To be ageless like you, -I would bargain." - -"You seem so sure of yourself. I almost believe you." - -"I am sure of myself. The mongrels can manage a successful revolt. But -with the information I can give you, you could put down that revolt. I -can't say about the next revolt, or the one after that, or any of the -revolts that will go on as long as there are men who have minds for -figuring out reasons for revolting. If you try to force the information -from me, I'll take the poison." - -"Would you really do that?" - -He nodded. - -"We could go out there and get the information directly from the -mongrels." - -"From them, you would find out nothing. The mongrels don't know -anything. Only the leaders know, the scientists, the secret -underground. You would never find them. The revolt is latent in every -man beyond these walls, in every man and woman and child. The leaders -know how to bring out that latent desire to revolt, when the time -comes. There will be adequate weapons, too. Like the ones those three -ships were blasted with." - -He touched her throat. He felt the stirring of the pulse. A flush rose -to her cheeks. "Show me why you haven't grown old during this last -hundred years, Rhone, as I have." - -Her face was near his. He could see the trembling in her lips, the -enigmatic brightness of her eyes. "You're attractive," she whispered. -"And that's odd, that a mongrel could be attractive." - -"There are differences among the mongrels," Danton said. He moved his -hands down her arms. She shivered a little. "And maybe there's a need -in you that makes me seem something I'm not." - -"That may be, yes. Maybe it isn't so easy to live forever. We have all -you would think anyone would want here. But there are so few of us. And -the men--always the same, with faces the same and walks the same and--" - -"Then you really are the same Rhone, the Oligarch of a century ago?" - -"Yes." - -"And it's true, you never grow old?" - -"It's true. We won't grow any older. And we'll never die." - -She looked into his eyes and the seconds went by and time dissolved -around Danton. And he thought: the lies I have told here--are they -really a conscious effort to deceive? Do I really want, unconsciously, -to become an Oligarch? Why not? He had wondered about it before. -Immortality. A system depending on eternal warfare for its existence. -Was this not his system after all? - -"Come," she said, and took his arm. "I'll show you. You interest me. -You're a diversion, soldier. I'll show you what we are." - - * * * * * - -They sat in a small spherical car. It made no noise. It slid silently -over the smooth floor by working a simple lever around. It darted like -a silver beetle. First she took him back to a place he remembered well. -The Pit. - -She didn't seem to see things actually. She talked with a calm -detachment, and sometimes her thoughts seemed far away. Danton's -thoughts weren't far away. - -She was saying, "The war goes on outside the walls. Their culture is -one of war, and that is all they know. We established it that way. We -intend to keep it that way. You see this is the Pit; here the bodies -come, the ones who have died. Here the bodies are sorted roughly onto -the conveyor belts which take them to the Dismembering Wards." - -The car whirred them away. The next station, gleaming white rooms, -shining and sterile. Danton felt the perspiration streaming down his -throat. - -Electronic machinery examined the bodies, mechanical hands removed -them from the conveyor belts with deft selectivity, deposited them on -wheeled, white slabs. - -"You will notice," Rhone said calmly, "that the bodies have come -through an antiseptic room, and their clothing dissolved. Now they are -ready for dismembering." - -Men in white moved silently down the line and did their work with -sharp, quick strokes. Scalpels and tiny whirring saws and the bodies -slowly dwindling into isolated parts. There was no blood, no mess, -everything was efficient and thorough and clean. - -"The usable body-parts are selected here," Rhone said. "Notice the -departments along the walls by each slab? They are refrigerated. They -contain separate sections for each of the salvaged body-parts that are -worth preserving." - -Behind glass in the walls, Danton saw neatly placed parts of the -bodies. Hearts, fingers, hands, legs, feet, bone sections, eyes and -interior organs. Kidneys, spleens, livers, carefully preserved, neatly -arranged and labeled and waiting. - -Danton slowly licked his lips. Her voice seemed far away now, droning -like an insect on a lazy day far from anywhere, and the endless length -of that room seemed dust-mantled and still, so still, he thought, and -unreal; but it was real. - -"From here, any part of a human body can be replaced by our surgeons. -Here is the source of our immortality. When any body organ becomes -worn, it is replaced. We are stocking our body-banks, soldier. As you -can see." - -Danton could see. What he saw was blurring a little though, and his -legs seemed numb when he tried to move them. - -"Why does it affect you so?" she was asking him then, and he turned and -looked at her. - -"Why?" - -He didn't really know, or else his brain wasn't functioning at the -moment. Why? It was beyond horror. It was alien, and yet why should it -be alien? As a soldier, why should he find it disturbing? He had been -conditioned, and his conditioning had allowed him to destroy millions -by pressing buttons, by directing missiles he never saw in flight to a -target he never saw dissolve in a great white-hot flame. - -Here it was planned, and here death had some transcendental meaning. - -"There's one more thing for you to see," she said. - -A dimly-lighted series of chambers. She pointed them out. Refrigerated -banks. As far as Danton could see, the long chambers were lined with -huge banks. Each filled with spare body-parts. - -"You see the pattern now, soldier? We started with a select group. From -among the Oligarchs only the elite of the elite was selected to come -here to Mars. There are fifty of us now, as there were fifty then. No -children, of course. Why complicate things? - -"Our slaves out there know nothing except that they must fight the -Redbirds. Theirs is a war society. We arranged it and we've perpetuated -it, and now it's the only life they know--unless your story of a revolt -is true, of course, which I can hardly believe. They have only the -crudest weapons. The kind of weapons we fought with on earth, soldier, -left little for body-salvage, did they? We feel we've found the only -way of being immortal. Why does it affect you like this, soldier? -Doesn't it seem logical and fair to you?" - - * * * * * - -Danton didn't say anything. He couldn't. His throat was dry and his -blood hammered past his temples. She was putting the question to him, -all right; and in a way it was the same question he had asked himself -more than once. To an efficiently conditioned soldier class, killing -was an end in itself. Why not go on from there, carry it out to its -final denominator? - -"The brain never wears out," she was saying, "the only damage possible -to it is due to the wearing out of supplementary body-parts, and they -are seldom used to such a point. And even parts of the brain can be -replaced. We have blood banks, of course. We cannot die of natural -causes. If death comes from any kind of violence or accident, we can -bring that body to life again. - -"We are storing up reserve body-parts to keep us strong and un-aging -for as long as one would care to imagine. When we are ready, of course, -we shall return to Earth. We have kept that in mind, naturally. We are -almost ready now to return. On Earth, of course, the same system will -be established--but there our system will of necessity be slightly -different. Perhaps wars will not necessarily go on unceasingly. There -will be breathing spells ... it won't matter particularly to us." - -She looked at Danton closely. "First we shall wipe out most of the -population. We only need a small stabilized population to provide for -us." - -"What about the Redbirds?" Danton said. His voice sounded weak. It was -weak. "This is their planet, doesn't--" - -"Their bodies are too alien," she said. "They can't be of any benefit -to us. Except, of course, they provide conflict for the mongrels." - -Danton closed his eyes. There was no more confusion. He knew now where -the road led if you stayed on it to its end. It ended here with bodies -stacked up in refrigerators. It ended with the cancellation of all -human values, except the values of the fifty select--and they were no -longer human in any familiar sense. - -He felt sick, very sick. It might be embarrassing, he was so sick. -He said, "I don't feel very well. Maybe I could rest here for a few -minutes?" - -She laughed. She stopped laughing, and Danton heard the sound of doors -sliding and the approach of softly moving feet. Two Oligarchs--Guards, -evidently, for each wore a flash-gun at his side. And between them-- - -Danton didn't quite believe what he saw, and if what he saw was true, -he didn't know whether to be glad or not. Keith and Van Ness. The -latter was terribly wounded, his face a red smear, blood soaking his -side. And Keith--Keith, Danton had decided, was a dangerous man. - -One of the Oligarchs said, "We brought them directly to you, on -Weisser's orders. Weisser talked to them, then sent them down here. He -said that you would know--" - -She raised her hand and the Oligarch guard stopped talking. Danton -looked at Keith's rigid, white face. Keith's lips thinned back over his -teeth as he grinned at Danton. "Captain," he said. "I guess you beat me -to the punch. I see you're already on friendly terms." - -Van Ness moaned softly and fell to his knees. He stared sightlessly -from his broken face. - -Danton said, "I thought you two were gone for good." - -"So did we," Keith said. "But the Redbirds dropped us over a tower, -down a chute. I don't know why." - -Rhone said, "The Redbirds fight for us too. We pay them. For every body -they bring to us, they receive pay. A kind of drug." - -She stared from Danton to Keith, then at Van Ness. "You three seem to -know one another. I'll find out from Weisser." She started to tune in -the communicator on her wrist. Keith stopped her. "Don't bother," he -said. "I've already talked to Weisser. This man here has been lying. -I'll tell you the truth." - -Danton had been afraid of this. "Keith! Don't tell them anything!" But -he knew somehow that his own game was over. It had never had a chance. -Even without Keith's selling out, it wouldn't have had a chance. It was -walking the road bravely that counted, anyway.... - -Keith said, "I'm talking, and I'll be glad to talk." - -Danton shouted, "Keith! Don't do it. Don't tell them anything. You -don't realize what they are!" - -"It doesn't matter," Keith said, "what they are. I've been on the wrong -side. Maybe I was always an Oligarch, and it's probably the same with -you, only you're just too stupid to admit it. You think I want to go -back to Earth, even if we had a chance to do it, which we'll never -have? I hate Earth, and maybe I always have hated it--the way the New -Order remade it! It's sane! Everyone an angel, filled to the hair roots -with the milk of human kindness. We found it no place for us. Weisser -says he'll take me in. I know where I belong!" - - * * * * * - -Rhone stood up in the car, looking into Danton's face. "It's true then. -The three of you are from Earth. I thought they were planning a culture -down there that couldn't possibly be aggressive. How could they have -sent you?" - -Danton's eyes went from face to face, round the immediate area of the -vast chamber. Keith was grinning thinly, watching him narrowly. This -was it, and there seemed nothing to do but to go down fighting in the -classic vein. A futile gesture, but what else? - -He said, "It was done in secret. Only we three and one other knew -about the flight." Tell the truth. It might keep them from invading -Earth for a while. If they thought Earth had an army they would strike -before Earth grew any stronger. The truth might keep them quiescent -for a while longer. "The new social system there, it has no conception -of warfare or violence. You wouldn't understand it. And they wouldn't -understand you, not now." - -"You used our ship to get here," she said. "That would indicate that -you have no ships of your own there?" - -Danton nodded. Keith laughed, a thin high laughter. He moved toward -Rhone. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands to her. "They have -no armaments, no ships. Psychologically they have no power to resist. -Weisser said I could become one of you." - -Danton pushed Rhone from the car. He shoved the control lever and the -car whirled violently, slammed into the foremost Oligarch guard, sent -him spinning across the metal floor. The car swerved again, struck down -the other guard. Danton jumped free, ripped the weapon from the man's -waist. The guard was groaning and his hands were sliding about vaguely -over the floor. - -The hand-gun was familiar. It was similar to the flash-guns used by the -guards on Earth a century before; there would have been no need to have -altered that weapon. - -Keith ran at him, kicked out, and Danton fired. Keith went to his knees -and looked at Danton dully and then fell forward. He rolled over and -lay there, grinning blankly at nothing at all. - -Deliberately, without feeling anything, Danton burned the life out of -the two Oligarchs who had lain stunned where they fell. As he spun -back, the woman stood stiffly almost up against him. He had expected -her to attempt to run away. - -She said softly, "I know what it is now. It's because you're human. -It's human to grow older. It's human to die. Maybe we have the wrong -idea, or maybe we've approached it wrong, I don't know. It doesn't -matter now. I--" - -He pressed the flash-gun toward her. She didn't seem to notice the -gun. She continued to look at his face, into his eyes, searching, for -something he couldn't tell what, and he didn't care. - -"Did you know you have gray eyes," she whispered, "and that they -deepen, get darker and darker?" - -"No." - -"No. No one ever told you." - -Mara had told him. He barely remembered that time when she had told him. - -She put her slightly opened mouth against his lips and pulled him -closer. - -He pulled the trigger. Her body quivered as though from the kiss, and -then he stepped away and she fell at his feet. He wasn't thinking now. -There was no time for that. He lifted her, carried her toward one of -the refrigerated banks. Her skin had turned a mottled ugly color and -her eyes were open and rigid. Quite suddenly her eyes moved up into her -head, and ugly groups of purple little veins appeared underneath the -skin. - -He put her on the frosty floor of the huge bank. Around her, like some -hideous garnishing, were eyes that looked at her accusingly. He dragged -the two Oligarch guards and Keith's corpse into another bank, slammed -the heavy door. Van Ness groaned and Danton lifted him into the car. - -"I can't see," Van Ness whispered. "I can't see. I'm dying." - -"Hang on," Danton said. "Only fifty Oligarchs, understand, Van? Forty -seven now. Maybe less if those seven I shot down in the pit didn't all -recover. Maybe we can get some more of them, Van!" - -"I'm dying," Van Ness whispered. "I can't see." - - * * * * * - -Danton tooled the car. As he approached doors in the long tubular -halls, the doors opened automatically, closed again behind. There were -turns, drops, risings, more doors, other halls. - -He stopped the car. Lost, alone, somewhere. Only fifty of them--no, -forty-seven now at most. They wouldn't have too large a structure here. -Somewhere there would have to be a central power source. If he could -find such a power unit, strike at the heart-- - -He shook Van Ness. He felt for the heart. It was still beating. Van -Ness moaned, "I'm dying. If I could see--" - -"Do you know what I'm saying, Van? Can you hear me?" - -"Yes ... sure I can hear you." - -"Listen to me. We're in the Oligarch's fortress. I don't know how big -it is. But it seems to be one unified structure. There has to be a -central power source here. You were an engineering expert. Where would -it be? Van, listen. There are only a handful of Oligarchs here now. We -stand a slim chance...." - -"But I can't see--" - -"I can see." - -"Yes--a central power source. I remember the words to an old song, -Captain. You know, soldiering used to be a great sport. There was one -about a chocolate soldier with a uniform so pretty...." - -"_Van Ness!_" - -"Yes." - -"Where would they build that central power room? Up? Down?" - -"Down." - -He started the car moving. Oddly curving and angling corridors bending -with geometrical precision. He saw an elevator door and he pressed -the button; the door opened and he drove the car into it. Down, fast, -sickeningly fast. - -"Bottom ... clear down," Van Ness mumbled. "Start from there. I can't -see--" - -Danton kept the elevator dropping and then it stopped. He hadn't -stopped it. - -He stepped to the side as the door slid open. He hit the entering -Oligarch, hit him with a short hard blow in the solar plexus and when -the man gasped and bent forward, Danton brought his knee up. Bone and -cartilage crunched. The man slewed to one side, and Danton hit him -again and the man smashed into the wall and slid down toward the floor. - -"I can't see," Van Ness said. "But what I hear has a sweet sound." - -Danton dragged the Oligarch up, held him against the wall. The man -sagged and lifted his hands to protect his face. His lips were torn, -his nose bleeding. He stared dazedly at Danton, his eyes filled with -terror, shock. - -"Wha--" he started to say something. Danton pushed his flash-gun into -the man's middle. And the Oligarch screamed. Danton's voice chopped -into the scream. - -"I'm going to kill you," Danton said. "Unless you tell me what I want -to know. Tell me where the power rooms are, the central power units." - -The man shook his head, no. - -Danton moved the gun around, pressed the stud. Burning flesh, and -the Oligarch jerked away and fell twitching on the floor, his left -leg charred from the knee down. He sat and stared at the leg, and he -started whimpering. He reached down with his fingers, then drew them -back again. - -"Tell me," Danton said. "Or what's left of you, even the body parts -from your banks won't put back together again." - -The Oligarch murmured, and he had changed his mind. - - * * * * * - -The Oligarch led them into the gigantic room, then collapsed. Danton -killed him where he lay. Danton recognized some of the equipment, -though he was no nucleonics or electronics expert as Van Ness had been. -"Listen to this, Van. Listen to me!" - -"Yes...." - -Danton told what he saw. He was Van Ness' eyes. The generators, -huge oscilloscopes, vacuumtube voltimeters, electronic power-supply -panels, rolls and skeins of hook-up wire, shielding of every color, -size and shape, panel plates, huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate -transceivers, long solid surfaces of gleaming bakelite, color-indexed -files of resistors and capacitances.... - -Van Ness told Danton what to do. Van Ness took a long time to say -a few words, and after that he didn't seem to be able to say -anything else. He didn't move either. Danton released the force of -the flash-gun, left the gun in the position Van Ness had indicated, -its beam burning deep into the heart of the complicated soul of the -Oligarch fortress. - -He would have taken Van Ness with him, but Van Ness wasn't interested -anymore. He was dead. Danton left him. He would remember Van Ness alive -as long as he was capable of remembering anything. Van Ness as clay he -had already forgotten. - -He ran toward the elevator. As it whirred upward, he felt the -reverberation, the trembling, the beginnings of a low deadly murmuring. -The elevator continued to rise smoothly, carrying Danton and the car, -but Danton felt a giddy swaying like that of an earthquake. - -A social system strictly of the top-down variety. But in the final -analysis, the top wasn't the mind of Rhone or of Weisser. It was -something above both of them, above the Oligarchs. Machines. And above -the machines, generators and switches and volts and tubes. - -The electronic interdependence was going insane within the fortress, -like the intricate cellular structure of a mind within a skull. - -In a hall somewhere in a catacomb of metal, Danton sat in the car, -wondering which way to go, wondering if it would make any difference -now, feeling the fortress above, below, all around him, breaking apart. - -What about the Oligarch spaceships? Perhaps they were someplace else, -away from here, and they would survive the destruction of the fortress. -And maybe one or two or three Oligarchs would also survive. Even one -ship, one Oligarch, returning to Earth, would be one too many. - -He was looking at the far door as it slid open and a car sped through, -skimming along the polished metal floor frantically, desperately. -The occupant of the car, a woman, took no notice of Danton. Her face -was damp and pale with fear as her car sped past. Her machines were -forsaking her. Her efficiency, her gadgets and the tremendous power -that had existed for so long at her fingertips, were disintegrating, -and she appeared to be disintegrating with them. - -She would be intent only on escape, of course, not realizing that -without her machines, she was doomed. But she might find a temporary -escape from the death around her, the metal walls of the gigantic -coffin. - -Van Ness was gone. And Keith--convinced that soldiering was an end in -itself, rather than a means to an end--had found the inevitable end for -a soldier. - -Danton wondered about that. He knew one thing--that the test was yet to -come for him. He was not sure yet that Keith had not been right.... - -He followed the woman through a door into a chamber. It was a nice -room, Danton thought. A great deal of pleasure had drifted through -this room, and in it, time had probably never meant anything. Perfumed -incense. Music, drifting, still rising from somewhere, pneumatic -couches--but underneath something was cracking open, veins and arteries -of power choking, blocked off; but the power had to go somewhere; -short-circuit, the madness of a great machine-mind. - -The woman had opened a panel, and beyond her, Danton could see the -Martian afternoon. He had never seen a Martian afternoon before. It was -beautiful, he thought, though he was hardly in a position to study or -appreciate it properly. Then he saw what she was doing--the woman was -escaping out the panel. There must be some way she was planning to get -safely to the ground outside. It seemed to be a long way down. - -But she wasn't worried about that. - -She jumped. She looked back at Danton, her face pale and twisted, then -she jumped. Danton ran, looked out. He looked out just in time to see -her body hit. It was too far down for anyone to go that way. Her body -bounced a little. - - * * * * * - -Insane, Danton thought. They had each become such component parts of -the bigger machine that very likely they were all going crazy now, -right along with the machine. And the machine wasn't going to last much -longer either, insane or otherwise. It was beginning to quiver, to -shake and shudder, and its metal skin was beginning to groan and twist. -Its metal joints were grinding together, its skein nerves wrenching and -singing. - -Danton looked around hurriedly. He saw the wires again, everything -suspended by wires, shiny and strong. He gave a heavy table -slab--legless, of course, a suspended disc of metal--he gave it a -tremendous shove and it began to swing to and fro; it made a heavy -pendulum, swinging wider and wider, and it began to crash into other -suspended things, into chairs and into weird sculpture, crashing -through structural images and distorted faces of metal. It made a sound -like off-key bells bonging and clanging. - -Wires finally snapped with a whine and Danton felt the hot sharpness -as a strand cut across his arm, sinking in like the slash of a knife. -He pushed the table slab to the wall, against the window. He managed -to get several strands of the wire tied together by complicated knot -designs. He yanked down an ornamental drape that seemed to have a -swirling life of its own, made sheaths for his hands from finely-woven -metallic-cloth, and looped the wire three times around the metal -sheathing. - -He slid down toward the ground. It was further down than it had seemed -from above. The wind was high and cold and strong. He began to sway -dangerously and the wind threatened to tear him from the wire. - -He glanced upward. The structure of the Oligarchs was huge, a shining -silver metal thing of coldness rising up out of bare rocks. It was -built on the side of a cliff, very high, and very far below was a -valley. Perhaps it was the valley in which he had landed ... no, that -must have been far away from here. He saw no lake. But, of course, the -valley itself stretched windingly away further than he could see. - -He ran out of wire. He managed to lift his weight with one arm enough -to unwrap the wire coils from the other. That gave him another three -feet. He dropped. Pain came from a wrenched ankle and the shock of the -weight on his bones. But he hit running and he kept on running. - -For somehow, though he had killed her, she was alive. - -Just before dropping he had seen her, running away from the Oligarch -tower. Running along a steel walkway. A fine-mesh railing separated the -walkway from a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet. It was Rhone. -She was running fast, too. Very fast. - -He ran hard. He didn't feel the pain in his ankle. He couldn't afford -to feel anything now except urgency. The cold thin air burned. - -She stopped and he stopped too, flattening against the hard -rust-colored rock. She was pushing a lever or something; whatever it -was it got results. A silver nose projected outward from the cliff, -slanting slightly upward; it blossomed out as though someone were -blowing a silver bubble from stone. Out and out. It stopped. - -It was a spaceship, all right. Danton figured that the power shut-off -had prevented her from reaching the ship from a subterranean route. -Evidently rigged for such an emergency, the wall of the cliff could -also summon the ship out into the open, prepare it for blasting off -from a cradle cut down into the cliff like a giant cannon barrel. - -When the outer door in the side of the ship opened, Rhone ran for it. -Danton was right behind her. She heard him just as she went through and -into the air-lock. She turned, her mouth opened, and then he struck her -with his shoulder, carried her on through the inner air-lock door and -into the tubular corridor leading forward into the control room. - -He dragged her forward with him as the doors closed behind him. The -controls were the same in principle as those of the ship he had brought -from Earth. Once set, they were automatic. He strapped Rhone in the -shock-seat at the side. He strapped himself into the chair before the -control panel.... - - * * * * * - -Seers, Secretary of Social Security, was a fat man with a serious round -slate-gray face. He looked at Danton thoughtfully, waited. Outside the -office of Sociology Section in New World Square, the sky was a soft and -promising blue. - -Finally Seers said, "Well, Danton, what happened then?" - -Danton shrugged. "First I dropped enough atomic fire to finish -destroying the Oligarch fortress completely, and to get any ships that -might have been left inside the mountain. There's nothing there now but -a big black crater. I don't think there will ever be any need to worry -about the Oligarchs anymore. I landed the ship in the Pacific in as -isolated a spot as I could find--midway between New Zealand and Cape -Horn. Then I contacted you by short wave. And here I am and here you -are. And I guess that's all there is." - -"Why did you bring Rhone back?" - -"I had no choice," Danton said. "I guess when I killed her and put her -in the refrigeration bank, that saved her life. Some surgeon did a -quick job on her." Danton leaned toward Seers. "If all of it, or any of -it, really happened." - -"What makes you think it didn't?" - -"For one thing, I'm back here alive, an impossible mission -accomplished. For another--I--well, this time I _want_ to be -reconditioned." - -"Your experience has changed your outlook, Danton?" - -"Considerably. I--want to be changed. I want to be someone else, -anything else. I've seen things too horrible to remember anyway. -I'd rather forget everything. It could all have been delusion, -hallucination rigged up in your psyche labs. As Keith said--you boys -are good at that sort of thing. If that's how it was--it was good -therapy. There's a doubt in my mind, you see. It _might_ have happened, -and just the bare possibility that it did happen is enough to make me -gladly volunteer for reconditioning." - -Seers nodded. "I'm very glad you're approaching it this way. It will -make the processing easier to perform, and the new personality easier -to maintain. We probably will never need your kind again, Danton. Now -that the Oligarchs are gone, the last threat to our new system is gone -with them. The chance of some other intelligent life-form being in the -universe at all is remote, and the further chance that they would take -aggressive action against Earth makes the whole thing something we can -logically ignore." - -"That's fine," Danton said. - -"You've seen where the psychology of war would lead, inevitably. If you -can justify killing human beings at all, the final result is bound to -be, in some form or another, what you saw on Mars." - -"If I actually saw it. If I was on Mars at all." - -Seers signaled through the intercom. A door opened. Rhone stood there, -a tablet in her hand, and a pencil. She sat down and crossed attractive -legs. Very attractive legs, Danton thought. - -"Miss Tannon, this is Richard Danton. Mr. Danton, my new secretary, -Miss Tannon." - -She nodded, turned her nose down once more, very business-like, into -the tablet. - -Danton thought, It's Rhone all right. A reconditioned Rhone. They must -be good at their reconditioning to change an Oligarch mind into that -of an efficient secretary. Danton said, "What about the others up there -on Mars?" - -"We'll take care of them, peacefully of course," Seers said. "We have -plenty of time. We won't bring them back. We will set up our new system -there." - -Danton listened to Seers' dictation. "To Chief Psyche-adjustment -Administrator. From Seers, Department of Social Security. Subject: -Voluntary reconditioning of Richard Danton. To take place at once under -the jurisdiction of...." - -There was more. Danton didn't hear it ... and later they injected -something into his veins and he sat there, feeling Richard Danton -dying, for the last time, going away. Richard Danton, fading out, all -around him bit by bit, cell by cell, dying, never to awaken again. And -remembering what he had experienced on Mars, Danton thought: It's as -good a reward as anyone could ask. Goodbye, Richard Danton. It was nice -knowing you, but Goodbye.... - - * * * * * - -_His name was Burton. John R. Burton._ - -_He was as happy as anyone could expect to be. His wife loved him and -he loved his wife. Their children were very well adjusted, as was -everyone of course in the New World System._ - -_Burton worked ten hours a week in a coal mine, though the job was -merely one demanding the overseeing of machines. The rest of the week -was one of leisure devoted to gardening, hobbies, play, music. There -was no more hate, no violence, no feelings of insecurity. It wasn't -that everyone loved everyone else particularly. It was just that no one -was afraid of the future anymore._ - -_And Burton was no longer bothered by bad dreams either, and so he was -what one might consider perfectly happy, perfectly adjusted._ - -_The perfect happiness of one who does not remember._ - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIAN NIGHTMARE *** - -***** This file should be named 63997-0.txt or 63997-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/9/9/63997/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this ebook. - -Title: Martian Nightmare - -Author: Bryce Walton - -Release Date: December 09, 2020 [EBook #63997] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIAN NIGHTMARE *** -</pre> -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>MARTIAN NIGHTMARE</h1> - -<h2>A novelet by BRYCE WALTON</h2> - -<p>Three tough, cynical fighting-men of<br /> -Earth—Danton, Keith, Van Ness—rose<br /> -from their tomb of forgetfulness ... to<br /> -find themselves space-wrecked on Mars,<br /> -the last hope of mankind against the<br /> -evil and immortal Oligarchs. It was<br /> -weird, incredible, it was a horrible<br /> -dream ... but it was real. Or was it?</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories January 1951.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p><i>His name was Burton. John R. Burton.</i></p> - -<p><i>He was as happy as anyone could expect to be. His wife loved him and -he loved his wife. Their children were very well adjusted, as was -everyone of course in the New World system.</i></p> - -<p><i>Burton worked ten hours a week in a coal mine, though the job was -merely one demanding the overseeing of machines. The rest of the week -was one of leisure devoted to gardening, hobbies, play, music. There -was no more hate, no violence, no feelings of insecurity. It wasn't -that everyone loved everyone else particularly. It was just that no one -was afraid of the future anymore.</i></p> - -<p><i>Sometimes though, Burton had bad dreams. Sometimes they were very bad. -In these dreams it seemed that he was somebody else. Someone who—</i></p> - -<p><i>But after he woke up he never remembered the dreams, so, he thought, -maybe they didn't matter.</i></p> - -<p><i>Burton guessed that what he was in the dreams was too horrible to -remember.</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton sat in the chair before the control bank and stared at his hands -until they seemed to stop shaking. It had been a long, long way to -Mars. A long, long time in which to think.</p> - -<p>Of, for example, who had he been for the last hundred years? He had -been someone, someone with a name, a job, a ritual, a wife, kids, -everything. A valuable worker, a nice round peg in one of countless -millions of nice round holes. Who and what you had been for the past -hundred years was certainly a question that could bother you, he -thought.</p> - -<p>He glanced at Keith and Van Ness. It wasn't bothering them now. They -had been two other people for a century also—but they weren't bothered -now. They had passed out cold on pre-New World bourbon.</p> - -<p>They had better snap out of it, Danton thought a little desperately. -The ship had about reached Mars. They had better get up from there.</p> - -<p>His hands started shaking again. He got a cigarette lighted and -the opiate stuff crawling in his throat. He closed his eyes. For -an instant it felt better, hiding in there behind the darkness of -his closed lids. But then the thoughts came faster, like schools of -irritated fish.</p> - -<p>A final war like the last one, destructive beyond memory anyway, was -one most of the survivors had been more than happy to forget. They had -welcomed reconditioning, the moving into the PLAN, into the New World -system of non-violence. People became, largely, depending on the amount -of reconditioning necessary, someone else. You can't change solidly -laid foundations of thought and still be the same person.</p> - -<p>So it was a New World. In it the people were New. Everything starting -over again from scratch. A small decentralized population. Beneficent -leaders, masters of psychology. No weapons, not even in museums, no -conception of war, no fears of tomorrow. There were no enemies on -Earth. In fact, the mind was conditioned so that the concept of an -enemy was impossible. Outer space was merely a region of lovely stars -on clear nights.</p> - -<p>Of the few New System soldiers left, most were willing to be -reconditioned. Three of them hadn't been willing. Richard Danton, Don -Keith, Dwight Van Ness. They had degenerated into drunken pariahs, -people without a group with which to identify themselves, lonely, lost, -aging and ailing. Finally they did accept reconditioning. Not because -they wanted to. But because they had to or go completely insane. Seers, -Secretary of Social Security, said this was bad, but that they might -be able to bring about an adjustment. It would be difficult, he said, -because of involuntary conditioning, but he would see what he could do.</p> - -<p>Evidently he had done all right. Danton couldn't remember the -subsequent hundred years. But he had been someone. They had blotted him -out, fixed him up with another name, twisted ganglia, altered synapsis, -probed lobotomy here and there. Everything went, name, identity, the -entire business inside and out.</p> - -<p>But all the time, Richard Danton had been there, a pattern. A circuit -disconnected. When they had needed him, they had merely twisted ganglia -back, altered synapsis, probed lobotomy again. And after a hundred -years here he was again, resurrected, like a ghost. And when they were -done with him, after his assignment was finished, he would go back into -the grave, and that someone else would go on living.</p> - -<p>But maybe not this time. Maybe not again. This could be a dangerous -assignment for him and Keith and Van Ness. They might never get back to -Earth, and that might be all right—for them.</p> - -<p>He would rather die fighting, as a soldier, than keep on living as -someone else, someone he didn't even know.</p> - -<p>According to Seers there was a chance that the final war had not been -quite so final. The Oligarch Council had evidently escaped Earth -in secretly constructed spaceships, destined for Mars. If they had -actually gotten to Mars, and had survived, they were there still, and -it would be only a matter of time until they returned to Earth and -destroyed it.</p> - -<p>Other factors made it even more complicated. Earth couldn't defend -itself, for one thing. It had no weapons. It had no human being capable -of manning a weapon if it had one. Seers had said that the sanity of -the world depended on absolute secrecy. The population was never to -know anything at all, never to suspect that they might be threatened. -Such knowledge, Seers said, would destroy the New System. The people -weren't psychologically capable of receiving knowledge of insecurity, -not for a long time yet.</p> - -<p>But what bothered Danton was—<i>who have I been for the last hundred -years?</i></p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Keith was crawling across the floor, gasping at an oxygen inhalor. The -small, thin-faced and cynical soldier got up and sat down. He grinned. -"Are we in Valhalla yet, Captain?"</p> - -<p>"You still take this whole thing as a joke, Keith?"</p> - -<p>"The psyche boys are good," Keith said. "Plenty good. And I still say -this is just delusion they're feeding us, on suggestion tape, after -good shots of hypnosene."</p> - -<p>"Why would they do that?"</p> - -<p>"They tried to recondition us, make good little workers out of us. -But it didn't take. We don't remember, sure—but that's no sign we -were successfully changed. I say we weren't. I got it all figured out, -Captain. They're killing us. Mercifully, of course, making us die -happy. But we're dying just the same, dying in a dream. A dream of -soldiering, of heroics, of sacrifice and high honor. Just the way we'd -want it. And instead of waking up, we'll really die, in the line of -duty. Like a good soldier should."</p> - -<p>"But—"</p> - -<p>"I'm not blaming them. I think it's a fine idea. For one thing, we -aren't sure it's not really happening, so we'll have to accept it as -truth. It's the real thing any way you look at it." Danton saw the -grin fade slowly across the mask of Keith's face. "Are we really here, -Captain?"</p> - -<p>Danton peered into the scope again. "Yes," he whispered.</p> - -<p>"Mars, the god of war," Keith said, "awaits his favorite sons."</p> - -<p>A big dull reddish ball, like an eyeball, a blood-shot eye. The cone -of its giant shadow streaming out, a quadrant of the heavens. And then -all at once, as if the eye were closing, it darkened except where the -sun splattered down on its far half, a pool of sickly light radiating -outward into dissipating orange and brown.</p> - -<p>Danton thought of the Oligarchs down there, or what remained of them. -The Oligarchs and the slaves they would have brought with them in their -ships. In a hundred years they could have multipled considerably. -And the Oligarchs themselves, the last of the old world type of -faithless human madness—essentially amoral, no empathy, tremendous -egotism—filled with the old ideas of class superiority. They destroyed -with utter casualness. What advanced stage had their paranoid culture -reached in a century? It wasn't something one wanted to think about.</p> - -<p>The planet was reaching up like a clenched red fist. He felt the -impulse to duck. Sweat ran down his face, itched along his ribs. A -hundred years was a long time to be someone else, and now Danton was -wondering if he dared trust himself anymore as a soldier. His hands -moved again over the controls.</p> - -<p>The wrecked Oligarch ship had been found off the Mindanao Deeps by a -sub-sea exploring party, brought up, reconditioned, studied. There were -records and documents in it, and from these Seers made his decision. -He brought back Danton. In secret, of course; send them to out of -living graves. They were trained, made into astrogators, cosmologists. -Everything in absolute secrecy, of course. And after the ship blasted -off for Mars, only the three of them and Seers retained any knowledge -that there had been a ship at all. The reconditioners had fixed that -up. Those who had found it, the scientists who had studied it, no one -remembered a thing.</p> - -<p>"Find out what you can, then come back," Seers had said. "Don't fight. -If you fight, you might never come back. We would never know then -what to do. We can prepare ships like this one, Danton. In secret, of -course, send them to Mars. But we don't want to take a chance like that -unless we have to. If activity like that ever leaked out to the people, -that would be the end of the New System. A sudden blast of insecurity -would wreck our delicately balanced new order."</p> - -<p>It was a fine ship, Danton thought. The Oligarchs knew machines. They -worshiped them. The ship was also a monstrous arsenal, a hurtling -fountain of destruction, loaded with hydrogen bombs and something -called a proton cannon that could curl a planet up in space like a moth -in a flame.</p> - -<p>Power, death, throbbing around him, hot and terrible ... the ordnance -console key inches from his fingertips. Keith had said he didn't want -to go back to Earth. Not and face all that business again. Why not let -go, blast, die right here when the attack came? That was a soldier's -way!</p> - -<p>"I'm going to throw her into an orbit," Danton said.</p> - -<p>He saw the weird swirling light of the moons then, the moons of Mars, -as the ship slowed in its orbit. Heavy cloud-banks drifting low in -colossal valleys. And then he saw the ships. Three of them rising like -giant silver beetles.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He didn't know whether he deliberately bungled and failed to lift the -ship out of its orbit in time, or whether—but psychologically there -weren't such things as accidental blunders. Anyway, now it was too -late. Maybe everyone on earth would be wiped out because of it, but -Danton blundered, moved too slowly. From the ships a white cloud of -released energy flashed, blinded, billowed. His ship bucked and swerved -and lurched.</p> - -<p>Keith whispered tensely, "I'll take that ordnance, Captain. <i>I'll take -it!</i>"</p> - -<p>Van Ness weaved upright, sucking at an oxygen capsule, mumbling.</p> - -<p>Danton said, "They're not firing now. They're curious, maybe. Let them -get in close. They'll come in, try to identify us. It must have just -occurred to them that this is one of their old ships. Then we fire, -clear our course, and run."</p> - -<p>"Run, run, get your gun!" Van Ness mumbled.</p> - -<p>Danton swung the view-plate. The ships hovered behind, slightly above, -coasting, waiting, watching. Danton laughed aloud. For a hundred years -he had been dead. Now he was alive. Really alive. His fingers were -hot and wet as he gripped the T-bar, and he saw that the ships were -improved types. He couldn't escape back to earth now, even if he wanted -to. And he didn't have time now to figure out whether he wanted to or -not. It was too late now for thinking. He preferred it that way. He -said, "They're coming in close now. Keith, this is it!"</p> - -<p>Keith nestled into the ordnance chair like a bird. His body was tight -with anticipated pleasure. His fingers hooked, spread, began to tremble -individually. Death was there, all around.</p> - -<p>Without looking up, seemingly without reason, he asked, "You were -engaged to marry a very pretty girl when the war ended, weren't you, -Captain? Someone named Mara?"</p> - -<p>Danton hadn't forgotten. "That's right. I couldn't explain it to -her—why I wouldn't be reconditioned. She married someone else. A -cybernetics engineer, named George."</p> - -<p>"The hell with them, all of them!" Keith said. "You wouldn't want to go -back there. That's what they all think about us, Captain. While they -need us we're great guys, and afterwards—don't touch. No, Captain, -whether this is delusion or the real thing, this is how we were meant -to go. We're lucky, Captain!"</p> - -<p>Keith manipulated the ordnance keys. Danton's eyes went blind before -the incredible flash of kinetic energy release. His eyes closed. Music, -lifting, whirling round and round and he was rocking with gentle joyous -softness in a cradle of death....</p> - -<p>But Danton got his hands up against the darkness, held on to it, pushed -it this way and that, got it away from his eyes. He crawled back into -the chair, blinked into the viewer. He didn't see the ships now, -anywhere. Only the great clenched fist of the war-world, the red world, -rushing up, growing with a silent onrushing fury, looming, broadening.</p> - -<p>Keith's fingers dug into Danton's shoulder. "I got 'em, Captain! Burned -them out like ants on a hot plate. They burned so beautiful...."</p> - -<p>The ship had suffered from the repercussion; nothing responded right. -Danton shoved more intensifier units into the stern tubes, straightened -her a little with a couple of bursts from the steering jets, then -power-dived with the tubes roaring.</p> - -<p>He fought the controls. The numbness, the roaring, the intolerable -rising temperature of the walls. Fighting for some sort of balance -to get the ship hurtling in at least a low-level orbit. The walls -quivered, then the whining, sighing, falling through a dense sea of -twisting vapor.</p> - -<p>Danton watched the altimeter, the power gauges, manipulated the -power-tube stops. His body was an unfeeling, unconscious circuit of -responses. Somehow he got the ship at vertical. The plate brought -the landscape up to him, presented it to him like the unveiling work -of a mad artist. Up-pushing violence of mountain walls, a valley, -forest, dense alien looking stuff, thick and high and entangled and -phosphorescent with a pinkish glow drifting like the reflection of a -vast roaring furnace.</p> - -<p>And—a senseless glimpse of something archaic, too primitive to be -real. Only a glimpse, so that immediately after, he decided he must -have seen something else. A long trail of armored cars. Amtracs, it -seemed, bristling with ancient types of guns. Armored cars. Amtracs. A -few hundred years ago they had had them in Earth museums.</p> - -<p>The ship roared and shook. The scream of metal penetrated Danton's -skull, became part of an iron ball grinding in his head....</p> - -<p>No sentience possessed him now, no mind, no body, no hate or joy or -hope or confused indecision about his twisted motivations. He thought -simply, death possesses me.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But death was only nearby. Life was a power-tube, dimming to a dull -yellow, flickering dangerously. Movement was without real substance. -Shapes, voices vague and distant. He heard Van Ness and Keith talking -once. Someone yelled. There was the burning sigh of the electronic -rifles they had evidently been able to salvage.</p> - -<p>The light brightened slowly. He sat up. Keith and Van Ness stood -beside him. Clothing torn, faces scratched and bleeding. Keith's mouth -was tight, his jaw muscles rigid and pale. He turned, held his rifle -steady. Van Ness wanted to know if Danton felt all right now, anything -else wrong besides the knock on the head.</p> - -<p>Danton said he didn't know. "I thought it would be cold here." He was -sweating. The air was muggy, quiet. The lake was huge before him, the -mountains beyond it gigantic and blue-misted. The lake was glassy and -still. Behind him was thick forest, reddish leaves, high trees, thickly -entangled, odd flowers, shadows. A feeling of things alive—but of -a cautious kind of living. Little eyes waiting and watching in the -bushes, on the fringes.</p> - -<p>"Out of this valley, on the desert, it would be plenty cold," Keith -said.</p> - -<p>Danton asked then, "What happened?"</p> - -<p>Keith watched the forest warily. "We hit the lake out there, had to -swim in."</p> - -<p>"So now what?" Van Ness wanted to know.</p> - -<p>"We still have a kind of advantage," Danton said. "They don't know who -we are, or where. They know nothing."</p> - -<p>"Neither do we," Keith said. "There's a chance Seers was wrong about -the Oligarchs. Maybe their culture has changed. Maybe they don't intend -to attack Earth."</p> - -<p>"Their ego couldn't stand to forget their defeat," Danton said. "They -had a highly advanced technology that could conceivably control any -environment, rather than the other way round. In some ways they were -ahead of the rest of the world."</p> - -<p>Keith grinned. "That's right, Captain. You're so right."</p> - -<p>Danton looked Keith in the eyes. "You mentioned earlier, something -about sometimes thinking you should be an Oligarch. You really feel -that way, Keith?"</p> - -<p>"Why not? We didn't have a choice whose side we would fight on. We were -conditioned from the time we were old enough to think, and we fought -the Oligarchs for fifty years. Three-quarters of the world's population -rubbed out. And then we had a world that didn't want us—unless we were -three other people. We fought to destroy the old values, help build a -new society. But let's face it, Captain—those old values we destroyed -were our own! We helped destroy our own kind of world. So what does it -mean? It means we should have fought <i>for</i> the Oligarchs, and that we -really sympathize with them. Their system is a war system, probably -still is. With them, there would always be a place for a fighting-man. -A soldier among the Oligarchs could expect honor and privilege."</p> - -<p>Danton had nothing to say. He had thought in a similar way more than -once.</p> - -<p>Van Ness said, "Wrong, Keith. We've committed ourselves, and now we -have to go on to the end of the road."</p> - -<p>The words drifted with the wind across the glassy lake. You walked -along the road, Danton thought, while the road was visible and you -walked it to the end. And neither road nor the end was your own -choice. Maybe the only glory was in walking it bravely. But maybe, as -Keith had said, they had been on the wrong road. The Oligarchs, had -they conquered, would have always provided an honorable place for a -soldier. Banners, flags, women, the rise of battle fever, the ecstatic -explosions of power, the enemy dead.</p> - -<p>Keith fired once into the forest wall. A shape fluttered away over -the tops of the trees, then fell, crying at first, then screaming -like a woman. "We've been followed by those things for about a mile -along the shore edge," Keith said. "They don't seem friendly. They're -intelligent. Big, with wings, and old-style weapons. Very old. -Explosive powder stuff."</p> - -<p>"Martians," said Van Ness.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton said, "I caught a look at some human beings just before we hit -the lake. Maybe I was seeing things that weren't, but there seemed to -be ancient amtracs, old-style cannon, marching men."</p> - -<p>Keith nodded. "This whole business is crazy. A highly advanced -technology with spaceships in the air—and centuries-old amtracs and -gun-powder on the ground! If this is all a dream and we're really on -earth in a psyche-cell, somebody's got a devil of an imagination!"</p> - -<p>An explosion, then the whine of steel missiles sent the three on their -stomachs among the small sharp shells. Danton raked the forest with -flash-gun fire.</p> - -<p>Finally Danton said, "We have to move."</p> - -<p>"Without a plan of action?" Keith said.</p> - -<p>"No. Our plan is the same. Find out all we can and return to Earth. -Seers has to know. He doesn't want to prepare a secret attack unit to -send up here unless he's absolutely sure it's necessary."</p> - -<p>"Even if we live long enough to find out something, how do we get back -to Earth? By teleportation?"</p> - -<p>"We'll have to get a ship, or try," Danton said.</p> - -<p>The sound of explosions drifted to them, the flat reverberating roar of -bombs. Van Ness looked to the right and said, "That way. And not so far -either."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Ten miles from the lake, the three crawled into the dense brush beside -the trail. They could hear now the approach of laboring gasoline -motors, the shouts of men. Danton waited. He waited tensely, as though -somewhere inside of him was a knowledge of what he waited for.</p> - -<p>The moons moved across the high valley. The light was clear, still, -with a reddish cast. Purple shadows bent and swayed in the slight and -cooler wind. Through the odd light, a column of wheezing amtracs came. -Broad wheels grinding, coughing engines, voices murmuring, bodies -wearily slogging, humans, weary ghosts.</p> - -<p>Van Ness whispered, "Looks as though they're in retreat."</p> - -<p>Danton nodded. Van Ness said, "The wounded, the dead and the dying. I -guess you could say we've come home again."</p> - -<p>Danton slowly licked his lips. The fifty-years war against the -Oligarchs hadn't been like this. His war had been swift and clean and -shiny as the metal cities that went with the bright hot flames of -atomic fission. Now the smells of sweating men drifted to him, the -smell of blood and of death.</p> - -<p>Weary, white-faced, shabbily-uniformed men filing by. Many hobbled, -wounded, swinging along in a freakish dance. Crude stretchers carrying -others, somewhat resentfully. Amtracs hauled still others, some -wounded, others dying, some already dead. The sounds of bombardment -edged nearer through the moonlight. The column moved faster. And -Danton noticed then that the women were there, uniformed, hardly -distinguishable from the men.</p> - -<p>The ground jarred. Projectiles screamed. An amtrac rose up in a -blossoming cone, fell apart, metal shining and bodies disintegrating. A -small detachment swung in squarely toward Danton's position. The three -men faded back into deeper concealment.</p> - -<p>A tired, thickly-bearded line-officer barked an order. "Thomas! Rennin! -Take the bodies away at once. According to the map, there's a disposal -mart half a mile east!"</p> - -<p>The torn bodies were rolled onto stretchers and carried into the -shadows.</p> - -<p>Danton thought: some pestilence probably. They have to get rid of the -bodies fast. But why under the stress of immediate attack?</p> - -<p>The line-officer was saying, "Men. We've been under constant attack -for eighty-five days. Our survival depends on orderly retreat until we -combine forces with Rudolph's Second Army."</p> - -<p>A woman stopped walking. Her face was streaked with dirt. She yelled, -"Why doesn't the Power give us some real weapons? With a real power gun -we could kill every Redbird that—"</p> - -<p>The line-officer brought his revolver up, fired. The back of the -woman's head exploded as the flattened bullet came out. The officer's -face twitched. "Barrows! Select a man, take her to the disposal mart."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>After the body was gone, Danton stared dazedly at the spot where -the woman had fallen. The officer was saying, "Any reference to the -Powers other than that necessitated by duty and reverence, is punished -immediately by execution." Then the officer sat down and looked blankly -into the moonlight. That was a quotation from a manual, Danton thought. -But the officer—hadn't meant it. He hadn't wanted to shoot the woman. -That might be very important to consider.</p> - -<p>Presently the officer stood up. "Men. The Redbirds will follow up this -bombardment with a winged attack. They always do when the moons are -right. We'll remain hidden along the trail and take them as they come -in. They've never learned the strategy of ambush. Make ready for the -attack. Be alert!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton motioned and the three of them retreated slowly, as silently as -possible. They had crawled probably a hundred yards when the attack -came.</p> - -<p>The Redbirds were red. They also might be considered birds, with a -reptilian dominance. Their wingspread was enormous, and their bodies -were very nearly human to look at—with an alien deviation that made -them seem grotesque when they really weren't grotesque at all. In a way -they were beautiful. Red feathers and gold-flecked eyes.</p> - -<p>And then the air was torn apart. Explosions, rushing bodies, breaking -wings, burning feathers and singeing flesh and hissing screams. The -moonlight fluttered with winged shadows.</p> - -<p>"This is real war," Danton heard Van Ness yell. "Hand to hand. The real -thing."</p> - -<p>Danton couldn't see either Van Ness or Keith. He fought, firing wildly -at shadows and substance. The real thing. It was strange, he thought, -but in that fifty years of the bloodiest war, the most destructive in -history—he'd never killed anything hand to hand. It had been coldly -impersonal, that war. A million here, a million there. Nine million at -once. And nothing remaining except charred craters. No bodies around. -No one crying either. Nothing at all. But this—</p> - -<p>Van Ness's fading scream chopped down like hot steel. Danton couldn't -fire, afraid of burning Van Ness, who was being lifted up by a Redbird. -Van Ness was gone almost before Danton realized that he was being -carried up and away over the tree tops.</p> - -<p>Danton crawled around in the flame-blasted clearing. His rifle was -gone. The Redbird's powerful wings had slammed it into shadows and -brush. He looked for Keith.</p> - -<p>Keith!</p> - -<p>He didn't find Keith either.</p> - -<p>He lay still, very still. Several soldiers were poking around in the -tangled debris of bodies and blood and torn brush. It was so still all -at once. No sounds at all except the hard breathing of men. No wings -threshing, or screams penetrating.</p> - -<p>Danton played dead. He was surprised at how easy it was.</p> - -<p>He recognized the officer's voice. "Load everything that looks human in -a couple of amtracs and drag them to the disposal mart."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir."</p> - -<p>Motors idling. Men lifting and grunting and cursing. Danton opened his -eyes just a little, stared upward into the broad river of sky far up -between the mountains:</p> - -<p>"How many casualties?"</p> - -<p>"Not bad. We lost a quarter maybe. We probably burned down a thousand -Redbirds."</p> - -<p>"Where do they all come from? We'll never kill them all. They keep -coming and they'll always keep coming."</p> - -<p>"They're supposed to come from across the white desert. We'll never -find out. Anyone striking out across that desert never comes back."</p> - -<p>The officer. "On the double, men!"</p> - -<p>"Why does it go on?"</p> - -<p>"Who knows?"</p> - -<p>"Will we win?"</p> - -<p>"No one can win. The Redbirds will keep coming. We keep killing!"</p> - -<p>"The Powers are happy though. Fifty bodies to the marts. Counting -yesterday's casualties, that's over three hundred to the marts since -this battle started."</p> - -<p>"And how many since the war started?"</p> - -<p>"Who knows? When wasn't there a war, pal? What the hell would a guy do -around here if there wasn't a war on?"</p> - -<p>Danton felt hands on his ankles and wrists. He forced limpness down his -body and felt himself tossed among the dead. He was hardly noticed at -all, dead or otherwise. His uniform was torn, covered with blood and -dirt until it looked like any other uniform. He must look pretty bad to -be taken for dead.</p> - -<p>Swarms of insects, drawn by the blood, settled in clouds. The amtrac -jerked forward. Danton saw the drivers sitting up there like gray -plaster figurines. One of the men started to mumble a song, a kind of -chant, more like a dirge.</p> - -<p>"Shut up! You'll get us shot!"</p> - -<p>"Borkan's back there. He can't hear."</p> - -<p>Danton listened. His stomach went hollow and icy at the song. It was -old. It was full of ghosts, ghost treads, and ghost shadows marching -out of the past, out of the present.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"The men of the tattered battalion, which fights 'till it stumbles and dies,</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Dazed with the scream of the battle, the din and damned glare and the cries,</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>The men with the broken heads backward, and the blood running out of their eyes!"</i></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>"Shut up!"</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"The Powers have all of the music, the glory and color and gold;</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Ours be a handful of ashes, a bountiful mouthful of mould."</i></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>"Shut up, I tell you! We'll be shot! If you—"</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—"</i></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p>The song faded slowly, died out. It seemed to die of weariness, to run -down. And Danton kept on hearing it—circling mournfully through his -head like swirling muddy water round a stake.</p> - -<p>One thing he was seeing now, graphically so that he would never -forget: Wars weren't all the same. Sometimes fighting-men hated war. -He had known only the swift clean war, the septic war, a gigantic -street-cleaning machine with a ray gun in front and a rotary brush in -the back, with individuals turned abruptly into the earth from which -they had come, and no one knowing the difference.</p> - -<p>But in different times and places, wars could be different.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The amtrac stopped. "Let's get 'em out of here!"</p> - -<p>Danton was thrown up, over, out and down, and other forms fell around -him. He heard a moan from something not quite dead. Metal clanged. -Machinery whirred. He thought of the mart, disposal mart. He thought -of dropping through a hole maybe into a pit of fire, or into a vat of -something. All through him as from an intravenous injection—horror.</p> - -<p>He looked. A mound of metal, as though a bald giant had been buried up -to his eyebrows. Metal corroded with green slime. And there, an opening -appearing as heavy metal doors slid open. A railcar with a spherical -truck bed emerging from the opening and waiting with an eery suggestion -of eager sentience in its cold metal.</p> - -<p>The men throwing the bodies into the railcar.</p> - -<p>"What happens to them?"</p> - -<p>"Who knows? No one ever hears of them again. Morlan mentioned it the -other day. He said the Powers demand sacrifice, like gods maybe. I'm -not superstitious or anything, but—"</p> - -<p>"Why not? Something's taking care of us, making us move around, dance -on the invisible wires. Maybe the Powers are gods. Why not? They're -supposed to live forever. Never grow old."</p> - -<p>"Push the button! Push it! Get them out of here. Wait, here's another -one."</p> - -<p>Danton felt himself plunging, striking, rolling among the other dead -logs. He didn't move. Some of the horror was dissolving, because this -whole disposal system was too elaborate. There was something basic and -symptomatic about it, and Danton felt that it was a key. Van Ness and -Keith were gone. He couldn't think about them now. Their disappearance -had seemed so very final. He was alone. He still had his duty, and he -was curious. He wanted to find out what he could, although the idea of -somehow getting a ship and returning to Earth with what information -he could garner was no longer part of his thoughts. You could take -advantage of the impossible if it happened perhaps. You couldn't -anticipate it as a basis for action.</p> - -<p>But he was still curious, and that was part of his duty. The Oligarchs, -the Powers, seemed interested in gathering in the blossoms of death -from the fields. Very interested. One of these soldiers had said the -Powers would be happy. Surely then the bodies wouldn't simply go into a -vat or a flame.</p> - -<p>"Here she goes!"</p> - -<p>Darkness. Silent movement whirring, rapidly accelerating speed, hot -wind sighing dry past his face. The body of the dead girl, her body -tight up against him in the darkness, moved a little. She sighed -brokenly.</p> - -<p>Danton felt around, found the belt, holster, ancient revolver he had -spotted earlier. He removed it, buckled it around his own waist. He -was careful not to raise his head. Above him, close, he felt a ceiling -rushing back.</p> - -<p>Feeling the girl beside him, the girl soldier, still alive somehow, he -thought of Mara who had found him unbearable because he still had the -mind of a soldier and had refused to be reconditioned. She had grown -to hate him—no, not hate, revulsion. It was natural. She had been -reconditioned to hate anything suggesting violence.</p> - -<p>Well, that was long ago and far away. Further away than long ago.</p> - -<p>The car slowed, tilted. Doors slid open and a soft blue radiance -filtered through. Danton clung to the metal and stared down a gleaming -metal chute. He began to hear incoherent sounds coming out of his -own throat, uncontrollably, as the car tilted further. He grabbed -desperately, hung on as the car dumped its load into the chute, down, -down into a giant pit. The pit was surrounded with high mesh walls and -a steel rail. And behind the rail a circular walkway, with panels, or -doors, spaced at regular intervals. Maybe a hundred or more doors.</p> - -<p>And cranes, cranes lifting metal mouths full of the squirming mass in -the pit, lifting them to the railing and onto moving belts that carried -them through the walls and out of sight.</p> - -<p>To what? <i>God, to what?</i> Danton thought.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton clung frantically to the empty car. Sweat made a stream down his -chest, though the pit was refrigerated. Cold. The metal was frosted, -it shone like ice. And in the pit some of the bodies moved and made -sounds. The girl soldier. She got to her knees.</p> - -<p>Danton tried to crawl back, back up the slippery metal of the railcar. -He sought darkness back there, a place to hide. Then he stopped trying -and felt his fingers loosening as he watched the girl. Her face was -unrecognizable behind a mask of blood and dirt. But she was standing -up now. She raised one hand. She looked up at the many expressionless -doors.</p> - -<p>The strength with which she forced the keening death-song from her body -was not the strength of her body. It came from someplace else. From -outside, from memory, from a last defiance that could no longer suffer -punishment, from the buried ghosts of thousands of years that had died.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"You sing of the great clean guns, that belch forth death at will.</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Oh, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!"</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p>Danton's hands let go, and he slid down the chute.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"... sing the songs of the billowing flags, the bugles that cry before.</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Oh, but the skeletons flapping rags, the lips that speak no more."</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p>He scarcely felt the bodies under him. He looked at the woman singing -and he listened.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"... sing the clash of bayonets and sabres that flash and hew,</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Will you sing of maimed ones, too, who die and die anew?"</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p>Danton stumbled. He reached her side.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"Sing of feted generals who bring the victory home.</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>Oh ... but the broken bodies that drip like honey-comb!"</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p>Danton touched her shoulder. Her uniform hung in tatters. A line of red -ran down her torn arm. She sank to her knees. He could barely hear the -last two lines of her song.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse"><i>"... sing of hearts triumphant, long ranks of marching men.</i></div> - <div class="verse"><i>And will you sing of the shadowy hosts that never march again?"</i></div> -</div></div> - -<p>He lifted her and stood, holding her like a child. Now her eyes were -closed. She would have a pretty face, he thought. The army uniform cap -fell away and her hair tumbled down over his hand and arm like red -dust. Her lips moved. She whispered: "No one hears. No one—ever hears."</p> - -<p>"I hear you," Danton said.</p> - -<p>But you don't hear me, he thought. Her body was limp. She's dead, he -thought.</p> - -<p>The crane dipped, steel jaws champing, steel-thewed neck stiff and -superior, now lifting.</p> - -<p>Danton put the girl down, leaped, caught the metal lips, clung as the -crane lifted, swung, caught the rail, pulled himself over onto the -walkway. His breath was hot and his lungs burned.</p> - -<p>He slid the ancient revolver free and examined it quickly. Its -mechanism was simple enough. He twirled the cylinder, removed the -safety catch. Doors? Where did they go? None of the doors seemed -inclined to tell him; nothing moved around him except the crane and the -conveyor belt.</p> - -<p>He walked round the circular way once, came back. It would seem -that he must crawl onto the belt to escape the pit. That would take -him—somewhere. It seemed that he was destined to follow the dead -wherever the dead went in this place where the dead seemed to have lost -the last faint tinge of dignity or honor.</p> - -<p>Silently, simultaneously, the doors slid open. A man was born from -the darkness of each black rectangle. Bronze giant men in tunics that -glittered like finely-woven metallic-silk. There was some variation, -yet they were amazingly alike, expressionless, cold, removed. Far -removed.</p> - -<p>Danton heard the conveyor belt moving softly, swiftly behind him, -carrying its macabre load. The revolver felt heavy in his hand. Then, -from somewhere, a voice crackled in the pit like ice shifting.</p> - -<p>"Bring this soldier to the Council Room."</p> - -<p>A man's voice, without any particular characteristic other than one of -detachment. It might have been the voice of a machine, or something on -a tape.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p><i>Danton fired seven times ... after that he stopped, because the gun was empty....</i></p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Danton fired seven times. After that he stopped because the gun was -empty of cartridges. Each time he fired, a man fell soundlessly, -without dramatics, calmly. Each time, the man next in line stepped -forward to receive the next bullet. After the last bullet was gone, -three other men lifted the fallen bodies and placed them on the -conveyor belt. Five others surrounded Danton. They did not touch him. -If the episode had had any emotional significance at all for these men, -Danton hadn't seen it. Further resistance was futile; the firing of the -revolver had been only token defiance anyway.</p> - -<p>Danton felt the refrigerated air of the pit clinging to him as the men -marched him down a long tubular hall walled in dull metal.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The room was large, metal-vaulted, brittle. Mesh grid screens -surrounded him at a distance, and the useless revolver hung cold and -damp in his hands. Three men and three women sat behind a half-moon of -bright silver suspended from the high ceiling by shimmering strands of -silver, like very fine wire.</p> - -<p>As architecture, the things he had seen were the final stage in -constructivism. An elimination of the sense of weight and solidity of -traditional forms. Everywhere were space constructions of metal sheets, -glass, plastic, beams of angular light, some vaguely related to human -figures, largely as abstracts of geometrical shapes, technological -forms.</p> - -<p>Environment and people were each a balanced projection of the other. -The general effect was one of machine-like precision, brittle coldness -in which man and machine had reached emotionless synthesis.</p> - -<p>One of the men said, "Rhone, will you question this?"</p> - -<p>The woman's voice was musical, but without warmth, like a nicely -constructed music-box. "What is your name?"</p> - -<p>He did not answer.</p> - -<p>"You should answer, soldier. Voluntarily. I can assure you that we have -ways to force your mind to give up all of its secrets."</p> - -<p>She waited. He did not answer.</p> - -<p>"Your actions have been peculiar, soldier. We are interested."</p> - -<p>Danton thought fast. They had spaceships. Three of them he had seen, -the three they no longer had, thanks to Keith. If he admitted being -from Earth it would certainly incite immediate reprisal, and Seers -wasn't ready. He wouldn't be ready for a long time. He would never be -ready to receive an attack from Mars. His idea was to send a secret -force to attack Mars, so that the New World populace would never know -about it.</p> - -<p>A well-planned series of lies, elaborate, complex, provoking. Find out -facts. Try to postpone or avert any immediate attack on Earth. Reduce -things to as individual a level as possible. He had one advantage: -from his observations to this point, the Oligarch culture seemed not -to have changed its basic pattern. Evolution had merely moved that -pattern forward a hundred years, solidified its static essence. Cold -efficiency, egomania, class superiority—the system supported by -scientific method and a fanatical, one-track dogma based on paranoia.</p> - -<p>He had fought this force a long time. He thought he understood it.</p> - -<p>"Your name, soldier. Your unit and rank."</p> - -<p>"Danton West," he said. He remembered the line-officer's words, a quick -frame of reference. "Captain. Second Army. That was a while back. More -lately of the Revolutionary Forces."</p> - -<p>"Revolutionary—"</p> - -<p>Danton saw their expressions alter, almost imperceptibly, but alter -they did under the masks. When that fifty-years war had ended, none of -the central ruling clique, the Oligarch Council, had been found. And -one thing seemed incredible to Danton as he stood there:</p> - -<p>These three men and women seemed to be the same individuals who had -made up that Oligarch Council on Earth a hundred years before.</p> - -<p>That was logical enough. Except—</p> - -<p>They hadn't aged at all. There had been no sign of change.</p> - -<p>That soldier back there had said, "... <i>They're supposed to live -forever. They never grow old.</i>"</p> - -<p>"That is impossible, of course," the woman Rhone said. "Now—explain -your uniform. It is unorthodox. In fact it is a duplication of the -uniforms worn by officers of a certain army of another time and place -of which you should know nothing. Can you explain this?"</p> - -<p>"I can and will. We do know about those certain armies in another time -and place. A hundred years ago. Earth. You think we have forgotten?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Silence. The woman's eyes widened, only slightly, though a tremendous -inner emotional surge was obvious. One of the men leaned forward. -Danton was relieved. He felt a bit more secure, seeing even this slight -degree of individuality and emotion. There was the psychological -effect, he knew, of feeling a subtle lessening of the unification of -forces against him.</p> - -<p>They hadn't aged, he thought. The same ones, without grayness, without -wrinkles, without any sign of physical degeneration.</p> - -<p>The woman said, not to him, voicing her thoughts, "Impossible. No one -beyond the Walls can possibly know of the past. We took great pains -to assure that—Mars is the only world they have ever known, the only -world that ever was. Our world."</p> - -<p>"We know," Danton said. "Others know too. The Revolutionists know. I'm -telling you this much because nothing you can do can stop it. It's -developed too far. Revolt. Did you think it would ever be stamped out?"</p> - -<p>Beneath the masks, Danton could see concern, incredulous concern. -Maybe they had thought they had set up an impervious regime. And maybe -they actually had. But there was doubt here. Just enough of a doubt to -play upon. One thing he knew, and that was that there was resentment -out there beyond the Walls, whatever the Walls were, and those songs, -hopeless as they were, had been songs of revolt against oppression. The -germ was out there....</p> - -<p>"You have a choice," the woman said. "Tell us everything you know. -That, or suffer the kind of pain we cannot describe to you, a kind you -will find out for yourself."</p> - -<p>He could imagine. The Oligarchs had been efficient at everything. -That had been their god—efficiency, mastery of the machines, the -maintenance forever of the master-elite over the rabble.</p> - -<p>Like an amoeba, the social forces of the world had split, the old -values solidifying, the new values pulling away, coming back again, -overrunning, defeating. But the Oligarchs had fled and here they had -developed their particular systems to some final state.</p> - -<p>Whatever they had waiting for him, to open his mind, it would be -efficient.</p> - -<p>She said, "You entered our Walls voluntarily. Why?"</p> - -<p>She said it as though it were totally inconceivable that anyone beyond -the Walls should seek to enter voluntarily. Maybe it was inconceivable.</p> - -<p>"Curiosity," Danton said. He managed to smile at each of them in turn. -"There have been so many rumors growing old, becoming legends and -myths. I came in to find out for myself."</p> - -<p>"You do not expect to escape?"</p> - -<p>Danton shrugged. "I don't care one way or the other. I had hoped to -remain here." He waited. He thought. Finally he added, "I had hoped to -become one of you."</p> - -<p>"What?" one of the men said in a whisper.</p> - -<p>The man on Rhone's right said, "A curious type. Obviously he has -insight. One might almost think—"</p> - -<p>The woman said, "We can speculate later, if we have to, Weisser. Right -now we are interested in facts. Facts!"</p> - -<p>She kept looking into Danton's eyes. Her own eyes had a curious green -quality. She was beautiful, of course, physically. No one had ever -denied the physical beauty of the Oligarchs. Hereditary physical beauty -was important to them. They developed it by selective breeding and—no -one had figured out by what other means.</p> - -<p>There was the indication of an edge to the woman's voice now. "Three of -our ships vanished. Do you know anything about those ships, soldier?"</p> - -<p>Danton smiled. "Yes," he said, and paused for perhaps five seconds. "We -destroyed them."</p> - -<p>The silence then was longer than five seconds. It was very long. It -lengthened until it was painfully heavy. The woman's voice was a -whisper. "How could the rabble do that? It isn't true, of course. It -couldn't be true."</p> - -<p>"You'll never find the ships," Danton said. "There aren't any ships -now. We blew them to pieces. Our scientists did it. I don't know where -the scientists and their secret laboratories are. I don't know too much -about the inner workings of the revolt. But I know some things you -might find very valuable."</p> - -<p>"But, Weisser, it is impossible, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"Of course. The man is obviously lying. They couldn't possibly have -evolved any such weapon. They couldn't even have developed the concept -of revolt. Their cultural patterns, their attitudes and hereditary -capabilities are set. They can't change."</p> - -<p>"Then how do we classify this soldier?"</p> - -<p>"Why bother? Some sort of crazy deviant. We put him under the Scanners -now, then dispose of him. His body has some value."</p> - -<p>The woman said, "There still remains the question of what happened to -our ships."</p> - -<p>Danton thought: the Oligarch Council operates on a strictly top-down -principle. Who is the extreme top? The woman, Rhone? Or the man, -Weisser? One of them certainly. That might be important to know.</p> - -<p>Danton dipped into the small supply packet at his waist, lifted a -food-capsule to his mouth. He looked first at Weisser, then at the -woman. "I can tell you a lot. And if you don't find out what is -happening out there very soon, you'll be destroyed. Like those ships. -I'll bargain with you. Let me remain here, enjoy certain privileges -I've thought about often when I was crawling around out there in the -mud. Show me what you have here, let me understand. For that, I'll give -you valuable information you need to survive."</p> - -<p>Weisser said coldly, "<i>We</i>—bargain with a mongrel?"</p> - -<p>"This capsule is poison, and it isn't partial to blue-blood," Danton -said easily. "A few seconds after putting it into my mouth, I'll be -dead. I'll be silent then. I can tell you how the ships were destroyed, -the weapons used, some things about the planned revolt. If I don't tell -you, you'll never find out. And if you don't find out what is happening -out there in a short time, it will be too late—for you."</p> - -<p>The woman pointed. "Take that door out, soldier. Perhaps you'll be -contacted later."</p> - -<p>Danton smiled. "Don't wait too long. You don't have much time, -beautiful."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>A corridor led into a circular room, one section paneled entirely in -glass. Furnishings were suspended at odd angles, the concepts of an odd -structural art, from various lengths of silver strands. He stood there, -then tried the door. He couldn't open it. He was locked in. He felt -eyes on him.</p> - -<p>Later he turned, moved back until he was facing the door through which -he had entered. He kept the food-capsule near his mouth as the door -opened and she stood there looking at him strangely.</p> - -<p>Then she strode toward him, long slim legs and an easy imperious -stride. The metallic-silk skirt that came half-way to her knees tinkled -like a thousand infinitely tiny bells.</p> - -<p>She said, "The records have been checked. One of our ships failed to -get out of Earth's atmosphere when we came here a century ago. We had -assumed the ship had burned up. It has been suggested that you are from -Earth, that you found that ship. It would be odd if you were one of the -Equalitarian soldiers who fought against us a hundred years ago."</p> - -<p>Danton shrugged. Self control was difficult now. He had to resist -an urge to reach out, put his fingers around her throat. She seemed -weaponless, and it could be accomplished rapidly enough. There would be -a great deal of personal satisfaction. But he still clung to the shreds -of his duty. His duty to Seers, to Earth millions who could so easily -die under the bombs of an enemy they had never been allowed to know -even existed. Or was that the real reason? <i>Maybe I don't really want -to kill her.</i></p> - -<p>"Think whatever you wish. I've told you the facts. I know nothing about -such a ship. If you believe such a fantastic idea, then where is this -ship now?"</p> - -<p>"You'll answer that," she said. She moved nearer, nearer than necessary -for conversation. How ageless and smooth her face was, he thought. -Smooth and pale. And her eyes like exotic books, concealing strange and -terrible secrets.</p> - -<p>He shrugged again. "It doesn't matter much to me," he said. "My offer -still stands. Take it or leave it. As I said, this capsule will kill me -in seconds. After that the troubles are all yours. You won't be able -to escape. Those mongrels out there, as you call them, they don't need -Earth. They have minds of their own."</p> - -<p>"That's impossible! They're mongrels."</p> - -<p>"You think you have them set solidly and forever in a static mold, -just the way you want them? The perfect slavery—culturally molded, -so they don't even realize they're slaves. That's the idea? It isn't -working out that way. They're human, with minds too complex—they can -never be wholly predictable. Of course you could send an agent to Earth -to find out. It would reduce the odds against us."</p> - -<p>"Us? But you've asked to become one of the Oligarchs."</p> - -<p>"Yes. I would prefer that, frankly. But it isn't too important. I'm -interested in your system for only one reason—because you never grow -old. You will notice that I am growing old, hair graying, wrinkles -creeping in around my eyes. I don't like that. To be ageless like you, -I would bargain."</p> - -<p>"You seem so sure of yourself. I almost believe you."</p> - -<p>"I am sure of myself. The mongrels can manage a successful revolt. But -with the information I can give you, you could put down that revolt. I -can't say about the next revolt, or the one after that, or any of the -revolts that will go on as long as there are men who have minds for -figuring out reasons for revolting. If you try to force the information -from me, I'll take the poison."</p> - -<p>"Would you really do that?"</p> - -<p>He nodded.</p> - -<p>"We could go out there and get the information directly from the -mongrels."</p> - -<p>"From them, you would find out nothing. The mongrels don't know -anything. Only the leaders know, the scientists, the secret -underground. You would never find them. The revolt is latent in every -man beyond these walls, in every man and woman and child. The leaders -know how to bring out that latent desire to revolt, when the time -comes. There will be adequate weapons, too. Like the ones those three -ships were blasted with."</p> - -<p>He touched her throat. He felt the stirring of the pulse. A flush rose -to her cheeks. "Show me why you haven't grown old during this last -hundred years, Rhone, as I have."</p> - -<p>Her face was near his. He could see the trembling in her lips, the -enigmatic brightness of her eyes. "You're attractive," she whispered. -"And that's odd, that a mongrel could be attractive."</p> - -<p>"There are differences among the mongrels," Danton said. He moved his -hands down her arms. She shivered a little. "And maybe there's a need -in you that makes me seem something I'm not."</p> - -<p>"That may be, yes. Maybe it isn't so easy to live forever. We have all -you would think anyone would want here. But there are so few of us. And -the men—always the same, with faces the same and walks the same and—"</p> - -<p>"Then you really are the same Rhone, the Oligarch of a century ago?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"And it's true, you never grow old?"</p> - -<p>"It's true. We won't grow any older. And we'll never die."</p> - -<p>She looked into his eyes and the seconds went by and time dissolved -around Danton. And he thought: the lies I have told here—are they -really a conscious effort to deceive? Do I really want, unconsciously, -to become an Oligarch? Why not? He had wondered about it before. -Immortality. A system depending on eternal warfare for its existence. -Was this not his system after all?</p> - -<p>"Come," she said, and took his arm. "I'll show you. You interest me. -You're a diversion, soldier. I'll show you what we are."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They sat in a small spherical car. It made no noise. It slid silently -over the smooth floor by working a simple lever around. It darted like -a silver beetle. First she took him back to a place he remembered well. -The Pit.</p> - -<p>She didn't seem to see things actually. She talked with a calm -detachment, and sometimes her thoughts seemed far away. Danton's -thoughts weren't far away.</p> - -<p>She was saying, "The war goes on outside the walls. Their culture is -one of war, and that is all they know. We established it that way. We -intend to keep it that way. You see this is the Pit; here the bodies -come, the ones who have died. Here the bodies are sorted roughly onto -the conveyor belts which take them to the Dismembering Wards."</p> - -<p>The car whirred them away. The next station, gleaming white rooms, -shining and sterile. Danton felt the perspiration streaming down his -throat.</p> - -<p>Electronic machinery examined the bodies, mechanical hands removed -them from the conveyor belts with deft selectivity, deposited them on -wheeled, white slabs.</p> - -<p>"You will notice," Rhone said calmly, "that the bodies have come -through an antiseptic room, and their clothing dissolved. Now they are -ready for dismembering."</p> - -<p>Men in white moved silently down the line and did their work with -sharp, quick strokes. Scalpels and tiny whirring saws and the bodies -slowly dwindling into isolated parts. There was no blood, no mess, -everything was efficient and thorough and clean.</p> - -<p>"The usable body-parts are selected here," Rhone said. "Notice the -departments along the walls by each slab? They are refrigerated. They -contain separate sections for each of the salvaged body-parts that are -worth preserving."</p> - -<p>Behind glass in the walls, Danton saw neatly placed parts of the -bodies. Hearts, fingers, hands, legs, feet, bone sections, eyes and -interior organs. Kidneys, spleens, livers, carefully preserved, neatly -arranged and labeled and waiting.</p> - -<p>Danton slowly licked his lips. Her voice seemed far away now, droning -like an insect on a lazy day far from anywhere, and the endless length -of that room seemed dust-mantled and still, so still, he thought, and -unreal; but it was real.</p> - -<p>"From here, any part of a human body can be replaced by our surgeons. -Here is the source of our immortality. When any body organ becomes -worn, it is replaced. We are stocking our body-banks, soldier. As you -can see."</p> - -<p>Danton could see. What he saw was blurring a little though, and his -legs seemed numb when he tried to move them.</p> - -<p>"Why does it affect you so?" she was asking him then, and he turned and -looked at her.</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>He didn't really know, or else his brain wasn't functioning at the -moment. Why? It was beyond horror. It was alien, and yet why should it -be alien? As a soldier, why should he find it disturbing? He had been -conditioned, and his conditioning had allowed him to destroy millions -by pressing buttons, by directing missiles he never saw in flight to a -target he never saw dissolve in a great white-hot flame.</p> - -<p>Here it was planned, and here death had some transcendental meaning.</p> - -<p>"There's one more thing for you to see," she said.</p> - -<p>A dimly-lighted series of chambers. She pointed them out. Refrigerated -banks. As far as Danton could see, the long chambers were lined with -huge banks. Each filled with spare body-parts.</p> - -<p>"You see the pattern now, soldier? We started with a select group. From -among the Oligarchs only the elite of the elite was selected to come -here to Mars. There are fifty of us now, as there were fifty then. No -children, of course. Why complicate things?</p> - -<p>"Our slaves out there know nothing except that they must fight the -Redbirds. Theirs is a war society. We arranged it and we've perpetuated -it, and now it's the only life they know—unless your story of a revolt -is true, of course, which I can hardly believe. They have only the -crudest weapons. The kind of weapons we fought with on earth, soldier, -left little for body-salvage, did they? We feel we've found the only -way of being immortal. Why does it affect you like this, soldier? -Doesn't it seem logical and fair to you?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton didn't say anything. He couldn't. His throat was dry and his -blood hammered past his temples. She was putting the question to him, -all right; and in a way it was the same question he had asked himself -more than once. To an efficiently conditioned soldier class, killing -was an end in itself. Why not go on from there, carry it out to its -final denominator?</p> - -<p>"The brain never wears out," she was saying, "the only damage possible -to it is due to the wearing out of supplementary body-parts, and they -are seldom used to such a point. And even parts of the brain can be -replaced. We have blood banks, of course. We cannot die of natural -causes. If death comes from any kind of violence or accident, we can -bring that body to life again.</p> - -<p>"We are storing up reserve body-parts to keep us strong and un-aging -for as long as one would care to imagine. When we are ready, of course, -we shall return to Earth. We have kept that in mind, naturally. We are -almost ready now to return. On Earth, of course, the same system will -be established—but there our system will of necessity be slightly -different. Perhaps wars will not necessarily go on unceasingly. There -will be breathing spells ... it won't matter particularly to us."</p> - -<p>She looked at Danton closely. "First we shall wipe out most of the -population. We only need a small stabilized population to provide for -us."</p> - -<p>"What about the Redbirds?" Danton said. His voice sounded weak. It was -weak. "This is their planet, doesn't—"</p> - -<p>"Their bodies are too alien," she said. "They can't be of any benefit -to us. Except, of course, they provide conflict for the mongrels."</p> - -<p>Danton closed his eyes. There was no more confusion. He knew now where -the road led if you stayed on it to its end. It ended here with bodies -stacked up in refrigerators. It ended with the cancellation of all -human values, except the values of the fifty select—and they were no -longer human in any familiar sense.</p> - -<p>He felt sick, very sick. It might be embarrassing, he was so sick. -He said, "I don't feel very well. Maybe I could rest here for a few -minutes?"</p> - -<p>She laughed. She stopped laughing, and Danton heard the sound of doors -sliding and the approach of softly moving feet. Two Oligarchs—Guards, -evidently, for each wore a flash-gun at his side. And between them—</p> - -<p>Danton didn't quite believe what he saw, and if what he saw was true, -he didn't know whether to be glad or not. Keith and Van Ness. The -latter was terribly wounded, his face a red smear, blood soaking his -side. And Keith—Keith, Danton had decided, was a dangerous man.</p> - -<p>One of the Oligarchs said, "We brought them directly to you, on -Weisser's orders. Weisser talked to them, then sent them down here. He -said that you would know—"</p> - -<p>She raised her hand and the Oligarch guard stopped talking. Danton -looked at Keith's rigid, white face. Keith's lips thinned back over his -teeth as he grinned at Danton. "Captain," he said. "I guess you beat me -to the punch. I see you're already on friendly terms."</p> - -<p>Van Ness moaned softly and fell to his knees. He stared sightlessly -from his broken face.</p> - -<p>Danton said, "I thought you two were gone for good."</p> - -<p>"So did we," Keith said. "But the Redbirds dropped us over a tower, -down a chute. I don't know why."</p> - -<p>Rhone said, "The Redbirds fight for us too. We pay them. For every body -they bring to us, they receive pay. A kind of drug."</p> - -<p>She stared from Danton to Keith, then at Van Ness. "You three seem to -know one another. I'll find out from Weisser." She started to tune in -the communicator on her wrist. Keith stopped her. "Don't bother," he -said. "I've already talked to Weisser. This man here has been lying. -I'll tell you the truth."</p> - -<p>Danton had been afraid of this. "Keith! Don't tell them anything!" But -he knew somehow that his own game was over. It had never had a chance. -Even without Keith's selling out, it wouldn't have had a chance. It was -walking the road bravely that counted, anyway....</p> - -<p>Keith said, "I'm talking, and I'll be glad to talk."</p> - -<p>Danton shouted, "Keith! Don't do it. Don't tell them anything. You -don't realize what they are!"</p> - -<p>"It doesn't matter," Keith said, "what they are. I've been on the wrong -side. Maybe I was always an Oligarch, and it's probably the same with -you, only you're just too stupid to admit it. You think I want to go -back to Earth, even if we had a chance to do it, which we'll never -have? I hate Earth, and maybe I always have hated it—the way the New -Order remade it! It's sane! Everyone an angel, filled to the hair roots -with the milk of human kindness. We found it no place for us. Weisser -says he'll take me in. I know where I belong!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Rhone stood up in the car, looking into Danton's face. "It's true then. -The three of you are from Earth. I thought they were planning a culture -down there that couldn't possibly be aggressive. How could they have -sent you?"</p> - -<p>Danton's eyes went from face to face, round the immediate area of the -vast chamber. Keith was grinning thinly, watching him narrowly. This -was it, and there seemed nothing to do but to go down fighting in the -classic vein. A futile gesture, but what else?</p> - -<p>He said, "It was done in secret. Only we three and one other knew -about the flight." Tell the truth. It might keep them from invading -Earth for a while. If they thought Earth had an army they would strike -before Earth grew any stronger. The truth might keep them quiescent -for a while longer. "The new social system there, it has no conception -of warfare or violence. You wouldn't understand it. And they wouldn't -understand you, not now."</p> - -<p>"You used our ship to get here," she said. "That would indicate that -you have no ships of your own there?"</p> - -<p>Danton nodded. Keith laughed, a thin high laughter. He moved toward -Rhone. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands to her. "They have -no armaments, no ships. Psychologically they have no power to resist. -Weisser said I could become one of you."</p> - -<p>Danton pushed Rhone from the car. He shoved the control lever and the -car whirled violently, slammed into the foremost Oligarch guard, sent -him spinning across the metal floor. The car swerved again, struck down -the other guard. Danton jumped free, ripped the weapon from the man's -waist. The guard was groaning and his hands were sliding about vaguely -over the floor.</p> - -<p>The hand-gun was familiar. It was similar to the flash-guns used by the -guards on Earth a century before; there would have been no need to have -altered that weapon.</p> - -<p>Keith ran at him, kicked out, and Danton fired. Keith went to his knees -and looked at Danton dully and then fell forward. He rolled over and -lay there, grinning blankly at nothing at all.</p> - -<p>Deliberately, without feeling anything, Danton burned the life out of -the two Oligarchs who had lain stunned where they fell. As he spun -back, the woman stood stiffly almost up against him. He had expected -her to attempt to run away.</p> - -<p>She said softly, "I know what it is now. It's because you're human. -It's human to grow older. It's human to die. Maybe we have the wrong -idea, or maybe we've approached it wrong, I don't know. It doesn't -matter now. I—"</p> - -<p>He pressed the flash-gun toward her. She didn't seem to notice the -gun. She continued to look at his face, into his eyes, searching, for -something he couldn't tell what, and he didn't care.</p> - -<p>"Did you know you have gray eyes," she whispered, "and that they -deepen, get darker and darker?"</p> - -<p>"No."</p> - -<p>"No. No one ever told you."</p> - -<p>Mara had told him. He barely remembered that time when she had told him.</p> - -<p>She put her slightly opened mouth against his lips and pulled him -closer.</p> - -<p>He pulled the trigger. Her body quivered as though from the kiss, and -then he stepped away and she fell at his feet. He wasn't thinking now. -There was no time for that. He lifted her, carried her toward one of -the refrigerated banks. Her skin had turned a mottled ugly color and -her eyes were open and rigid. Quite suddenly her eyes moved up into her -head, and ugly groups of purple little veins appeared underneath the -skin.</p> - -<p>He put her on the frosty floor of the huge bank. Around her, like some -hideous garnishing, were eyes that looked at her accusingly. He dragged -the two Oligarch guards and Keith's corpse into another bank, slammed -the heavy door. Van Ness groaned and Danton lifted him into the car.</p> - -<p>"I can't see," Van Ness whispered. "I can't see. I'm dying."</p> - -<p>"Hang on," Danton said. "Only fifty Oligarchs, understand, Van? Forty -seven now. Maybe less if those seven I shot down in the pit didn't all -recover. Maybe we can get some more of them, Van!"</p> - -<p>"I'm dying," Van Ness whispered. "I can't see."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Danton tooled the car. As he approached doors in the long tubular -halls, the doors opened automatically, closed again behind. There were -turns, drops, risings, more doors, other halls.</p> - -<p>He stopped the car. Lost, alone, somewhere. Only fifty of them—no, -forty-seven now at most. They wouldn't have too large a structure here. -Somewhere there would have to be a central power source. If he could -find such a power unit, strike at the heart—</p> - -<p>He shook Van Ness. He felt for the heart. It was still beating. Van -Ness moaned, "I'm dying. If I could see—"</p> - -<p>"Do you know what I'm saying, Van? Can you hear me?"</p> - -<p>"Yes ... sure I can hear you."</p> - -<p>"Listen to me. We're in the Oligarch's fortress. I don't know how big -it is. But it seems to be one unified structure. There has to be a -central power source here. You were an engineering expert. Where would -it be? Van, listen. There are only a handful of Oligarchs here now. We -stand a slim chance...."</p> - -<p>"But I can't see—"</p> - -<p>"I can see."</p> - -<p>"Yes—a central power source. I remember the words to an old song, -Captain. You know, soldiering used to be a great sport. There was one -about a chocolate soldier with a uniform so pretty...."</p> - -<p>"<i>Van Ness!</i>"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Where would they build that central power room? Up? Down?"</p> - -<p>"Down."</p> - -<p>He started the car moving. Oddly curving and angling corridors bending -with geometrical precision. He saw an elevator door and he pressed -the button; the door opened and he drove the car into it. Down, fast, -sickeningly fast.</p> - -<p>"Bottom ... clear down," Van Ness mumbled. "Start from there. I can't -see—"</p> - -<p>Danton kept the elevator dropping and then it stopped. He hadn't -stopped it.</p> - -<p>He stepped to the side as the door slid open. He hit the entering -Oligarch, hit him with a short hard blow in the solar plexus and when -the man gasped and bent forward, Danton brought his knee up. Bone and -cartilage crunched. The man slewed to one side, and Danton hit him -again and the man smashed into the wall and slid down toward the floor.</p> - -<p>"I can't see," Van Ness said. "But what I hear has a sweet sound."</p> - -<p>Danton dragged the Oligarch up, held him against the wall. The man -sagged and lifted his hands to protect his face. His lips were torn, -his nose bleeding. He stared dazedly at Danton, his eyes filled with -terror, shock.</p> - -<p>"Wha—" he started to say something. Danton pushed his flash-gun into -the man's middle. And the Oligarch screamed. Danton's voice chopped -into the scream.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to kill you," Danton said. "Unless you tell me what I want -to know. Tell me where the power rooms are, the central power units."</p> - -<p>The man shook his head, no.</p> - -<p>Danton moved the gun around, pressed the stud. Burning flesh, and -the Oligarch jerked away and fell twitching on the floor, his left -leg charred from the knee down. He sat and stared at the leg, and he -started whimpering. He reached down with his fingers, then drew them -back again.</p> - -<p>"Tell me," Danton said. "Or what's left of you, even the body parts -from your banks won't put back together again."</p> - -<p>The Oligarch murmured, and he had changed his mind.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Oligarch led them into the gigantic room, then collapsed. Danton -killed him where he lay. Danton recognized some of the equipment, -though he was no nucleonics or electronics expert as Van Ness had been. -"Listen to this, Van. Listen to me!"</p> - -<p>"Yes...."</p> - -<p>Danton told what he saw. He was Van Ness' eyes. The generators, -huge oscilloscopes, vacuumtube voltimeters, electronic power-supply -panels, rolls and skeins of hook-up wire, shielding of every color, -size and shape, panel plates, huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate -transceivers, long solid surfaces of gleaming bakelite, color-indexed -files of resistors and capacitances....</p> - -<p>Van Ness told Danton what to do. Van Ness took a long time to say -a few words, and after that he didn't seem to be able to say -anything else. He didn't move either. Danton released the force of -the flash-gun, left the gun in the position Van Ness had indicated, -its beam burning deep into the heart of the complicated soul of the -Oligarch fortress.</p> - -<p>He would have taken Van Ness with him, but Van Ness wasn't interested -anymore. He was dead. Danton left him. He would remember Van Ness alive -as long as he was capable of remembering anything. Van Ness as clay he -had already forgotten.</p> - -<p>He ran toward the elevator. As it whirred upward, he felt the -reverberation, the trembling, the beginnings of a low deadly murmuring. -The elevator continued to rise smoothly, carrying Danton and the car, -but Danton felt a giddy swaying like that of an earthquake.</p> - -<p>A social system strictly of the top-down variety. But in the final -analysis, the top wasn't the mind of Rhone or of Weisser. It was -something above both of them, above the Oligarchs. Machines. And above -the machines, generators and switches and volts and tubes.</p> - -<p>The electronic interdependence was going insane within the fortress, -like the intricate cellular structure of a mind within a skull.</p> - -<p>In a hall somewhere in a catacomb of metal, Danton sat in the car, -wondering which way to go, wondering if it would make any difference -now, feeling the fortress above, below, all around him, breaking apart.</p> - -<p>What about the Oligarch spaceships? Perhaps they were someplace else, -away from here, and they would survive the destruction of the fortress. -And maybe one or two or three Oligarchs would also survive. Even one -ship, one Oligarch, returning to Earth, would be one too many.</p> - -<p>He was looking at the far door as it slid open and a car sped through, -skimming along the polished metal floor frantically, desperately. -The occupant of the car, a woman, took no notice of Danton. Her face -was damp and pale with fear as her car sped past. Her machines were -forsaking her. Her efficiency, her gadgets and the tremendous power -that had existed for so long at her fingertips, were disintegrating, -and she appeared to be disintegrating with them.</p> - -<p>She would be intent only on escape, of course, not realizing that -without her machines, she was doomed. But she might find a temporary -escape from the death around her, the metal walls of the gigantic -coffin.</p> - -<p>Van Ness was gone. And Keith—convinced that soldiering was an end in -itself, rather than a means to an end—had found the inevitable end for -a soldier.</p> - -<p>Danton wondered about that. He knew one thing—that the test was yet to -come for him. He was not sure yet that Keith had not been right....</p> - -<p>He followed the woman through a door into a chamber. It was a nice -room, Danton thought. A great deal of pleasure had drifted through -this room, and in it, time had probably never meant anything. Perfumed -incense. Music, drifting, still rising from somewhere, pneumatic -couches—but underneath something was cracking open, veins and arteries -of power choking, blocked off; but the power had to go somewhere; -short-circuit, the madness of a great machine-mind.</p> - -<p>The woman had opened a panel, and beyond her, Danton could see the -Martian afternoon. He had never seen a Martian afternoon before. It was -beautiful, he thought, though he was hardly in a position to study or -appreciate it properly. Then he saw what she was doing—the woman was -escaping out the panel. There must be some way she was planning to get -safely to the ground outside. It seemed to be a long way down.</p> - -<p>But she wasn't worried about that.</p> - -<p>She jumped. She looked back at Danton, her face pale and twisted, then -she jumped. Danton ran, looked out. He looked out just in time to see -her body hit. It was too far down for anyone to go that way. Her body -bounced a little.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Insane, Danton thought. They had each become such component parts of -the bigger machine that very likely they were all going crazy now, -right along with the machine. And the machine wasn't going to last much -longer either, insane or otherwise. It was beginning to quiver, to -shake and shudder, and its metal skin was beginning to groan and twist. -Its metal joints were grinding together, its skein nerves wrenching and -singing.</p> - -<p>Danton looked around hurriedly. He saw the wires again, everything -suspended by wires, shiny and strong. He gave a heavy table -slab—legless, of course, a suspended disc of metal—he gave it a -tremendous shove and it began to swing to and fro; it made a heavy -pendulum, swinging wider and wider, and it began to crash into other -suspended things, into chairs and into weird sculpture, crashing -through structural images and distorted faces of metal. It made a sound -like off-key bells bonging and clanging.</p> - -<p>Wires finally snapped with a whine and Danton felt the hot sharpness -as a strand cut across his arm, sinking in like the slash of a knife. -He pushed the table slab to the wall, against the window. He managed -to get several strands of the wire tied together by complicated knot -designs. He yanked down an ornamental drape that seemed to have a -swirling life of its own, made sheaths for his hands from finely-woven -metallic-cloth, and looped the wire three times around the metal -sheathing.</p> - -<p>He slid down toward the ground. It was further down than it had seemed -from above. The wind was high and cold and strong. He began to sway -dangerously and the wind threatened to tear him from the wire.</p> - -<p>He glanced upward. The structure of the Oligarchs was huge, a shining -silver metal thing of coldness rising up out of bare rocks. It was -built on the side of a cliff, very high, and very far below was a -valley. Perhaps it was the valley in which he had landed ... no, that -must have been far away from here. He saw no lake. But, of course, the -valley itself stretched windingly away further than he could see.</p> - -<p>He ran out of wire. He managed to lift his weight with one arm enough -to unwrap the wire coils from the other. That gave him another three -feet. He dropped. Pain came from a wrenched ankle and the shock of the -weight on his bones. But he hit running and he kept on running.</p> - -<p>For somehow, though he had killed her, she was alive.</p> - -<p>Just before dropping he had seen her, running away from the Oligarch -tower. Running along a steel walkway. A fine-mesh railing separated the -walkway from a sheer drop of at least a thousand feet. It was Rhone. -She was running fast, too. Very fast.</p> - -<p>He ran hard. He didn't feel the pain in his ankle. He couldn't afford -to feel anything now except urgency. The cold thin air burned.</p> - -<p>She stopped and he stopped too, flattening against the hard -rust-colored rock. She was pushing a lever or something; whatever it -was it got results. A silver nose projected outward from the cliff, -slanting slightly upward; it blossomed out as though someone were -blowing a silver bubble from stone. Out and out. It stopped.</p> - -<p>It was a spaceship, all right. Danton figured that the power shut-off -had prevented her from reaching the ship from a subterranean route. -Evidently rigged for such an emergency, the wall of the cliff could -also summon the ship out into the open, prepare it for blasting off -from a cradle cut down into the cliff like a giant cannon barrel.</p> - -<p>When the outer door in the side of the ship opened, Rhone ran for it. -Danton was right behind her. She heard him just as she went through and -into the air-lock. She turned, her mouth opened, and then he struck her -with his shoulder, carried her on through the inner air-lock door and -into the tubular corridor leading forward into the control room.</p> - -<p>He dragged her forward with him as the doors closed behind him. The -controls were the same in principle as those of the ship he had brought -from Earth. Once set, they were automatic. He strapped Rhone in the -shock-seat at the side. He strapped himself into the chair before the -control panel....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Seers, Secretary of Social Security, was a fat man with a serious round -slate-gray face. He looked at Danton thoughtfully, waited. Outside the -office of Sociology Section in New World Square, the sky was a soft and -promising blue.</p> - -<p>Finally Seers said, "Well, Danton, what happened then?"</p> - -<p>Danton shrugged. "First I dropped enough atomic fire to finish -destroying the Oligarch fortress completely, and to get any ships that -might have been left inside the mountain. There's nothing there now but -a big black crater. I don't think there will ever be any need to worry -about the Oligarchs anymore. I landed the ship in the Pacific in as -isolated a spot as I could find—midway between New Zealand and Cape -Horn. Then I contacted you by short wave. And here I am and here you -are. And I guess that's all there is."</p> - -<p>"Why did you bring Rhone back?"</p> - -<p>"I had no choice," Danton said. "I guess when I killed her and put her -in the refrigeration bank, that saved her life. Some surgeon did a -quick job on her." Danton leaned toward Seers. "If all of it, or any of -it, really happened."</p> - -<p>"What makes you think it didn't?"</p> - -<p>"For one thing, I'm back here alive, an impossible mission -accomplished. For another—I—well, this time I <i>want</i> to be -reconditioned."</p> - -<p>"Your experience has changed your outlook, Danton?"</p> - -<p>"Considerably. I—want to be changed. I want to be someone else, -anything else. I've seen things too horrible to remember anyway. -I'd rather forget everything. It could all have been delusion, -hallucination rigged up in your psyche labs. As Keith said—you boys -are good at that sort of thing. If that's how it was—it was good -therapy. There's a doubt in my mind, you see. It <i>might</i> have happened, -and just the bare possibility that it did happen is enough to make me -gladly volunteer for reconditioning."</p> - -<p>Seers nodded. "I'm very glad you're approaching it this way. It will -make the processing easier to perform, and the new personality easier -to maintain. We probably will never need your kind again, Danton. Now -that the Oligarchs are gone, the last threat to our new system is gone -with them. The chance of some other intelligent life-form being in the -universe at all is remote, and the further chance that they would take -aggressive action against Earth makes the whole thing something we can -logically ignore."</p> - -<p>"That's fine," Danton said.</p> - -<p>"You've seen where the psychology of war would lead, inevitably. If you -can justify killing human beings at all, the final result is bound to -be, in some form or another, what you saw on Mars."</p> - -<p>"If I actually saw it. If I was on Mars at all."</p> - -<p>Seers signaled through the intercom. A door opened. Rhone stood there, -a tablet in her hand, and a pencil. She sat down and crossed attractive -legs. Very attractive legs, Danton thought.</p> - -<p>"Miss Tannon, this is Richard Danton. Mr. Danton, my new secretary, -Miss Tannon."</p> - -<p>She nodded, turned her nose down once more, very business-like, into -the tablet.</p> - -<p>Danton thought, It's Rhone all right. A reconditioned Rhone. They must -be good at their reconditioning to change an Oligarch mind into that -of an efficient secretary. Danton said, "What about the others up there -on Mars?"</p> - -<p>"We'll take care of them, peacefully of course," Seers said. "We have -plenty of time. We won't bring them back. We will set up our new system -there."</p> - -<p>Danton listened to Seers' dictation. "To Chief Psyche-adjustment -Administrator. From Seers, Department of Social Security. Subject: -Voluntary reconditioning of Richard Danton. To take place at once under -the jurisdiction of...."</p> - -<p>There was more. Danton didn't hear it ... and later they injected -something into his veins and he sat there, feeling Richard Danton -dying, for the last time, going away. Richard Danton, fading out, all -around him bit by bit, cell by cell, dying, never to awaken again. And -remembering what he had experienced on Mars, Danton thought: It's as -good a reward as anyone could ask. Goodbye, Richard Danton. It was nice -knowing you, but Goodbye....</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p><i>His name was Burton. John R. Burton.</i></p> - -<p><i>He was as happy as anyone could expect to be. His wife loved him and -he loved his wife. Their children were very well adjusted, as was -everyone of course in the New World System.</i></p> - -<p><i>Burton worked ten hours a week in a coal mine, though the job was -merely one demanding the overseeing of machines. The rest of the week -was one of leisure devoted to gardening, hobbies, play, music. There -was no more hate, no violence, no feelings of insecurity. It wasn't -that everyone loved everyone else particularly. It was just that no one -was afraid of the future anymore.</i></p> - -<p><i>And Burton was no longer bothered by bad dreams either, and so he was -what one might consider perfectly happy, perfectly adjusted.</i></p> - -<p><i>The perfect happiness of one who does not remember.</i></p> - -<pre style='margin-top:6em'> -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIAN NIGHTMARE *** - -This file should be named 63997-h.htm or 63997-h.zip - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/9/9/63997/ - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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