Richard Rein Smith

“ What drove a man to do anything except the impetus of pain and the instinct to avoid pain? A man did a million things to avoid physical pain. To avoid hunger pains, a man would eat; to avoid the pain of coldness, a man would light a fire; to avoid aching muscles, a man would make a wheel to carry his burden; to lessen that burden, a man would split an atom.... And a man did a million other things to avoid emotional pain. To avoid the pain of loneliness, a man would make friends; to avoid the pain of boredom, a man would play a game; to avoid the pain of ugliness, a man would create beauty.... ”

“ The house's electronic brain glowed with an intangible thing that might have been pride.
It thought, I am content. I am content because there are so many things I can do to make them happy. I can cook their meals, make the beds, scrub my floors, wash my windows. I can bathe them, keep them warm, give them a gentle, cool breeze. If they want entertainment, I can rise hundreds of feet on my antigravity rays and give them a nice view. I can give them soft music, entertaining TV programs and pleasant surprises. ”

“ A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry. ”

“ The Antarians had only one choice: capture as many soldiers as possible and make them tell where military targets were located. And to them, men were an alien form of life. Their science was not adapted to the human body; they had no drugs to affect the human mind. In the middle of an interplanetary war, they could not spare the workers, time, wealth, and effort to invent drugs that had taken mankind itself years to produce. But it took them only a few minutes to make a whip....
As Murphy listened, the distant rumble of exploding shells grew in volume. ”

“ The woman screamed even more shrilly as the weird machine tugged at her panties. Frantically, she grabbed the slender tentacles and twisted them until rewarded by the crunch of delicate mechanisms not meant for such rough treatment.
The machine served its purpose until its last metal arm was broken.
The house watched as the woman cried for a few minutes and then, clad only in high-heel shoes and wristwatch, continued her search of the bedroom.
She is different, the house thought. She does not scream threats at me like the man does. ”

“ So, there were two possibilities: he could attempt to wreck the machine or wait for it to wear itself out and fight boredom while waiting.
It didn't take him long to decide that he should wait for the machine to run down. If the alien devices really drew energy from the space-time continuum, it would be dangerous to tamper with one. A wrong move when fooling with such a tremendous amount of energy might be disastrous, and perhaps that was exactly what the old Martian had planned for him to do! On the other hand, it didn't seem possible that a machine could run forever. ”

“ If Earth won that battle, the Antarians would be beaten since they would have no way to stop Earth from sending more men and more supplies.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the problem of saving Hank's life. That was his habit: every time he went into combat, he picked someone like Hank—a kid—and stuck with him. He would worry about that kid, whoever he might be, and try to keep him out of tight spots. It was his way of protecting himself. Whenever he worried about his own life, his mind always froze. But worrying about someone else was different. ”

“ Each time we met, George complained. Each time, he seemed to drink more and complain more.
I worried about his job. He was a surgeon—one of the best—and a surgeon needs good nerves and steady hands when he performs delicate operations.
I urged him to get a divorce, but he said he didn't want one. "I love Helen," he said one time. "Well, I don't exactly love Helen, but I love her body. It's like the old saying about marrying a girl because she's pretty is like picking a rose by looking at the stem. We're all different, you know, and we all have different tastes. ”

“ Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. ”

“ George asked.
"He may have been afraid the other would miss and damage the ship," Emmett said. "Or possibly—"
"No. They're trained from birth to be soldiers. They're expert marksmen and their weapons are foolproof. They can adjust the blast from a weapon to travel any distance."
"Why should one enemy prevent another from killing us?" Emmett repeated wonderingly. He remembered another question that had nagged at his mind: Why had the Agronians totally destroyed Earth? ”

“ The house decided to leave the sound-blocks on. It was best to attack them individually.
A closet door slid into a wall. A slender machine, five feet tall and with sixteen long metal tentacles rolled across the room on soft rubber wheels.
It looked like a mechanical monster from another world, but it was merely a very efficient machine to undress the house's masters—a mechavalet.
The mechavalet paused behind the woman's back. Sixteen rubber-tipped metal tentacles reached out.
The machine normally undressed a person with smoothness and gentleness. ”

“ He wondered, How do you prevent a man from giving information? It was an important problem. There seemed to be no way to prevent the Antarians from taking prisoners, no way to prevent them from torturing prisoners. If they captured enough prisoners, they could learn the location of every military base and war plant on Earth. Every soldier knew the location of something vital; almost every soldier could point to it on an aerial map. ”

“ Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion. ”

“ He still wanted Helen but she had changed into a personality that he hated. Over a period of years, she had changed into a morbid hypochondriac, an unpleasant woman who enjoyed—more than anything else—such things as having one of her legs replaced and sampling the latest pills and drugs. George said he had tried to get her to see a psychiatrist but she refused. And you can't have a person committed to a mental institution because they have an unpleasant personality! ”

“ Mankind had invented atomic energy and then used it to kill millions. Their latest achievement was the marvel of spaceflight and where had that ended? It had also ended in war....
Personally, he didn't believe they were justified in fighting the Martians. If they didn't want anyone intruding on their planet, what right did Earthmen have to force their way? The popular theory that they could help rebuild the dying Martian civilization didn't seem very logical when millions had to be killed in the process. ”

“ They wandered aimlessly about the room, each engrossed in his private mental turmoil. Finally the pilot broke the silence, "Since we're probably the last ones alive on the ship, we should know each other. My name is George Hartman."
"Emmett Corbin."
"Gloria ... Gloria White."
The pilot said with grim urgency: "We've got to do something. There's no sense in just standing here—waiting for the enemy to come."
"Come?" Emmett inquired. "You mean that the Agronians will actually board our ship?"
"They always examine disabled ships. They are determined to learn as much as they can about us." ”

“ She will love me and he will be proud of me and take good care of me. I am glad they own me!
It deactivated the scanner and from hidden closets, shiny machines quietly entered the many rooms. The tiny machines rolled on soft rubber wheels, floated on invisible antigravity rays and went about their many tasks. They sucked in dust and dirt, waxed the floors, washed the dishes. Behind the smooth gray walls, machines prepared the evening meal, checked the video schedule for the afternoon and selected recordings of soft music that the house's owners would enjoy. ”

“ It's not a simple case of schizophrenia that our men get. It's a schizophrenic dream. The system blocks all sensory contacts and speeds up the mind. You know how a person dreams only a few seconds before he wakes up and that dream seems days or weeks long? Can you imagine how much a dream can be speeded up and clarified by drugs, how much a dream can be controlled by hypnotic suggestion, how much experience can be—"
Murphy saw that they were on a street, the tall, angular shadows of strange buildings all around them. He heard a shuffling noise and turned to see Antarians crawling toward them. ”

“ I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
"Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. ”

“ We'll have to conceal ourselves outside."
"Outside?"
"We can use the magnetic shoes on our spacesuits to walk on the ship's hull. If luck favors us they may never even think of searching the forward section of the hull."
Emmett shrugged his shoulders, not realizing that in the faint light no one could see the gesture. Gloria said, "It's better than making no attempt at all to save ourselves."
George led the way from the control room, and across a passenger compartment that was filled with the crumpled, lifeless forms of almost a hundred men and women. ”

“ If he dreamed that he was a child again, playing in the fields and chasing rabbits, the nightmare image was there, superimposed upon the dream. If he dreamed that he was a teen-ager, walking Betty home from the movies and holding her soft hand in his, it was there—hovering in the air around them. ”

“ Since the machine influenced the space-time continuum and the same ten-minute interval in time was always repeated, all physical things in space were exactly as they had been at the beginning of the cycle. His body had been refreshed at the beginning of the original cycle and it would always be in the same condition. He would never grow older, he would never become hungry and he would never become tired physically.
Desperate for a way to overcome boredom, he used the bottle of whiskey in the kitchen. ”

“ Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us!"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure." ”

“ A meteor! People usually visualized meteors as tons of metal hurtling through space. But there were small ones as well, and perhaps this one had been no larger than a grain of sand. He dismissed it from his mind, and after what seemed an eternity, his feet touched the hull of the enemy ship. Quickly he activated the magnetic boots.
A distant figure gestured as George's voice came loudly over the intercom system, "This way. Here's the air lock!" ”

“ It wasn't a long distance, but inching his way on his elbows and knees, and with his face close to the evil-smelling mud, it seemed like a mile. As he crawled, he reflected bitterly that most of mankind's really great achievements always ended in war. ”

“ Maybe we'll get killed. But getting killed in a struggle for survival is better than just waiting to die."
Gloria shuddered. "It looks so cold out there. We'll get separated—hopelessly lost. I don't even know how to operate the spacesuit's rockets!"
"I don't either," Emmett admitted.
"It's simple." George carefully explained the operation of the rockets in detail and ended by instructing them, "We'll get separated on the way. But when we reach the ship, we'll try to meet at the air lock. It resembles the air lock of an Earth ship." ”