Raymond F. Jones

“ Mel felt as if a wall had suddenly sprung up between them. He clutched Alice's shoulders desperately in his hands. "Alice—I don't think that ship out there is going to Mars. I know it sounds crazy, but please listen to me—we weren't told anything about the Martian Princess being merely a shuttle and that we'd transfer to another ship out here. No one was told. The Martian Princess is a space liner perfectly capable of going to Mars. There's no reason why such a huge ship should be used merely as a shuttle." ”

“ There was no place he could hide with assurance inside the ship.
But what about outside?
His thoughts crumpled in indecision as he thought of Alice. Yet whatever the black ship meant, he could help no one if he went aboard. He had to get back to Earth and try to find out what it was all about and alert the authorities. Only in that way could he hope to help Alice.
He opened the stateroom door cautiously and stepped out. The corridor was filled with hurrying passengers, carrying hand luggage, laughing with each other in excitement. He joined them, moving slowly, alert for crew members. ”

“ The choice is not one which a new world is invited to make; the choice is made for it. A world which begins to send its ships through space becomes a member of the Council, or its ships cease to travel. The world itself may cease to exist."
"You mean this dictatorial Council determines whether a world is fit to survive and actually wipes out those it decides against?" gasped Mel in horror. "They set themselves up as judges in the Universe?"
"That's about the way they operate, to put it bluntly," said Connemorra. ”

“ We use our machines to block traveling."
"I can understand the first argument, but not this one!" said Mel.
"We move our bodies to new locations with our machines, but our minds remain at home. We take our rutted thoughts, our predispositions, our cultural concepts wherever we go. We do not touch, even with a fragment of our minds, that which our machines give us contact with. We do not travel. We move in space, but we do not travel. ”

“ Mel said casually, enjoying the bubbling excitement that was in Alice.
The ship was so completely stabilized that the passengers did not even have to sit down during takeoff. They crowded the ports to watch the land and the water shoot past as the ship skimmed half the length of Lake Michigan in its takeoff run. As it bore into the upper atmosphere on an ever-increasing angle of climb, its own artificial gravity system took over and gave the illusion of horizontal flight with the Earth receding slowly behind. ”

“ Mel asked. He backed warily against the opposite wall from Connemorra. "That time when I escaped from the Martian Princess rather than come aboard the black ship?"
Connemorra nodded. "Yes."
"I still don't understand. Why?"
"It's an old story." Connemorra shrugged faintly. "A man learns too much about things he should know nothing of."
"I have a right to know what happened to my wife. You know about her don't you?"
Connemorra nodded.
"What happened to her? Why was she different after her trip to Mars?"
James Connemorra was silent for so long that Mel thought he had not heard him. ”

“ But the Alice android failed, and you set out on a course to uncover us. I had to find a way to destroy you—murder.
"I'm truly sorry. I don't know how an android thinks or feels. Sometimes I'm afraid of all of you. You are like men, but I've seen the factories in which you are produced. There are many things I do not know. I know only that I had to obey the Galactic Council or Earth would have been destroyed long ago.
"And something else I know: Alice and Mel Hastings are content and happy. They are on a lovely world, very much like Central Valley." ”

“ Mel hailed the nearest cab and drove to Jake's place.
"Mel, it's great to see you!" Jake said. "I didn't think any of the boys would remember an old man after he'd walked out for the last time."
"People remember real easy when they want favors."
"Sure," Jake said with a grin, "but there's not much of a favor I can do you any more, boy. Can't even loan you a ten until next payday."
"Jake, you can help me," said Mel. "You don't expect to ever take a trip to Mars, do you?"
"Mars! Are you crazy, Mel?"
"I went once. I've got to go again. It's about Alice. And they won't let me. ”

“ A reporter should be objective even about a hospital. It's his business to stir others' emotions and not let his own be stirred. But that was no good, Mel Hastings told himself. No good at all when it was Alice who was here somewhere, balanced uncertainly between life and death. ”

“ Its cover bore the picture of the great Martian Princess and the blazoned emblem of Connemorra Space Lines. Inside were glistening photos of the plush interior of the great vacation liner, and pictures of the domed cities of Mars where Earthmen played more than they worked. Mars had become the great resort center of Earth.
Mel closed the book and glanced again at the Connemorra name. Only one man had ever amassed the resources necessary to operate a private space line. ”

“ No. That was real enough. The accident. Dr. Winters. The scene in the icy room next to Surgery at the hospital. Dr. Martin didn't know about that. He would have called that a fantasy, too, if Mel had tried to tell him.
No. It was all real.
The unbelievable, alien organs of Alice.
The great, black ship.
The mindless robot searchers.
His nightmare had stemmed from all this that had happened out in space, which had somehow been wiped from his conscious memory. The nightmare had not existed in his boyhood, as he had thought. It was oriented in time now. ”

“ Watch, and you can see it blot them out as it moves."
"It's another ship!" Alice exclaimed. "That's exciting! To think we're passing another ship in all this great emptiness of space! I wonder where it's coming from?"
"And where it's going to."
They watched its slow, precise movement across the stars. After several minutes a steward passed by. Mel hailed him and pointed to the screen. "Can you tell us what that other ship is?"
The steward glanced and seemed to recognize it instantly. But he paused in replying. "That's the Mars liner," he said finally. ”

“ Winters said he thought recovery would be required."
"He is right. No matter how much overlay you pile on top of such a phobia to suppress it, it will continue to haunt you. We can make a trial run to analyze the situation, and then we can better predict the chance of ultimate success."
As a reporter, Mel Hastings had had vague encounters with the subject of psycho-recovery, but he knew little of the details about it. He knew it involved some kind of a machine that could tap the very depths of the human mind and drag out the hidden debris accumulated in mental basements and attics. ”

“ Surely there was no possibility that the great Connemorra Lines would plan any procedure to the detriment of the more than five thousand passengers aboard the ship. His uneasiness was pretty stupid, he thought.
But it wouldn't go away.
He returned to the crowd clustered at the viewing screen and took Alice by the arm to draw her away.
She looked quizzically at him. "This is the most exciting thing yet. I want to watch it."
"We haven't got much time," Mel said. "We've got a lot of things to get in our suitcases. Let's go down to our stateroom."
"Everyone else has to pack, too. ”

“ Mel lay on the couch, continuing to stare at the ceiling. "Then there was no great, black ship out of space?"
"Of course not! That is one danger of these analyses, Mr. Hastings. You must not be deceived into believing that a newly discovered fantasy is the truth for which you were looking. You must come back and continue your search." ”

“ We are using space flight for the boring, the trivial, the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watch on the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions: the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've built civilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. ”

“ One circulates a blood substance in the outer layers of tissue that is almost normal. The other circulates a liquid that gives the remainder of the organs their greenish hue. But how circulation takes place we do not know. She has no heart."
Mel Hastings burst out in hysterical laughter. "Now I know you're crazy Doc! My tender, loving Alice with no heart! She used to tell me, 'I haven't got any brains. I wouldn't have married a dumb reporter if I did. ”

“ The passengers were shunted into branching corridors leading to their own staterooms. So far everything was so utterly normal that Mel felt an overwhelming despondency. It was just as they had been told; they were transferring to the Mars liner from the shuttle.
The steward glanced at his ticket, held it for a moment of hesitation while he scanned Mel's face. "Mr. Norton—please come with me."
The steward moved away in a direction no other passengers were taking. Another steward moved up to his place. "That way," the second man said to Mel. "Follow the steward." ”

“ The colonies are small, the largest are only a few thousand. The problems there are different than on Earth—and they are tough. The natural resources are not the same. The development of the resulting cultures will be vastly different from that of Earth. The Galactic Council is very interested in the outcome—which will not be known with certainty for a thousand years or so."
"But they come back," Mel repeated. "You bring them back!"
"For each Earthman who goes out, a replacement is sent back. The replacement is an android supplied by the Council." ”

“ Winters had found about Alice?
Overcome with grief and exhaustion he sat fingering the mementos aimlessly while he stared at the pictures and the ticket envelope and the souvenirs.
Dr. Winters spoke a little more sharply than he intended. "I don't think anything is going to be solved by a wild-goose chase to Mars. It's going to cost you a great deal of money, and there isn't a single positive lead to any solution."
"It's the only possible explanation." Mel persisted. "Something happened on Mars to change her from what she once was to—what you saw on your operating table." ”

“ What do they intend? Taking groups of Earthmen, deporting them to other worlds—breaking them apart from each other forever—?"
The coldness found its resting place in Mel's chest. He stared at James Connemorra. Then his eyes moved slowly over the walls of the room in the black ship and out to the stars. The black ship.
"This ship—! You transfer your passengers to this Galactic ship for deportation to other worlds! But they come back—"
"They are sent to colonies on other worlds where conditions are like those on Earth—with significant exceptions. ”

“ They closed swiftly, and the nearest robot came within a dozen feet, matching Mel's own velocity. Suddenly, from a small opening in the machine, a slender metal tentacle whipped out and wrapped about him like the coils of a snake. The second robot approached and added another binding. Mel's arms and legs were pinned. Frantically, he manipulated the jet control in the glove of the suit. This only caused the tentacles to cut deeply and painfully, and threatened to smash the shell of the suit. ”

“ Winters. "But I suspect that the cause of your trouble cannot be suppressed. It will have to be lifted. Psycho-recovery is the only way to accomplish that. I can recommend a number of good men. This, too, is very expensive."
"I should have done it for Alice—long ago," said Mel.
Dr. Martin, the psychiatrist, was deeply interested in Mel's problem. "It sounds as if it is based on some early trauma, which has long since been wiped from your conscious memory. Recovery may be easy or difficult, depending on how much suppression of the original event has taken place." ”

“ Earthmen are still making too many blunders to join creatures that could cross the galaxy at the speed of light when we were learning how to chip flint."
"But they didn't wipe us out!"
James Connemorra looked out at the stars. "I wonder," he said. "I wonder—"
"What do you mean?" Mel said in a tight voice.
"We have defects which are not quite like any they have encountered before. We have developed skills in the manufacture of artifacts, but we have no capacity for using them. ”

“ A race that is merely stupid seldom gets out to space. But ours has something else they fear: destructiveness. They have plotted our history and extrapolated our future. If they let us come out, war and conflict will follow. ”

“ But our fabulous screens prevent us from communicating with each other by throwing up a wall of pseudo-communication that we can't get through. We subject ourselves to a barrage of sound and light that has a communication content of almost zero. ”

“ Martin. "It takes away the grogginess that sometimes attends such a deep sweep. We will look for you day after tomorrow."
Mel nodded and stepped out into the hall.
No great black ship.
No mysterious little robot ships with tentacles that whip out and capture a man. ”