Part 2

He walked slowly on, taking his thoughts with him. What was the purpose in all this? All a monotonous cycle, constantly repeated. From the torture of starvation to the torture of the shame and bitter self-accusation that makes one despise himself, back to the starvation. Men slowly becoming something lower than pigs, and knowing it all too well. A satisfying of the body at the expense of decency, even, of sanity. A Hell within souls.

And all for what purpose? To live? For how long, and in what hideous way? There would be only one lonely and sick man left long before help could come. What would that last man do? Go completely mad and try to devour himself? Like the two snakes who met one sunny afternoon and decided to swallow one another. Each took hold of the tail of the other and both swallowed and swallowed until nothing at all remained. There was no purpose. No purpose or reason at all.

* * * * *

A short distance back among the trees McBride halted and looked back. There were bushes between the men and himself. This was it. He drew his automatic.

Strange, he thought. I don't feel at all like I should about this. It's just like routine procedure, something you do every day. I actually think I'm glad I came out with the short straw.

He even thought coolly about the best way to do it. The heart? Not sure enough. The brain, like Heinie? A little better, but what if there should be a nervous twitch at the wrong time and a deflection caused by the bone of the skull?

A babble of voices came to him as if from a great distance, through his thoughts. Excited voices. But he was in a world of his own, now. All the others were behind him, cut off.

Safety off, he put the muzzle of the automatic into his mouth and aimed it sharply upward. The most efficient way, probably. His finger tightened.

He heard the deafening report and felt the recoil jerk his arm down. Somewhere he had heard that a man killed instantly by a gun never lives to hear the report. It puzzled him. Why didn't he fall? Why could he still see the green tangle of Venus and hear sounds?

There was a ringings in his ears and a sickening shimmer before his eyes. His shocked mind refused to come back to things for a moment. Who were these laughing, crying, shouting skeletons whirling about him with their dirty beards and red-rimmed eyes?

"It's Flaunders," someone shouted. "He's done it!"

"Done it," McBride repeated dumbly. "Done what?"

Then Flaunders was shaking him by the shoulders and grinning. "Come out of it, man! You're safe; we all are, now! There's no need for any more of this--gluttony! Don't you understand? I've won! I know how to treat the fruit, even the edible animals of this world, so we can eat them and they won't hurt us a bit!"

McBride tried to call order to mind, starting from the beginning. He looked dazedly at the gun in his hand.

Flaunders laughed. "Don't look so surprised to be alive. One of the men hit your arm just in time. You missed death by an inch."

It was all too much at one time, a skirling confusion.

"That what you said about beating the poison," McBride said. "Are you sure? It's not just something on paper, something not proven?"

"Lord, no," Flaunders said, fighting down an urge to shout. "I had it worked out yesterday, but it still had to be tested and the white rats and two monkeys we brought along for experimental purposes were gone. So I went out last night and gathered some fruit and treated it and tried it on myself. Just look at me and you have your answer. I feel fine."

Still dazed, still not quite understanding how everything had happened, McBride started back toward the ship with the others. But one thing he knew. Venus had been beaten!

* * * * *

The meal was all day in the preparing. The eating was a gala event, a banquet, a roaring party. It lasted two hours.

There wasn't any wolfing down. When you have been starving for weeks you just don't start off that way. You take a small bite and wait until you are sure it is safely down. Then you take another small bite and wait again. If you keep doing that you have a chance of holding what you eat.

They didn't mind. This food was not the kind you had to force yourself to chew on, like--some other things.

There were little animals looking something like rabbits, but tasting more like chicken, fried golden brown. There were oranges that tasted like nothing of Earth and apples that reminded you of paw-paws in fall. Seven different kinds of meat there were, and it seemed like a hundred different kinds of fruits and nuts and herbs. There was even a juice that proved mildly intoxicating. All a little different, but all delightfully, temptingly good!

"We'll be eating like this every day!" Flaunders said. "Maybe we can even set up a bar, with fruit-juice drinks and wine and even invent a new kind of beer. Big, foamy schooners of beer on Venus! Won't the work crew be surprised when they get here!"

They let it run away with them. It went to their heads. The warmth of intoxication, the feel of stomachs filling out. All the things long missing now returning in full force, all at one time. Almost it was too much. Almost death from excessive joy.

They went on and on like that, the most happy men ever. They wanted it to go on for ever, but the feast had started late and it ended late. After the two hours they felt like sleeping. In fact, they felt a more relentless urge to sleep than they ever had before.

The result of a full stomach, they supposed, or the aftermath of months of hardship let in by the sudden relaxation. It certainly wasn't a matter of choice. Who wanted to sleep at a time like this, a time for staying up all night and celebrating? But the sandman said no, and right now he had the advantage.

One by one they yawned, stretched and drifted off to bed like carefree children, and to hell with cleaning up. That could wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow! It was wonderful to have one to think about. Tomorrow was a golden day.

The last to turn in was Captain McBride, just as sleepy but not so carefree. He alone, perhaps, was not completely satisfied. Underneath the powerful urge to sleep was a question, and that question needed answering. Or did it? In one way it didn't really matter. He went in and found his bed in the darkness and decided to forget the question.

* * * * *

Fifteen minutes later McBride lay awake. The great urge to sleep was still there, but sleep wouldn't come. No, that was not it exactly. He wouldn't let it come. He was fighting it. The question wouldn't go away, and it really did need answering after all.

Moving around quietly in the darkness he made sure that the men were sleeping. Then he returned to the bed next to his, the one in which Flaunders slept.

"Flaunders," he said softly.

The question grew in his mind. "Flaunders," he called more urgently. He jostled the quiet form.

"What's wrong?" said Flaunders, half asleep.

"Nothing exactly. I want to talk a bit."

"Better sleep. The time is--"

"Go on," McBride said intently.

Flaunders fought himself awake. "Nothing. Half asleep. Didn't know what I was saying. What do you want?"

McBride lay down on his own bed, hardly able to keep his eyes open. "Maybe I want to talk about the Garden of Eden, about the pair who were told that a certain fruit was death to them, and about a serpent who told them it wasn't."

Flaunders said nothing.

"Must have been quite a persuader, that Serpent," McBride went on in dream talk. "Up until this morning I guess I might have welcomed such a one, and I don't think I was alone in feeling that way. Men were never intended to live the way we were living. We really didn't want to live if we had to live that way. We only convinced ourselves that we did. We were caught in a hellish vise and each of us knew it, underneath. So a talking serpent who could convince us that the fruit of Venus was not poison might not have been such a bad idea."

"Why talk about that?" said Flaunders, like a man talking in his sleep. "It's over. We've beaten Venus."

McBride tried to open his eyes. It was too much trouble. His own words seemed to him like someone else talking, far away and unreal. There was a feeling like being detached from one's body.

"Beaten Venus, yes," he said. "But I'm wondering how. I keep thinking how this kind of poison acts. Probably affect us as it did the rats and monkeys. Takes four or five hours to act, and it hasn't been three since we started eating. Was it only chance that your treatment of the food took all day and had to be extended up to the last moment before serving? It wasn't even sampled before three hours ago. And so I wonder."

Flaunders' voice seemed to come out of a deep well. "Let's get some sleep."

McBride's voice almost matched it. "Not yet. I haven't mentioned about the medical supplies we brought along. Even drugs. It would have been simple for the welcome serpent to treat the food with something to deaden pain, to make us sleep through it."

His voice trailed off in sleep, his thoughts drifting away with the night. Still the question wouldn't go away. It forced him partly awake. He didn't even realize how little of a question it was now. His body was a chunk of lead, not able to move. To speak required almost more effort than he could muster.

"Flaunders. You didn't. It's just fatigue, letdown after strain. I know you won't lie if I ask you. All I want is to hear you say you didn't."

Flaunders wouldn't have tried to move if he could. He lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest. Appropriate.

"Goodnight," he said.