Part 2

Tynia buried her face in her hands. Briggan put his arm around her. In the flickering light, Tchassen saw the Sergeant grin.

"You didn't have to kill him, Captain," Tynia whispered.

"After what you told me--"

"Don't blame me; I didn't do anything!"

"He was going to fire at us, wasn't he?"

"You don't know that for sure. Maybe he was asking for help!"

Tchassen shrugged; there was no accounting for the emotional inconsistencies of a woman.

"What did you expect to prove by murdering Drein?" Briggan asked.

"I saved us from--"

"If he was an Earthman, why were the bandits firing at him? Why had they wounded him?"

"To make it look good," Tchassen replied, no longer really believing it himself. "They wanted our weapons; they have to use trickery to get them away from us."

Tchassen slid the weapon out of Drein's lifeless fingers and half-heartedly searched the street for Tynia's dispersal ray. He didn't expect to find it. The Earth people had it now. The loss of the weapon was, in one sense, more serious than the destruction of the Nevada station. A prison compound could be rebuilt and restaffed. But if the Earth ever faced the conqueror with equal firepower, Earthmen would recapture their world--and more.

We've failed; we have no right to be here--the Captain fought a burning nausea as the fear washed over his mind. What had they accomplished by the occupation? The Earth was neither enslaved nor destroyed. Hatred made the natives savages. They would never be content until they had revenge. They never conceded defeat; they never would. Corporal Drein seemed to be typical of their fanaticism, and that was why Tchassen had killed him--that, and the hysterical story Tynia had told. On calmer reflection, Tchassen knew he had no proof of Drein's disloyalty--which meant that either Briggan or Tynia could be Earth natives. That problem was unsolved; the danger was undiminished.

* * * * *

Tchassen wasted very little time looking for the weapon Tynia had lost. After twenty minutes, the three survivors returned to the house where Tchassen and Briggan had found food and clothing. They packed the canned goods into the sedan and put on warm coats and jackets. Although the woolens and the cottons fell to pieces when they touched the cloth, the synthetic fabrics were still relatively sound, particularly when they had been sealed in mothproof plastic.

Tchassen took over the driving when they left Reno. For greater warmth, Tynia and the Sergeant crowded into the front seat beside him. As they ascended the grade toward the pass, the air turned much colder. Tchassen's hands felt numb on the wheel and the altitude made his mind swim in a haze of vague nausea.

There was no moon and the headlights of the sedan had been smashed long ago. The Captain drove very slowly, concentrating on the curves of the highway. Three times the machine narrowly missed going over the edge; the guard rail saved them. Tchassen knew he was risking their lives to drive at night, but he had no alternative. They would not be really safe again until they reached the base on the coast, and the Earth people would try to prevent that. They would try to make sure that no survivors lived to report what had happened at the Nevada station.

Briggan fished three cans of food out of the back of the car and blasted them open with his dispersal ray. The can he handed Tchassen contained a fruit in a heavy, sickly sweet syrup. Tchassen made himself empty the tin. Tynia had a pinkish meat which she was totally unable to choke down. The civilized galaxy had been vegetarian for two thousand years; a clear indication of the savagery of the Earth culture was the fact that the natives still ate animal flesh. Briggan opened another can for Tynia. After a brief hesitation, he began to eat the meat himself.

Tynia gagged and looked away. "I don't see how you can do it, Sergeant."

"We may be on the road longer than we think," he answered. "We can't afford to waste anything; we aren't likely to find another food cache."

Tchassen glanced at Briggan suspiciously. It was possible that he could force himself to stomach the meat, if he were starving, but how was he able to eat it now? An Earthman could do it; yet if Briggan were a native, wasn't he too clever to give himself away with anything so trivial?

"Tell me, Captain," Briggan asked, "what chance do we have of getting through this alive?"

"We're armed; we have transportation; we--"

"And the natives will risk everything to stop us. They have to. This attack on the Nevada station was the beginning of the revolution. If they plan the rest of it as carefully, they stand a good chance of throwing us off the Earth."

"No!" Tynia cried. "Now that they know the civilized galaxy exists, they'll build space ships and come after us. With our weapons--"

"Plus their fanaticism," Tchassen put in, "the galaxy doesn't stand a chance."

"But we invaded the Earth to prevent that; we came here to teach them to live civilized lives."

"How much teaching have we actually done in the compounds?" the Sergeant demanded. "How many Earth people have listened to us?"

"They're human beings; they have brains like ours. Surely when we have explained our ways to them logically and sanely--"

"The trouble is," Tchassen said thoughtfully, "it's our logic, not theirs. If you look at this from the point of view of an Earthman, you see us as savage invaders of their world."

"Our purpose makes it different."

"We say that, but the Earth people wouldn't understand us."

"It's very strange," Sergeant Briggan said quietly, "that you understand the Earthman's point of view so well, Captain Tchassen. Let's see. You've been here--how many days?"

"Five."

"But you set yourself up as an authority on these people."

"Come now, Sergeant. I didn't say that. I'm simply trying to understand them reasonably."

"To think like an Earthman: that's rather difficult for us to do, Captain." Briggan paused briefly before he snapped out a rapid question, "Where were you stationed before you came here, Captain?"

"At security headquarters."

"Assigned to what staff?"

"Well, I was--" Tchassen glanced at Tynia. It would do no good, now, to explain why he had been assigned to the Nevada post. All that was finished because the station staff died in the explosion. "I wasn't on any staff," he said. "I was working on my own."

"That's a pity, sir. You wouldn't remember the name of your commanding officer, then; I could have checked up on that."

Tynia gasped; only then did Tchassen realize what Briggan's questions implied. He said coldly, "You're way off the track, Briggan. I'm the only one of you who couldn't be an Earthman; I haven't become acclimated yet--that's obvious, isn't it?"

"Of course you're right, sir. It wouldn't be the sort of thing you could put over by playing a part, would it? Besides, Drein was the Earthman and you killed him. We've no reason to be suspicious of each other now, have we?"

There was no way Tchassen could reply. He gritted his teeth and said nothing. From the expression on Tynia's face, he realized that Briggan's insinuation had been rather effective. And suppose Briggan actually believed it himself. Didn't that rule out the Sergeant as an Earthman?

And it left only Tynia. Tchassen eyed the dark-haired woman on the seat beside him. What did he really know about her?--only that she had been married to a station commander; and had flirted outrageously with other post officers. She may have done it simply because she was bored; on the other hand, it could have been a deliberate attempt to create friction--exactly the sort of thing an Earth woman might try to do. Perhaps she was a native. When Tchassen was given the security assignment, he hadn't checked into her background; it didn't seem necessary. He realized suddenly that Tynia was the only witness against Drein. Because of what she had said, Tchassen had killed the Corporal. Tynia's hysteria had set the stage for murder.

* * * * *

As the sedan climbed higher into the pass, it moved more slowly. The motor coughed and wheezed; once or twice it seemed ready to stop altogether. When they reached the summit, the tenuous crescent of a new moon emerged above the pines. In the pale glow of light, Tchassen saw that the highway was covered with a treacherous sheet of ice.

The metal rims found no traction. When the machine began to skid, the Captain found he could neither control it nor stop it. In spite of the cold, his body was covered with sweat.

At a point four or five miles beyond the summit, they came to a place where thick trees on both sides of the highway shaded the road so the sun never reached it. The ice was continuous for a hundred feet or more, and it was covered with three inches of unmelted snow. The sedan skidded out of control. Tynia screamed and hid her face in her hands. Tchassen fought the wheel futilely. The car spun toward the shoulder, banged against a tree, and slid across the road into a clearing in front of an abandoned building.

In the sudden silence Tchassen heard nothing but the whisper of icy wind in the trees. He opened the door and looked at the deserted building. The roofs of the smaller structures nearby had collapsed under the pressure of winter snows, but the main building, sheltered by tall pines, was in good repair.

"We'd be warmer inside," Tchassen suggested. "In the morning after the sun comes out--"

"Captain!" Briggan broke in. "We must reach the coast!"

"--after the sun comes out, the ice on the road should begin to melt; the driving will be much easier."

"Don't you realize, sir--these mountains are enemy territory?"

"We're still well-armed, Sergeant."

"We had the rays in Reno, too, but Drein's dead."

"I tell you we'll be safe here. I remember a trick I saw demonstrated at the school of tactics."

"You security men have the advantage. I'm just an enlisted non-com. I never went to the military schools and learned any fancy tricks, but I know I have a duty to reach the coast and report what's happened."

Tynia took Briggan's arm. "The sedan won't run, Sergeant. Surely you aren't saying we have to walk--"

"It's interesting, isn't it, that the car stopped right here--in front of a place where it would be so convenient for us to spend the night?"

"What do you mean, Briggan?"

"I wasn't doing the driving, Tynia."

A hard knot of anger exploded in Tchassen's mind, but he held his temper. It was easier to ignore Briggan than to answer his suspicion. In a tone that concealed his feelings, the Captain said, "Let me show you what I saw them do in the demonstration, Sergeant." He slid out of the sedan. With numb fingers, he opened the firing box of the portable heat ray and took out one of the two thermal coils. Breaking the seal, he began to unwind the thin thread of wire.

"We have our own alarm system right here," he explained, trying to convey more enthusiasm than he really felt. "Nearly a quarter mile of wire. We'll string it in a circle around this clearing, six inches above the ground. The natives will never notice it. If they attack us, they'll snap the wire and set off the thermal reaction. We'll be surrounded for a second or two in a blazing ring of fire."

"Maybe it'll work, Captain."

* * * * *

The two men strung the wire while Tynia lugged the weapons and the canned goods into the abandoned building. When the Sergeant and Tchassen went inside, they found that she had started a fire in a pot-bellied stove. The Captain stood holding his hands over the flames and gradually he began to feel warm again. He knew that the pillar of smoke rising from the chimney might invite an attack by the natives, but there was also a good chance that the smoke would disperse before it could be spotted.

The warmth of the fire acted like an opiate, but Tchassen realized he didn't dare risk falling asleep. Tynia or Briggan might be Earth people, waiting for the chance to finish the job they had begun when the Nevada station was destroyed. After a brief hesitation, the Captain took another shock capsule from his belt pouch and choked it down. The drug would keep him awake, although it was dangerous to take a second capsule so soon after the first; there were sometimes emotional side-affects which were unpleasant.

"One of us should stay on guard," Briggan said. "We could take turns at it, Captain--two hour stints until dawn."

"Good idea, Briggan. I'll stand the first watch."

"I was going to volunteer--"

"No; you're tired; you and Tynia need your sleep."

"You're too considerate of us, Captain." The overtone in Briggan's voice suggested far more than he actually said. He lay back on his blankets, but he did not shut his eyes, and he put his dispersal ray across his belly with his hand on the firing stud. Tchassen stood up, sliding a weapon over each shoulder.

He went through a connecting hall into a narrow room. A few scattered dishes, overlooked by the looters, and built-in cooking machines indicated that this had been a restaurant. The room gave him an excellent vantage point, for the windows, still unbroken, provided a broad view of the highway and the clearing in front of the building.

The restaurant was bitterly cold. Tchassen pulled the rough, fibrous clothing tight around his shoulders, but it felt irritating rather than warm. He looked out on the ice and the snow and the pines, and he was acutely conscious of the savage alienness of Earth.

Snow he knew as a scientific curiosity; he had seen it created in laboratory experiments. Nowhere in the civilized galaxy did it exist as a natural phenomenon. The teeming billions of people crowding every world could not survive unless every square inch of soil was occupied and exploited. Science regimented the temperatures in the same way that it controlled rainfall. For more than twenty centuries neither deserts nor Arctic wastes had existed. All animal species had disappeared. Trees survived only as ornamental growths in city parks. The Earth was a relic of the past, a barbaric museum piece. The strong, individualistic genius of its people had evolved in no other society; and that genius had created a technology which mushroomed far beyond the capacity to control it. It gave this savage world atomic power before it had planetary unity.

For that reason, the civilized galaxy had invaded the Earth. They could do nothing else. The decision had been made long before Tchassen was born. The galactic council of scientists studied the Earth and argued the meaning of their observations for a quarter of a century before they ordered the invasion. War, to the civilized galaxy, was unthinkable; yet the government had no alternative. For, with even their primitive form of atomic power, the Earth people could blow their world to dust. The planet had to be occupied to save the natives from the consequences of their own folly.

But what does it matter, Tchassen thought bitterly, if our intentions were noble and unselfish? It's what Earth thinks we meant to do that counts. And by that standard we've failed. We have no right to be here.

Alone in the cold darkness of the abandoned restaurant, Tchassen faced the fear gnawing at his soul. The drug he had taken warped his depression into a crushing weight of melancholy. The occupation of the Earth had gone wrong--or so it seemed to him--because the council of scientists misjudged the native mentality. True, these people had created a brilliant technology, but it didn't follow that they would comprehend the social forces at work in the civilized galaxy. Their emotional reactions were at best on an adolescent level; intelligence alone would not lift them up to maturity. The prisoners in the compounds learned nothing but hatred; they lived for nothing but revenge. Vividly Tchassen saw the nightmare of the future: the time when the savages on the Earth had weapons to match the dispersal ray; the time when they would be able to build ships that could invade the civilized galaxy.

* * * * *

The Captain paced the dusty floor in front of the serving counter. Briggan did not come in two hours to take over the watch; and he made no attempt to call the Sergeant. It was long after midnight, perhaps less than an hour before dawn, when something outside triggered the thermal-wire alarm. Simultaneously, as the blaze of white glared against the restaurant windows, Tynia screamed. Tchassen heard the explosive blast of a dispersal ray slashing into wood. A split-second later Tynia burst through the connecting hall and flung herself into Tchassen's arms.

"They're attacking!" she screamed.

"You saw them? Where?"

"Briggan. At the window. I--I shot him."

His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arm. "Take it easy, Tynia. Tell me how it happened."

"I saw him when the alarm went off. He was lifting his dispersal ray, as if he meant to shoot you. I remembered how he had eaten meat last night, and I--I thought--" She shuddered. "I knew he was an Earthman. He was the one who blew up the supply robot; now he wants to kill us."

"You were sure Drein was an Earthman, too."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?"

"Obvious?" She shrank back against the counter.

He ignored her but kept her within the range of his peripheral vision while he glanced through the window, trying to locate what had set off the alarm. The circle of heat had melted all the snow and ice in the clearing; the trunks of the pines were smoldering and a corner of the building was beginning to burn.

Tchassen saw a chunk of flesh lying on the road--an animal of some sort which had blundered into the alarm wire. Then they had not been attacked by natives. The dead animal made it very clear that wild beasts still survived on the Earth. No wonder the natives were meat eaters! And, since they were, that meant they could live indefinitely in the remote mountain areas. They did not depend upon hidden caches of food; starvation would never drive them back to the prison compounds. The occupation policy was based upon a false assumption; more than ever it was vitally imperative for Tchassen to reach the coast and report the truth to his superiors.

Tchassen shifted his weapon so that his fingers lay on the firing stud. Tynia stared at him, her eyes wide with terror. In a tight whisper, she said,

"Then you--you're the Earthman, Captain!"

He grinned, admiring her skillful use of emotion. If he hadn't known better, he would have taken her fear for the real thing. Maybe it was; he couldn't be sure, but the facts seemed to add up to only one answer. Tynia laid the groundwork for the killing of Corporal Drein; she herself shot Briggan. And who had been in a better position to tamper with the landing beam for the supply rocket? Who else had a better opportunity to destroy the transmitter in the emergency pillbox? Yet, even in the face of so much evidence, Tchassen gave her the benefit of the doubt! His reasoning might have been colored by the drug he had taken.

With the mouth of his weapon, he nudged her toward the hall. "Go back and pick up the food, Tynia. We're leaving here now."

She clenched her fist over her mouth. "Don't turn me over to them, Captain. Let me go. I've never done you Earth people any harm."

Magnificent acting! No wonder they had sent her to the Nevada station. "We're heading for the coast," he explained.

"The sedan wouldn't go last night; it won't now, either."

"We'll push the car back to the highway. The downgrade is steep enough to make the machine run without power. If that doesn't work, we can always walk."

"It'll be warmer if we wait until daylight."

"And the natives would be here by that time, too, wouldn't they? The glare of the thermal explosion was visible for miles."

"I didn't sleep at all last night, Captain. I don't have the energy to--"

With the dispersal ray, he pushed her along the hall toward the room where she and Briggan had slept in front of the pot-bellied stove. Naturally she would try to keep him there, he thought; he didn't need much more proof of her disloyalty.

Flames from the burning wall lit the room. As they entered, Tynia screamed and fell back against Tchassen.

"The Sergeant's gone!" she gasped.

"Along with the weapons you left in here."

"Then he--he's the Earthman, Captain; you aren't!"

"You said you'd shot him."

"I fired at him. I saw him fall. I thought he was dead."

Tchassen wanted to believe her, but the husky, deep-throated appeal in her voice couldn't quite destroy the hard core of his doubt. This could be an alibi which she could have contrived for herself. She might have hidden the weapons as well as Briggan's body. If Tchassen believed her, if he let himself trust her, it would be easier later on for her to dispose of him.

"Pack up the food, Tynia; I'm going to see if I can start the car."

* * * * *

When he went outside, the dawn was brightening the eastern sky. The snow and ice, melted by the thermal fire, made a slushy sheet of water in the clearing; it ate at the drifts, sluggishly washing the snow into the highway.

Tchassen waded through the water toward the sedan. His boots kept him dry, but the cold penetrated and made his feet numb. Hidden by the water were tiny, unmelted puddles of ice which made very treacherous footing. Twice the Captain slipped and nearly went down.

He was twenty feet from the car when he heard the door of the building bang open behind him. He glanced back, calling Tynia a warning to be careful of the hidden ice. At the same time she screamed. Tchassen swung aside instinctively. He slipped and fell. From the back of the sedan a thread of energy snaked toward him. Tchassen felt the momentary pain stab at his shoulder; then nothing. He lay flat in the icy water, fighting the red haze that hung over his mind. If the dispersal ray had come half an inch closer to his heart, it would have cut the artery and killed him.

Sergeant Briggan opened the door of the sedan and stood leaning against it, holding a dispersal ray in his left hand. The Sergeant was badly wounded. His right arm was an unrecognizable, bleeding pulp; he was too weak to stand alone. So Tynia had told the truth, Tchassen thought; she actually had shot him. The Captain felt a surge of relief and hope. Perhaps he could rely on Tynia, after all. But now it was too late! The blast from the Sergeant's weapon had paralyzed Tchassen's motor control; he was helpless.

The Sergeant, obviously, assumed that Tchassen was dead. Ignoring him, he ordered Tynia to pile the canned food in the back of the sedan. She moved toward him slowly.

"You're the Earthman," she said dully. "And I thought Captain Tchassen--"

"The farce is over, Tynia. You and Tchassen made a fine game of it for a while, but I've been in the service long enough to spot a fake security officer."

"The Captain and I?" she repeated.

"Do I have to draw you a blueprint? You two are in this together. You're both natives."

For a moment she seemed to recover her self-assurance. "So that's how you're going to play it, Sergeant. Just who do you think you'll take in with such nonsense?"

"I'm through batting words around with you, Tynia. Put the food in the car. Help me push the machine out to the road."

"Why bother, Sergeant? If you stay right here, the natives will be along soon enough."

"I'm glad you admit that, Tynia." Briggan laughed sourly. "But it's my duty to get through to the base--just as it's your duty, I suppose, to try to stop me."

"Why do you still want to make me believe that, Sergeant? What difference does it make now?"