Part 2

"So _what_? Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe we're prisoners of the Antarians?"

"Are you serious?" Hank inquired. "How can we be prisoners?" He glanced around the room and shrugged his shoulders. "We were picked up by one of our own tanks and--"

"The Antarians capture our tanks now and then. It could have been a trick."

"Our own men were aboard the tank!"

"We didn't _see_ them. It was too dark inside the tank to see anything."

"We heard them," Hank insisted.

"That doesn't mean anything." Murphy remembered that they had been warned about Antarian "talkie" machines. The Antarians frequently tricked or forced a prisoner to talk for hours. The conversation was recorded, broken down according to individual sounds and recorded in a "talkie" machine. The machine resembled a typewriter, and an Antarian could reproduce any vocal sound by pressing one of its keys. A skilled Antarian linguist could use one of the machines and carry on a conversation with perfect English. They had been used during attempts to infiltrate their lines at night but, Murphy realized, one _could_ have been used in the tank.

"Take it easy," Hank said. "You're imagining things. We're on one of our own ships!"

"Are we? What have we seen of this ship except the corridor and this compartment? It could be.... Well, this compartment could be like a stage. It was so foggy outside, we couldn't see anything."

He paused to light a cigarette and continued, "Gregg gave me the idea. I've seen Gregg before--at Fort Meade. I remember him but he doesn't remember me. Of course, that's natural. You meet a lot of guys in the army and you can't remember them all. But Gregg was in the Infantry like he said, and now he's a ship's captain. Our Army doesn't work like that. The Infantry doesn't take a man and train him to be a spaceship captain! That's the sort of thing the Antarians would do. They have a screwy theory about their soldiers being versatile."

Hank's eyebrows rose; there was a trace of doubt on his face. "We're here," he said nervously. "We can hear the ship's engines."

Murphy listened. True, they could hear a ship's engines. "Could be a recording," he said.

"If there's a possibility, maybe we shouldn't talk so damned much." Hank rose to his feet, frowning. "If you're right, they may have hidden microphones."

"What's the difference?" If they were prisoners, Murphy thought, there was no reason to keep the Antarians from knowing that they knew. There would be no chance to escape, no way out. Antarians took their prisoners far behind their lines. A man, a creature who walked upright on two legs, could not disguise himself and pass unnoticed among creatures that resembled lizards and crawled on four legs. No, if they were prisoners they would be well behind the lines; there would be no way to escape. _But_, he wondered, _if we're prisoners, why are they trying to keep us from realizing it?_ They had used a trick to get information, but they could have gotten the same information through torture. He knew: he was brave enough to die for his country, but not strong enough to--

_What's wrong with this compartment?_ he interrupted the chain of thought. There was _something_ wrong with the compartment. He could sense the wrongness. But what could be wrong with cots, a table, four walls, a ceiling, and a floor? There was nothing wrong with them, so that meant there was something wrong that was not in the compartment; a something that came in to the compartment from outside. _What_, he thought wildly, _is not in here but comes in here from outside?_

"_I've got it!_"

Hank jumped, startled. "What?"

"Vibrations," Murphy said. "There aren't any!"

Hank shrugged his shoulders.

"It's important," Murphy said. "Remember the troopship that took us to Antares? I remember I had trouble sleeping because of the vibrations. Every ship has vibrations. The engines kick up one hell of a fuss and the vibrations travel all over the ship. Not so bad in some places, but you can feel them anywhere."

He pressed his hands against a wall. Hank, some of the color draining from his face, did the same. "See?" Murphy inquired. "There are no vibrations. We're supposed to be in outer space, headed for Earth. _There should be vibrations!_"

He hit the wall with his fist.

He hit it harder.

The wall didn't sound _right_.

Taking his bayonet, he jabbed the wall. The blade cut through a thin layer of metal--a layer of metal no thicker than a sixteenth of an inch.

Laughing wildly, he cut a large rectangle; the section clattered to the floor, exposing a layer of wood. He kicked at the wood--dry, crumbling wood that gave way beneath his foot.

He climbed through the opening.

Hank followed him.

* * * * *

Colonel Donovan studied the papers before him with blank eyes. Lately the Project had started to annoy his conscience, and the fact that it was a logical move did not lessen the annoyance. There at Fort Meade, he had faced the problem: How can you keep men from giving information when captured? It had been a vital problem. Without a solution, the Antarians could have learned countless military secrets and ultimately won the war. Death had seemed the only solution, but it had not seemed right to deliberately murder their own men. He had asked himself: How can you kill a man without killing him? And he had come up with the answer: Drive him insane.

They had placed him in charge of the Project, and he had organized a group of psychologists, psychiatrists, chemists, doctors, and sociologists. He had asked them: Can you install the seeds of schizophrenia in a soldier--seeds that will bloom upon the realization that he is a prisoner of the enemy and _only_ upon that realization?

The answer had been "Maybe"--and they had started on the Project.

The system had been developed after months of research and experiment. It worked through a combination of surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric, encephalographic, and chemical treatment. All given to a soldier while under drugs and hypnosis.

Although the originator of the system, no one had told him exactly how it worked. In such matters, it was the army's policy not to tell anyone who did not _have_ to know. And, not being a scientist, he would not have understood all the mechanics if explained to him.

But he had a vague concept: A soldier realizes that he is a prisoner of the enemy, and the realization triggers a reaction planted in his mind. A reaction placed there by surgery, hypnosis; psychiatric, encephalographic and chemical treatment. The reaction forced the soldier into a schizophrenic dream--entirely separated from the world. A tight, permanent dream dissociated from all sensory perception. A dream that not even Antarian whips could reach.

And it annoyed his conscience: he was responsible for the insanity of thousands of their men. He could not help feeling that perhaps, if he had tried harder, he could have thought of another way....

The door opened and Phillips burst into the room in his customary manner. He threw some papers on Donovan's desk. "Our new project," he said. "A tough one. Impossible, I should say."

While Donovan glanced at the papers, Phillips slumped in a chair and lit a cigarette. "The Antarians have made a counter-move," he explained. "We found a way to prevent them from torturing prisoners and getting information, but our system depends upon the realization by a soldier that he _is_ a prisoner. The Antarians learned that and now they have a new approach. They use our tanks that they've captured and pretend to be our troops while they trick information from our men. You see, our men have the treatment, but they don't realize they're prisoners, so the treatment doesn't work. Our new project is to find a way that our men will realize they're prisoners despite any trickery." He shrugged his shoulders as if the problem were a tangible thing and he wished to thrust it aside. "Anyway, the war is almost over and the Antarians are losing. I don't think it'll make any difference whether we find a solution or not. The war will probably be over before--"

He hesitated when he noticed Donovan's expression. "What's the matter?" he inquired. "You look sick."

"Nothing."

Phillips nodded his head. "I get it. The same old stuff. Your conscience is bothering you again." He leaned back in the chair, placed his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. "You're foolish to let it bother you. You know what happened to me yesterday? On the way home, I had a flat tire. It was raining, muddy as all hell and I messed up my last clean uniform. The tire was ruined--now I haven't got a spare and can't buy one because of this damned war. My wife's sister, Louise, is staying with us now. Her husband was killed on Antares and she cries all night, every night. Now and then, she gets Martha crying. Last night I couldn't stand it so I went out and had a few drinks. I got charged with drunken driving, and when I got home this morning, I really caught it! Martha's talking about getting a divorce. She says I--"

Donovan groaned. "Phil. I'm interested in your problems. Someday we'll sit down together and cry on each other's shoulder, but--"

Phillips raised a hand. "I was trying to illustrate how we all have a hundred big and little troubles every day. The fact that the system prevented thousands of men from being tortured does not matter to you. Your stupid conscience hurts because you're responsible for driving men insane. But you don't understand. 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.

_They were prisoners!_ For some reason, the Antarians had kept them from realizing it and--

A brief, intense pain ripped through his skull. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them....

The Antarians were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. There at the end of the street--_their troops!_

He looked up at the sky. There were no blinking pinpoints of light among the stars. The war was over! They had won!

The years that followed were good ones for Murphy. Although he had never written a line before, he wrote a novel about his war experiences and it became a best-seller. He went to Hollywood when a motion picture producer purchased the story and, unbelievably, became an actor. He had never considered himself a handsome man but millions of viewers considered him handsome and beautiful women were attracted to him. He married and became the father of two children. Life seemed like a dream ... a perfect dream in which, day after day, year after year, everything was perfect....