Part 2

The two guides waited, still leaning on their phantom supports, talking softly, hardly looking at the settlers. When all the carts were lined up in a straggling column, the two guides ambled to the road that led away from the spaceport. They paused and looked back briefly with worn eyes. Then with a motion that was more a shrug than a gesture, they started up the brown dirt road.

Harvey looked at Ruth. Her face was taut. All around him the settlers were silent, except for labored breathing or a hurried warning as the wagon wheels reached a rut or a rock. Reality had flooded over them with abrupt and dismaying force. The sky was still bright, the fields were still gloriously golden but the radiance seemed to have gone out of their paradise.

Harvey put an arm around Ruth's slim shoulders. Strangely, as spirits sank around him, his rose. Now his vague forebodings had become clarified; now he knew what the reality was, he knew what he had to cope with.

"They get a ship here from Earth every two years," he said to her. "We'll work hard and save our money, and if we find we can't stand it, we'll just pack up and go home."

She looked at him miserably. "How awful. After all our hopes...."

"Maybe it'll work out," he said lightly. "I hate to think of living in a place run by these guys, but I'm willing to give it an honest try. Keep your chin up, kitten."

* * * * *

The road became steeper, and the settlers slipped and grunted and struggled behind the carts. Near the crest, in a field to the right of the road, four people were working, apparently cutting and binding grain. As the column of settlers approached, the workers glanced up, said something to each other, and bent to their work again.

"Look at that," growled Red Brace. "We come across practically half the universe to reach this place, and all we get is a cockeyed glance out of the corner of their eyes."

"Well, you aren't exactly a pretty sight," Harvey said.

But it _was_ strange, he thought--this indifference, this lack of curiosity. Here, for the first time in two years, were newcomers from distant Earth. Didn't they want to hear the news, hear about the blight, ask questions about relatives and friends? Could anybody be that uninterested?

At the crest of the rise, the guides paused, and the settlers leaned against their carts or sat on the ground to rest. In the valley below were little clumps of houses, long, low buildings, arranged in groups of three and four, with a hundred yards or so between each group. Off to the right, a hill, steep and lofty, stood alone in the rolling plain. Almost at the summit, in a cleft in the rock, was a building shaped like a semicircle, topped with a slim spire. Its walls seemed mostly windows. They glinted golden in the warm light.

"And who lives up there, I wonder," said Red Brace.

"I could make a guess," Harvey said.

"Mr. Big. A nice, cozy spot where he can sit all day and spit down everybody else's throat."

"I'm sure," Harvey said, "the gentleman never does anything as inelegant as that."

The clusters of buildings had looked close. It took fully an hour before the settlers reached them. By that time, they were hot and thirsty and dispirited. As they went up the village street, the guides pointed out the numbered houses, and the settlers assigned to them left the column and carried their luggage inside. Most of them were inside only a few minutes before they came to the doorways to stare unhappily at each other. They had found that the houses, made of wood and plaster, each consisted of three boxy rooms containing a few sticks of crudely made furniture. Nothing was painted. There was no glass in the windows. The beds consisted of four posts with mattresses of woven vines.

"What did you expect--innersprings?" Harvey said. "Remember--Colonel Baker never said you'd get innersprings on this planet. The man never told you a lie."

The toilets were tiny out-houses, a hundred yards away in the field. "Oh, dear," Ruth said.

"Well, you can't expect the man to transport sewer pipe to Paradise," Harvey said grimly.

He stood in the doorway and waited until the guides had deposited the last of the settlers and were started on their return trip. Harvey called to them as they came by. They glanced at him blankly, said something to each other, and kept on walking. Harvey leaped to the street, raced after them, grabbed them by the shoulders and spun them both around. "When I talk to somebody, I expect an answer," he said savagely.

The two guides looked at him with worn, emotionless eyes. They stood there, shoulders drooping slightly in a weirdly identical posture.

"What's this all about?" Harvey said, subduing his voice with difficulty. He waited. Nothing came out of them. "Do you work for Baker? Don't you have farms like the rest of us?"

The stocky one's mouth twisted slightly. Then he spoke. "We have farms," he said in a low, sullen voice. "We are also guides. We couldn't work our farms all the way. We had to do extra work to meet our payments."

Harvey stared at them. "Payments for what? Didn't you pay for the farms before you came here?"

"Payments for the oxygen," said the stocky man.

"What do you mean?"

A weak, sardonic smile edged across their faces. "They weren't told," the tall man said.

Harvey boiled over. He grabbed one man by the throat. "Told what, goddamn you? Talk!"

The pale eyes stared into his. The sardonic smile stayed on the man's lips. "Told that you'll have to work all day, every day, dawn to dark"--his voice hardened viciously--"to pay for the oxygen you breathe." His smile widened as he saw the alarm in Harvey's face. Harvey loosened his grip, but the man kept his face close to his. "You see that tube of oxygen on your back? That will last you one day. When you get a new one, you will owe a hundred credits. Do you understand now? You'll never be able to stop working, because you can't get ahead of that hundred credits a day, you just about make it if you work all day--and you have to make it, do you understand, you fool?--you have to, if you want your oxygen tomorrow, if you want to breathe."

Harvey watched dazedly as the two guides turned and started away down the road, and then, abruptly, the stocky one looked back and yelled back, "You're slaves! All of you! You're the same as us! You're slaves!"

Ruth, wide-eyed, was waiting at the doorway for him, when he came back. "You heard them?" Harvey said shakily.

"I heard," Ruth said in a quiet voice.

"Lord, what did I get you into?"

She put a hand on his arm. "There's nothing to grieve about. If we find that things just don't work out, we'll stick it out for two years and save up enough for our return passage."

Harvey looked at her brokenly. "If what they say is true, how can you save anything?"

* * * * *

Of course, Harvey reflected afterward, the guide could have been talking nonsense, he could have been some sort of nut. So Harvey said nothing about his encounter to the other settlers. But after three days, everybody knew the true conditions of their existence. The story was made explicit by the little debit-and-credit book that each settler was given. Every evening a caravan of Baker's men, pulling carts, came down the road, collected what the settlers had harvested during the day, and marked the credits in their books. Those who worked from dawn to dusk usually managed to achieve 100 credits. A few went over 100--three, four, or five credits over--and were told that if they kept this rate up, why, in six months or so, they'd have enough credits to buy some clothes at the central commissary. Several settlers fell short each day. They got particular attention from the man who collected the depleted oxygen tanks from the settlers and handed each a new one.

"We're not cutting anybody's oxygen off--not right away," he said. "But if I were you, I'd get working--fast. The Colonel looks these accounts over every night. He doesn't like anybody getting far in arrears."

Dr. Lurie, who, with his wife, had averaged only 96 credits on each of the first three days, spoke up puzzledly. "Do you mean--do you mean you actually let people--asphyxiate?"

The leader gave a nasty grin. "I didn't say that--I just said we don't give them any more oxygen. What they do after that is _their_ business."

"Is that right?" growled Red Brace. He moved slowly through to the front of the crowd and then, with a lunge, grabbed the leader by the throat. "I'm just going to squeeze, and squeeze," he gritted, "and what happens to you is _your_ business."

Harvey leaped forward and grabbed Brace's arms. "Let go, Red!" he yelled. "Let go!"

Brace jammed him aside with a jerk of his big shoulders. Harvey leaped at him again. "For God's sake, Red, this isn't the one--it's not his fault!" He yanked at Brace's arms. It was like yanking an oak. Harvey stepped back, his mouth grim, and slammed his fist into Brace's jaw.

Red Brace staggered. The caravan leader slipped from his hands and oozed down on the ground, gasping weakly. Red Brace's fists tightened and he turned on Harvey. "Goddam you, you want to get yourself killed?"

They stood there, glowering at each other, breathing hard. "The guy is only one of Baker's slaves," Harvey said. "Why were you taking it out on him?"

The caravan leader was on his feet now. "That's what I was trying to tell him," he said weakly. "I'm only carrying out orders. I've got to work my place and work for Baker, too, to make up my credits. You know how long I'd last if I didn't carry out orders."

"Okay, okay," Harvey said, suddenly sick of the whole thing. "We've got our oxygen, we've got our lecture. Now take off."

The settlers watched Baker's men move to their wagons, like a troop of horses, and slowly set out up the road.

"All right," Red Brace growled abruptly, "I'm sorry. But you didn't have any call to take a poke at me."

"You were about to kill the guy," Harvey snapped.

"All right, all right, I said I'm sorry. It was the wrong guy. Now let's go after the right one."

In the center of the settlement, at the side of the road, was a yellow wooden booth, marked COM, for communications. A loudspeaker on the roof brought messages from the central office. Inside the booth was a microphone and other electronic apparatus. Dr. Lurie sat down before the microphone and pressed the Call button. He cleared his throat. "I--we want to talk to Colonel Baker personally," he said.

* * * * *

In a large circular room, with a huge curving window overlooking the golden valley, sat Colonel Martin E. Baker, sipping a Scotch highball. It was a weak highball; Colonel Baker really didn't enjoy drinking. But his doctor had told him, on the periodic physical he had taken during his last visit to Earth, that a mild drink before dinner might help overcome his dyspepsia. "Tenseness," the doctor had said. "You've got to relax more." This seemed preposterous to Colonel Baker, who always thought himself to be a very relaxed person, but there was no denying the dyspepsia--it was there all the time--and he was willing to try anything that might ameliorate it.

When the gentle buzzer sounded and the red light glowed on the communications set, Colonel Baker went over to it, flipped the switch and leaned back in his reclining chair.

"Yes?" said Baker pleasantly. He was rather tickled with the arrangement that permitted him to watch the faces of people who were unaware of the television camera focused on them.

"Sir," said Dr. Lurie in a strained voice, "there has been--there is--a good deal of dissatisfaction in our group. This system of credits doesn't seem equitable. Some of us find it extremely difficult to amass a hundred credits a day, and yet that is the amount we are charged for our daily tube of oxygen. Now, sir, we believe it would be fair if you reduced the charge for the oxygen, to, shall we say, eighty credits?"

Baker took another sip of his highball. "Impossible," he said. "I'm sorry, but it's impossible."

He watched Dr. Lurie's face go through some nervous gyrations. "Why, sir?"

"The economy of this entire settlement was carefully worked out with the counsel of economists," Colonel Baker said. "You realize that we just can't step in and change one part without upsetting the entire pattern. We can't tinker--it's too hazardous."

"But, sir, we find that we're just working for our respiratory needs, so to speak. That, plus the little food we consume ourselves from what we harvest. Oxygen and food--isn't there any possibility of our earning anything more?"

"There have been settlers who have amassed enough credits to import some things from Earth. It's all a matter of the rate of work. Incidentally, I've noticed your production figures, Dr. Lurie. I wouldn't keep on this way, if I were you. Deficits pile up. The situation can become dangerous faster than you imagine."

Even over the televiewer, Baker could see Dr. Lurie's face pale. A hand suddenly appeared, pushing Dr. Lurie aside. The big face of the redhead, Brace, appeared on the screen.

"Listen, Baker," he roared, "if we don't get a better deal, we'll strike. You won't get a damn thing out of us. And what the hell're you going to do about that?"

Baker sipped his Scotch and smiled. "You're all free agents," he said gently. "Far be it for me to attempt to dictate your behavior. You're at liberty to do as you please."

Dr. Lurie's voice came over in a tense whisper. "He'll cut off our oxygen!"

"He wouldn't dare," Brace snarled. "Nobody goes and kills a couple of hundred people."

Baker chuckled loud enough for the settlers to hear. "If that is all, gentlemen, good day," he said, and flicked a switch. But it was only a one-way switch, shutting off sound from his direction but permitting him to see and hear the settlers. Their talk didn't go on very long before Baker could see that Brace had lost--the thought of not seeing the oxygen wagons come along in the evening was too frightening.

"All right, you jerks," Red Brace shouted, "I'll go after him myself." He strode off up the road. Harvey Flanders ran after him. Baker could see, but not hear, the heated colloquy as the two men walked on, and then, finally, Brace turned around and came back, and the two men disappeared inside Flanders' house.

Baker flicked a switch. Carsing's face appeared on the screen, with a brisk, "Yes, sir?"

"Might be some trouble the next couple of days--perhaps even tonight," Baker said. "Double-check the infrared warning system, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

Baker went back to his highball, feeling rather pleasant.

* * * * *

Late that night, in Harvey Flanders' house, a long discussion went on among Harvey, Brace, Dr. Lurie, and the Schweitzer twins.

"I went over it in detail with some of the old-timers here," Harvey said. "I also did some personal scouting, and everything they said seems to be true. Here's the setup:

"Our idea of raiding the commissary for a lot of oxygen tanks is out. They don't keep any stock; there's never more than a single day's supply for the settlement. Of course, we can't make off with that, unless we want to kill off everybody else.

"The oxygen plant itself is right up there on the hill, next to Baker's house. That's the key to his control, and he keeps it right under his thumb. Nobody--I mean nobody--except Carsing ever goes up there. They've got an endless belt system for taking up the empty tanks and sending back the full ones to the commissary."

"That makes the whole thing simple," Red Brace said impatiently. "We go up there, knock off Baker and Carsing, and take over the oxygen factory."

"It's not that simple," Harvey said. "I imagine the old boy has a way of keeping strangers out. The story I get is that he's got some sort of electronic telescope, and he sits up there all day watching everything that's going on. You're not going to sneak up on him, exactly."

Brace stood up. "The longer we sit and talk, the more time he has to get set for us. Anybody coming with me?" He looked around. "Frankly, I don't give a damn if anybody comes or not. You'd only be in the way, anyway."

He headed for the doorway.

"Red, you can't go off half-cocked like this," Harvey pleaded.

"So long," said Brace and went out into the cloudy night.

Harvey looked around desperately. "We've got to stop him."

"I say let him go," said Dr. Lurie. "He might find out something of value."

"Get himself killed, more likely." Harvey went to the doorway. "Red!" he shouted. He got no answer. The road was empty as far as he could see in the clotted darkness.

He raced around to the rear of the house and stood still. Faintly he heard the crunch and crackle of steps in the grain field. Red was hitting across country. Harvey raced into the field. "Red!" he shouted.

Harvey found him by the sounds. Brace was coldly angry. "Either you pipe down and come along, or you go on back. Nobody's stopping me. If you try any monkey business, I'll kill you, and I'm not kidding."

Harvey fell in alongside him. "You're the craziest jerk I ever saw."

"Pipe down before you give us away," Brace growled.

The hill loomed ahead of them like a giant blot against the sky. On their left were the thick woods where the settlers gathered timber for fencing and bridging. Straight ahead was a deep stream, traversed by a single bridge.

"That bridge is a likely place for a burglar alarm," Harvey said. "We'd better swim."

They took off their clothes and left them on the bank. They let themselves carefully down into the water and set out, using the breast stroke to keep the oxygen apparatus out of the water. They clambered up on the other side, chilled and shivering, and continued, naked, toward the hill.

The ground roughened underfoot; the rise began. There was no apparent road. Here and there stood small blighted trees, devoid of foliage, standing like posts--They weren't trees at all! Harvey gripped Brace's arm. "Keep away from those posts," he whispered.

They continued upward slowly. Harvey heard a faint click. He stopped. "Hear that?" he whispered, "that click?"

Brace shook his head. They stood still, listening. There was no other sound. Brace took a step forward, and stopped. "I heard it," he whispered. They sank to the ground, and stretched out on their bellies, and waited tensely.

Not a sound came out of the surrounding darkness.

Far ahead, high in the sky, the windows of Baker's castle dimly glowed with a yellow light. There was still a long way to go.

Brace sat up and jerked a hand impatiently at Harvey. They got to their feet and moved forward. They were moving through trees now. Harvey followed Brace reluctantly. There was something funny. Some sound he was hearing--or wasn't hearing--

"Red!" It was the oxygen pack. The soft, bubbling murmur it always made was gone. "My oxygen is off! Yours, too! We've got to get back--fast!"

Brace's eyes flared white in the darkness. "Come on," Harvey shouted, and rushed back through the trees. Brace came lumbering after him, protesting loudly. They raced across an open space--there were the posts again--they passed them--

Click!

And now Harvey knew where the click came from. It came from inside his oxygen pack.

Almost instantly, he felt the soft flow of the oxygen through the tubes. He sat down. Brace sat down heavily beside him. "Those posts," Harvey said. "He must have them all around the hill. They throw out a radio wave that shuts these things off when you go past them." He shook his head ruefully. "I should have guessed it. When I first took a look inside this oxygen pack, I noticed something that looked like a transistor, but I couldn't imagine what that could have to do with oxygen."

Brace let out a long breath. "We should have kept going," he said bitterly.

"There was a good two hours of climbing ahead of us. We'd have been dead a long time before we got there."

"Okay," Brace said. "Let's go wreck these radio posts."

"I'm afraid he has that all figured out," Harvey said sadly. "You notice the posts shut you off when you're going one way, and turn you on again when you're going back. If you go over there and wreck them, there'll be nothing to turn you on again."

Red cursed long and loud. "There must be _some_ way to beat this oxygen racket."

"We'll think of something," Harvey said determinedly.

But the echo of his confident words rapidly faded as they moved through the grain fields. He was tired and chilled. Think of something? That white-haired devil in that eagle's nest had been thinking of the same subject for a decade. Could there be any angles he had overlooked?

* * * * *

Long after Ruth was asleep that night, Harvey lay in bed thinking. He reviewed, item by item, everything he could remember about electricity, radiation, the laws of gases, atmospheric constituents, the mechanics of partial pressures--all the tag-end memories of his college science courses. He felt that if there was a solution, it had to be something elementary, something that matched the simplicity of Baker's own idea.

The thoughts went around and around in his brain, an intricate and dizzying dance, forming a pattern that grew fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier....

He sat up with a start. His brain was tingling with something ... something that seemed to be....

He struggled into his clothes, and dashed out of the house. He ran up the dark road and burst into Dr. Lurie's house. "Doc, Doc, wake up!" he yelled. "I need some scientific advice!"

Shortly after sunrise, when most of the settlers were heading for the fields, Harvey and Dr. Lurie went to the COM booth. "Better let me do the talking," Harvey said.

"I'd prefer it that way," Dr. Lurie said.

* * * * *

Baker, sitting before the electronic telescope, was enjoying the sight of the great phalanx of settlers swarming into the fields, when the buzzer sounded on his communication set. In a moment, two faces appeared--Dr. Lurie and Harvey Flanders. They weren't wearing their oxygen packs.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Baker said affably.

"Hiya," said Harvey Flanders.

"Well!" said Baker. "I'm certainly glad to see you in such good spirits after last night's expedition."

"Thanks," Harvey said. "All we want to tell you is that you don't have to send us any oxygen any more."

Baker chuckled. "I see. You are going on strike, eh?"

"No," Harvey said, "we're going to keep working--but for ourselves, not for you, Colonel. You see, Dr. Lurie here has put his scientific brain to work and come up with a substitute for your oxygen pack."

"How incredible," Baker said pleasantly. "And what is the substitute, if I may ask? Alcohol?"

"No, it's still oxygen, Colonel, but not the way your pack handles it. You see, Dr. Lurie has figured out a way to use atomic, not molecular, oxygen--O instead of O_{2}, if you follow me--and to give it by injection in a highly concentrated form. As you see, we're not wearing oxygen packs any more."

"So I noticed. But I'm afraid your little hoax can't go on very long. In another two minutes, my friends, you'll be gasping like fish and running frantically home to get those pesky oxygen packs."

"Why don't you time us?"

Baker sipped his coffee. "I _am_ timing you, my friends. There are certain principles of physiology that can't be contravened. We're at the oxygen equivalent of a 27,000-foot elevation. The average duration of useful consciousness is two and a half minutes."

Baker sipped his coffee, watching the faces of the two men. The clock on his desk moved past two minutes. Two and a half minutes. Baker shrugged. He knew there were some exceptions. Some persons in superior physiological condition had proved in aeronautical tests on Earth to be able to go on for as long as four minutes in as rarefied oxygen as existed here. But no more than four minutes.

The clock hand reached four minutes. The men still sat there.