off!" and he began to lookforward to his landing on Venus. Not the problems of landing, but whathe would find there when he soared down through the clouds.
Determined to hold up through the high-G even though nobody watched, hewent on and on and up and up, his radio voiced the progress tinnily.Shock followed roaring pressure, release followed shock. Orientation waslost; only logic and intellect told him where he was and which way hewas going.
Then he was free. Free to eat and drink and read and smoke one cigaretteevery three hours and, in essence, behave in about the same way as aprisoner confined in solitary. The similarity did not bother JerryMarkham, for this was honor, not punishment.
* * * * *
Huvane collected him with the ease of a fisherman landing a netted crab.Easily, painlessly. Shockingly, for the crab doesn't exactly take to thenet with docility.
Huvane collected the whole shebang, man and machinery; then opened thespacecraft with the same attitude as a man peeling the lid from a can ofsardines. He could have breached the air lock, but he wanted the Terranto understand the power behind the act.
Jerry Markham came out blinking; very mildly wondering about the air. Itwas good. Without considering the rather high probability that nobodyspoke the language, he blurted:
"What gives?"
He was not very much surprised when one of them in uniform said curtly,"This way and make it snappy, Terran!"
No, he was not surprised. He was too stunned to permit anything assimple as surprise. And through the shock and the stun, his months oftraining came through. Jerry Markham worried his first worry: _How washe going to get the word back home?_
Confinement in the metal cell of his top-stage hadn't bothered him. Theconcept of landing on a planet that couldn't come closer to home thansome twenty-seven million miles was mere peanuts. Isolation for a yearwas no more than a hiatus, a period of adventure that would be rewardedmany-fold. Sally? So she might not wait but there were others; he'denvisioned himself fighting them off with a club after his successfulreturn. Hell, they'd swarmed him before his take-off, starting with themoment his number had come up as possible candidate.
No, the meeting with competence in space did not shock him greatly. Whatbothered him was his lack of control over the situation. Had he seenthem and passed on about his business, he recounted the incident.
As it was, his desire to tell somebody about it was cut off. As he sat,alone and helpless, it occurred to him that he did not mind so much thedying, if that was to be his lot. What mattered was the unmarked grave.The mourning did not move him; the physical concept of "grave" and itsfill of moldering organic substances was nothing. It was mere symbol. Solong as people knew how and where, it made little difference to JerryMarkham whether he was planted in a duridium casket guaranteed topreserve the dead flesh for a thousand years or whether he went out in abright swift flame that glinted in its tongues of the color-traces ofincandescent elements of human organic chemistry.
So long as people knew. Where and how. Vague, vague, mass-volumizedconcept. Granite tomb was one idea, here was a _place_. Point aspread-fingered hand in a waving sweep across the sky that encompassesthe Plane of The Ecliptic and say, "It is there," and another _place_ isidentified. Lost on Venus is no more than a phrase; from Terra Haute orTimes Square, Venus is a tiny point in the sky smaller to the visionthan the granite of Grant's Tomb.
Imagination breeds irritation. Would they call it pilot error orequipment unreliability? Dying he could face. Goofing would be adisgrace that he would have to meet in fact or in symbol. Hardwarecrackup was a matter of the laws of probability. Not only his dutydemanded that he report, his essence cried out for a voice to _let themknow_.
Anybody.
Just the chance to tell one other human soul.
Chelan asked, "Who are you? Your name and rank?"
He said sullenly, "Go to hell."
"We have ways and means."
He said, "Use 'em."
"If we said that we mean no harm; if we asked what we could do to proveit, what would be your reply?"
"Take me back and let me go."
"Who are you? Will you identify yourself?"
"No."
"Stubborn Terran!"
"I know my rights. We are not at war. I'll tell you nothing. Why did youcapture me?"
"We'll ask the questions, Terran."
"You'll get no answers." He sneered at them angrily. "Torture me--andthen wonder whether my screamings tell the truth. Dope me and wonderwhether what I truly believe is fact or fantasy."
"Please," said Chelan, "we only want to understand your kind. To knowwhat makes you tick."
"Then why didn't you ask?"
"We've tried and we get no answers. Terran, the Universe is a vastnessbeyond comprehension. Co-operate and give us what we want to know and apiece of it is yours."
"Nuts!"
"Terran, you have friends."
"Who doesn't?"
"Why can't we be your friends?"
Angrily, resentfully, "Your way isn't friendly enough to convince me."
Chelan shook his head. "Take him away," he directed in his own tongue.
"Where? And how shall we keep him?"
"To the place we've prepared. And keep him safe."
Huvane asked, "Safe? Who knows what is safe? One bribed his guards. Oneseduced her guards. One dug his way out scratch by scratch. Disappeared,died, dead, gone, mingled off with the myriad of worlds--did one gethome, perhaps, to start their legend of the gods in the sky; the legendthat never dies through the rise and fall of culture from savagery to... to ... to Element 109?"
Chelan looked at Jerry Markham, the Terran looked back defiantly as ifhe were guest instead of captive. "Co-operate," breathed Chelan.
"I'll tell you nothing. Force me. I can't stop that."
Chelan shook his head sorrowfully. "Extracting what you know would beless than the play of a child," he said. "No, Terran. We can know whatyou know in the turn of a dial. What we need is that which you do notknow. Laugh? Or is that a sneer? No matter. What you know is worthless.Your problems and your ambitions, both racial and personal, are minor.We know them already. The pattern is repetitive, only some of the namesare changed.
"But why? Ah, that we must know. Why are you what you are? Seven timesin History Terra has come up from the mud, seven times along the sameroute. Seven times a history of ten thousand years from savage tosavant, from beast to brilliance and always with the same will todo--to do what? To die for what? To fight for what?"
Chelan waved Huvane to take the Terran away.
* * * * *
Huvane said, "He's locked in air-tight with guards who can be trusted.Now what do we do with him?"
"He will co-operate."
"By force?"
"No, Huvane. By depriving him of the one thing that Life cannot existwithout."
"Food? Safety?"
Chelan shook his head. "More primitive than these." He lowered hisvoice. "He suffers now from being cut off from his kind. Life starts,complaining about the treatment it receives during the miracle of birthand crying for its first breath of air. Life departs gasping for air,with someone listening for the last words, the last message from thedying. Communication, Huvane, is the primary drive of all Life, fromplant to animal to man--and if such exists, superman.
"Through communication Life goes on. Communication is the primerequisite to procreation. The firefly signals his mate by night, thehuman male entices his woman with honeyed words and is not the gift of ajewel a crystalline, enduring statement of his undying affection?"
Chelan dropped his flowery manner and went on in a more casual vein:"Huvane, boil it down to the least attractive form of simplification, nolife stands alone. And no viable life goes on without communication, Ishall shut off the Terran's communication."
"Then he will go rank staring, raving mad."
"No, for I shall offer him the alternative. Co-operate, or molder inutter blankn
ess."
Huvane shrugged. "Seems to me that any Terran locked in a duralim cellso far from home the distance means nothing is already cut fromcommunication."
"Deeper, deeper, Huvane. The brain lies prisoner within a cell of bone.Its contact with the Outside world lies along five channels of sensorycommunication. Everything that the brain believes about the Universe isthe product of sensory information carried inward by sight, touch,sound, taste and smell. From five basic bits of information, knowledgeof the Great Truth is formed through logic and self-argument.Everything."
"But--"
"Oh, now stop. I am not expressing my own singular opinion. I believe arather great proportion of the things