place was air-conditioned,too.
I could hear Wally whistling to himself the way he did, the soundmuffled by his oxygen mask and drowned in the rocket noise, but stillperfectly audible. The tune was _Sophisticated Lady_. Sometimes it was_Easy to Love_ and sometimes _Chasing Shadows_, but mostly_Sophisticated Lady_. He was from Juilliard.
Somebody sneezed, and it sounded just like Chowderhead sneezing. Youknow how everybody sneezes according to his own individual style?Chowderhead had a ladylike little sneeze; it went _hutta_, real quick,all through the mouth, no nose involved. The captain went _Hrasssh_;Wally was Ashoo, ashoo, _ashoo_. Gilvey was _Hutch_-uh. Sam didn'tsneeze much, but he sort of coughed and sprayed, and that was worse.
Sometimes I used to think about killing Sam by tying him down and havingWally and the captain sneeze him to death. But that was a kind of ajoke, naturally, when I was feeling good. Or pretty good. Usually Ithought about a knife for Sam. For Chowderhead it was a gun, right inthe belly, one shot. For Wally it was a tommy gun--just stitching him upand down, you know, back and forth. The captain I would put in a cagewith hungry lions, and Gilvey I'd strangle with my bare hands. That wasprobably because of the cough, I guess.
* * * * *
She was back. "Please tell me about it," she begged. "I'm _so_ curious."
I opened my eyes. "You want me to tell you about it?"
"Oh, please!"
"About what it's like to fly to Mars on a rocket?"
"Yes!"
"All right," I said.
It's wonderful what three little white pills will do. I wasn't evenshaking.
"There's six men, see? In a space the size of a Buick, and that's allthe room there is. Two of us in the bunks all the time, four of us onwatch. Maybe you want to stay in the sack an extra ten minutes--becauseit's the only place on the ship where you can stretch out, you know, theonly place where you can rest without somebody's elbow in your side. Butyou can't. Because by then it's the next man's turn.
"And maybe you don't have elbows in your side while it's your turn offwatch, but in the starboard bunk there's the air-regenerator mastervalve--I bet I could still show you the bruises right around mykidneys--and in the port bunk there's the emergency-escape-hatch handle.That gets you right in the temple, if you turn your head too fast.
"And you can't really sleep, I mean not soundly, because of the noise.That is, when the rockets are going. When they aren't going, then you'rein free-fall, and that's bad, too, because you dream about falling. Butwhen they're going, I don't know, I think it's worse. It's pretty loud.
"And even if it weren't for the noise, if you sleep too soundly youmight roll over on your oxygen line. Then you dream about drowning. Everdo that? You're strangling and choking and you can't get any air? Itisn't dangerous, I guess. Anyway, it always woke me up in time. Though Iheard about a fellow in a flight six years ago--
"Well. So you've always got this oxygen mask on, all the time, except ifyou take it off for a second to talk to somebody. You don't do that veryoften, because what is there to say? Oh, maybe the first couple ofweeks, sure--everybody's friends then. You don't even need the mask, forthat matter. Or not very much. Everybody's still pretty clean. The placesmells--oh, let's see--about like the locker room in a gym. You know?You can stand it. That's if nobody's got space sickness, of course. Wewere lucky that way.
"But that's about how it's going to get anyway, you know. Outside themasks, it's soup. It isn't that you smell it so much. You kind of_taste_ it, in the back of your mouth, and your eyes sting. That's afterthe first two or three months. Later on, it gets worse.
"And with the mask on, of course, the oxygen mixture is coming in underpressure. That's funny if you're not used to it. Your lungs have to worka little bit harder to get rid of it, especially when you're asleep, soafter a while the muscles get sore. And then they get sorer. And then--
"Well.
"Before we take off, the psych people give us a long doo-da that keepsus from killing each other. But they can't stop us from thinking aboutit. And afterward, after we're back on Earth--this is what you won'tread about in the articles--they keep us apart. You know how they workit? We get a pension, naturally. I mean there's got to be a pension,otherwise there isn't enough money in the world to make anybody go. Butin the contract, it says to get the pension we have to stay in our ownarea.
"The whole country's marked off. Six sections. Each has at least one bigcity in it. I was lucky, I got a lot of them. They try to keep it soevery man's home town is in his own section, but--well, like with us,Chowderhead and the captain both happened to come from Santa Monica. Ithink it was Chowderhead that got California, Nevada, all that Southwestarea. It was the luck of the draw. God knows what the captain got.
"Maybe New Jersey," I said, and took another white pill.
* * * * *
We went on to another place and she said suddenly, "I figured somethingout. The way you keep looking around."
"What did you figure out?"
"Well, part of it was what you said about the other fellow getting NewJersey. This is New Jersey. You don't belong in this section, right?"
"Right," I said after a minute.
"So why are you here? I know why. You're here because you're looking forsomebody."
"That's right."
She said triumphantly, "You want to find that other fellow from yourcrew! You want to fight him!"
I couldn't help shaking, white pills or no white pills. But I had tocorrect her.
"No. I want to kill him."
"How do you know he's here? He's got a lot of states to roam around in,too, doesn't he?"
"Six. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland--all the way down toWashington."
"Then how do you know--"
"He'll be here." I didn't have to tell her how I knew. But I knew.
I wasn't the only one who spent his time at the border of his assignedarea, looking across the river or staring across a state line, knowingthat somebody was on the other side. I knew. You fight a war and youdon't have to guess that the enemy might have his troops a thousandmiles away from the battle line. You know where his troops will be. Youknow he wants to fight, too.
_Hutta. Hutta._
I spilled my drink.
I looked at her. "You--you didn't--"
She looked frightened. "What's the matter?"
"_Did you just sneeze?_"
"Sneeze? Me? Did I--"
I said something quick and nasty, I don't know what. No! It hadn't beenher. I knew it.
It was Chowderhead's sneeze.
* * * * *
Chowderhead. Marvin T. Roebuck, his name was. Five feet eight inchestall. Dark-complected, with a cast in one eye. Spoke with a Midwest kindof accent, even though he came from California--"shrick" for "shriek,""hawror" for "horror," like that. It drove me crazy after a while.Maybe that gives you an idea what he talked about mostly. A skunk. Athoroughgoing, deep-rooted, mother-murdering skunk.
I kicked over my chair and roared, "Roebuck! Where are you, damn you?"
The bar was all at once silent. Only the jukebox kept going.
"I know you're here!" I screamed. "Come out and get it! You louse, Itold you I'd get you for calling me a liar the day Wally sneaked asmoke!"
Silence, everybody looking at me.
Then the door of the men's room opened.
He came out.
He looked _lousy_. Eyes all red-rimmed and his hair falling out--thepoor crumb couldn't have been over twenty-nine. He shrieked, "You!" Hecalled me a million names. He said, "You thieving rat, I'll teach you totry to cheat me out of my candy ration!"
He had a knife.
I didn't care. I didn't have anything and that was stupid, but it didn'tmatter. I got a bottle of beer from the next table and smashed itagainst the back of a chair. It made a good weapon, you know; I'd takethat against a knife any time.
I ran toward him, and he came all sta
ggering and lurching toward me,looking crazy and desperate, mumbling and raving--I could hardly hearhim, because I was talking, too. Nobody tried to stop us. Somebody wentout the door and I figured it was to call the cops, but that was allright. Once I took care of Chowderhead, I didn't care what the cops did.
I went for the face.
He cut me first. I felt the knife slide up along my left arm but, youknow, it didn't even hurt, only kind of stung a little. I didn't careabout that. I got him in the face, and the