cropped short. Her uniform was the same as the man's on Marquis'left.
The man was No. 4901. He hadn't been here so long. His face was thin andgray. His hair was dark, and he was about the same size and build asMarquis. His mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were closed and therewas a slight quivering at the ends of the fingers which were lacedacross his stomach.
_When the bells rang they would arise...._]
"Hello," Marquis said. The man shivered, then opened dull eyes andlooked up at Marquis. "I just got in. Name's Charles Marquis."
The man blinked. "I'm--I'm--No. 4901." He looked down at his chest,repeated the number. His fingers shook a little as he touched his lips.
Marquis said. "What's this indoctrination?"
"You--learn. The bells ring--you forget--and learn--"
"There's absolutely no chance of escaping?" Marquis whispered, more tohimself than to 4901.
"Only by dying," 4901 shivered. His eyes rolled crazily, then he turnedover and buried his face in his arms.
The situation had twisted all the old accepted values squarely around.Preferring death over life. But not because of any anti-life attitude,or pessimism, or defeatism. None of those negative attitudes that wouldhave made the will-to-die abnormal under conditions in which there wouldhave been hope and some faint chance of a bearable future. Here to keepon living was a final form of de-humanized indignity, of humiliation, ofignominy, of the worst thing of all--loss of one's-self--of one'sindividuality. To die as a human being was much more preferable overcontinuing to live as something else--something neither human ormachine, but something of both, with none of the dignity of either.
* * * * *
The screening process hadn't detected the capsule of poison in Marquis'tooth. The capsule contained ten grains of poison, only one of which wasenough to bring a painless death within sixteen hours or so. That washis ace in the hole, and he waited only for the best time to use it.
Bells rang. The prisoners jumped from their beds and went through a fewminutes of calisthenics. Other bells rang and a tray of small tins offood-concentrates appeared out of a slit in the wall by each bed. Morebells rang, different kinds of bells, some deep and brazen, others highand shrill. And the prisoners marched off to specialized jobsco-operating with various machines.
You slept eight hours. Calisthenics five minutes. Eating ten minutes.Relaxation to the tune of musical bells, ten minutes. Work period eighthours. Repeat. That was all of life, and after a while Marquis knew, aman would not be aware of time, nor of his name, nor that he had oncebeen human.
Marquis felt deep lancing pain as he tried to resist the bells. Eachtime the bells rang and a prisoner didn't respond properly, invisiblerays of needle pain punched and kept punching until he reacted properly.
And finally he did as the bells told him to do. Finally he forgot thatthings had ever been any other way.
Marquis sat on his bed, eating, while the bells of eating rang acrossthe bowed heads in the gray uniforms. He stared at the girl, then at theman, 4901. There were many opportunities to take one's own life here.That had perplexed him from the start--_why hasn't the girl, and thisman, succeeded in dying?_
And all the others? They were comparatively new here, all these in thisindoctrination ward. Why weren't they trying to leave in the onlydignified way of escape left?
No. 4901 tried to talk, he tried hard to remember things. Sometimesmemory would break through and bring him pictures of other times, ofhappenings on Earth, of a girl he had known, of times when he was achild. But only the mildest and softest kind of recollections....
Marquis said, "I don't think there's a prisoner here who doesn't want toescape, and death is the only way out for us. We know that."
For an instant, No. 4901 stopped eating. A spoonful of food concentratehung suspended between his mouth and the shelf. Then the food movedagain to the urging of the bells. Invisible pain needles gouged Marquis'neck, and he ate again too, automatically, talking between tastelessbites. "A man's life at least is his own," Marquis said. "They can takeeverything else. But a man certainly has a right and a duty to take thatlife if by so doing he can retain his integrity as a human being.Suicide--"
No. 4901 bent forward. He groaned, mumbled "Don't--don't--" severaltimes, then curled forward and lay on the floor knotted up into atwitching ball.
The eating period was over. The lights went off. Bells sounded forrelaxation. Then the sleep bells began ringing, filling up the absolutedarkness.
Marquis lay there in the dark and he was afraid. He had the poison. Hehad the will. But he couldn't be unique in that respect. What was thematter with the others? All right, the devil with them. Maybe they'dbeen broken too soon to act. He could act. Tomorrow, during the workperiod, he would take a grain of the poison. Put the capsule back in thetooth. The poison would work slowly, painlessly, paralyzing the nervoussystem, finally the heart. Sometime during the beginning of the nextsleep period he would be dead. That would leave six or seven hours ofdarkness and isolation for him to remain dead, so they couldn't get tohim in time to bring him back.
He mentioned suicide to the girl during the next work period. She moaneda little and curled up like a fetus on the floor. After an hour, she gotup and began inserting punch cards into the big machine again. Sheavoided Marquis.
Marquis looked around, went into a corner with his back to the room,slipped the capsule out and let one of the tiny, almost invisiblegrains, melt on his tongue. He replaced the capsule and returned to themachine. A quiet but exciting triumph made the remainder of the workperiod more bearable.
Back on his bed, he drifted into sleep, into what he knew was the finalsleep. He was more fortunate than the others. Within an hour he would bedead.
* * * * *
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
The sounds rose higher and higher. A human body, somewhere ... painunimaginable twisting up through clouds of belching steam ... musclesquivering, nerves twitching ... and somewhere a body floating andbobbing and crying ... sheets of agony sweeping and returning in wavesand the horror of unescapable pain expanding like a volcano ofmadness....
Somewhere was someone alive who should be dead.
And then in the dark, in absolute silence, Marquis moved a little. Herealized, vaguely, that the screaming voice was his own.
He stared into the steamy darkness and slowly, carefully, wet his lips.He moved. He felt his lips moving and the whisper sounding loud in thedark.
_I'm alive!_
He managed to struggle up out of the bed. He could scarcely remainerect. Every muscle in his body seemed to quiver. He longed to slip downinto the darkness and escape into endless sleep. But he'd tried that.And he was still alive. He didn't know how much time had passed. He wassure of the poison's effects, but he wasn't dead. They had gotten to himin time.
Sweat exploded from his body. He tried to remember more. Pain. He laydown again. He writhed and perspired on the bed as his tortured mindbuilt grotesque fantasies out of fragments of broken memory.
The routine of the unceasing bells went on. Bells, leap up. Bells,calisthenics. Bells, eat. Bells, march. Bells, work. He tried to shutout the bells. He tried to talk to 4901. 4901 covered up his ears andwouldn't listen. The girl wouldn't listen to him.
There were other ways. And he kept the poison hidden in the capsule inhis hollow tooth. He had been counting the steps covering the length ofthe hall, then the twenty steps to the left, then to the right to wherethe narrow corridor led again to the left where he had seen theair-lock.
After the bells stopped ringing and the darkness was all around him, hegot up. He counted off the steps. No guards, no alarms, nothing to stophim. They depended on the conditioners to take care of everything. Thistime he would do it. This time they wouldn't bring him back.
No one else could even talk with him about it, even though he knew theyall wanted to escape. Some part of them still wanted to, but theycouldn't. So it was up to him.
He stopped against the smooth, opaque,up-curving glasite dome. It had a brittle bright shine that reflectedfrom the Moon's surface. It was night out there, with an odd metallicreflection of Earthlight against the naked crags.
He hesitated. He could feel the intense and terrible cold, theairlessness out there fingering hungrily, reaching and whispering andwaiting.
He turned the wheel. The door opened. He entered the air-lock and shutthe first door when the air-pressure was right. He turned the otherwheel and the outer lock door swung outward. The out-rushing air spunhim outward like a balloon into the awful airless cold and nakedsilence.
His body sank down into the thick pumice dust that drifted up around himin a fine powdery blanket of concealment. He felt no pain. The coldairlessness dissolved around him in deepening darkening pleasantness.This time he was dead, thoroughly and finally and