Good as I am at dirty fighting, hand-to-hand combat and general closeup nastiness, there is a limit. The limit being an apparently inexhaustible supply of the enemy. To make matters worse they really weren’t very good fighters. About all they did was grapple. It was enough. I knocked back the first two, slugged the next few, chopped a couple more—and they kept on coming. And, frankly, I was beginning to get tired. In the end they simply swarmed over me and overwhelmed me and that was that. Shackles were clicked into place around my wrists and ankles and I was tossed onto the control room floor. The sound led the battered away and the officers went back to their positions at the controls. Changing my course back to the original one, I noted with dark depression. When he had done this, Kome turned his chair about to face me.
“You tricked me,” I said. Not a bright remark but something that might get the conversation rolling.
“Of course.”
Laconic was the name of the game with the gray men. Never use a word when none would do. I pressed on, mainly out of a feeling of slight hysteria since I knew I was trapped and trapped well.
“You wouldn’t mind telling me why? If you can spare the time, that is.”
“I thought it would be obvious. We could of course use our normal mind control techniques on you, and this is what we originally planned to do. But we needed answers to some important questions at once. We have worked among the aliens for years and they have suspected nothing. We needed to know how you had discovered our presence. We of course have psychocontrol techniques for all races. It was when we were preparing brain attachments that we discovered your real identity. Metal skulls do not exist in nature. Your disguise was revealed. Your face resembled very much that of someone we have been searching for for many years. That was when I determined to use this ruse. If you were the man we were looking for we knew that your ego would not permit you to think that you had been tricked.”
“Your mother never met your father,” I sneered. A feeble response but the best I could do at the moment. Because I knew that he was right. I had been fooled right down the line.
“I knew that if you thought you had the upper hand you would answer questions that might take days to get out of you by other means. And we needed some instant answers. So we arranged the scene you played so well. Your hand weapon was charged with sterile needles. Everyone acted his role well. You best of all.”
“I bet you think you’re smart,” was all I could come up with since, at that moment, I was feeling very defeated.
“I know I am. I have been organizing our field operations for many years—and they have only failed twice. You were to blame each time. Now that you have been captured your interference is at an end.” He signaled to two of his men, who picked me up. “Lock him away until we land. I do not wish to speak with him any longer.”
Low? Up until that moment I had never known what low was. Depressed, dispirited, out-thought, out-fought, it was enough to bring out the suicidal in anyone. Except me, of course. Where there is life there is hope. Eureka! I was even more depressed after this minor surge of rebellion because I knew this time there was just no hope at all.
These people were too efficient. They hung my wristcuffs over a hook high on the wall and cut away my clothes, boots, everything, in a calmly depressing way. Then they cleaned me out, efficiently, operating like a vacuum cleaner klyster. All of the obvious devices, picklocks, grenades, blades, saws, were stripped from me first. Then they went over me again slowly with fluoroscopes and metal detectors removing, painfully, those other devices that were better hidden. They even x-rayed my jaws and removed a few teeth that had never been discovered before. When they were done I was pounds lighter and as bereft of helpful gadgetry as a newborn babe. It was all quite humiliating. Particularly when they took everything away and just left me lying there, naked, on the cold deck.
Which, I discovered, was getting colder all the time. When moisture began to condense on it I found myself growing blue and chattering with the chill. I began to howl and thrash about. This warmed me up a bit and eventually led to one of the gray men poking his head in the door.
“I am freezing to death!” I clattered through trembling teeth at him. “You are deliberately chilling the air to torture me.”
“No,” he answered with utmost blandness. “That is not one of our tortures. This ship was warmed when the ports were open and is now returning to normal temperature. You are weak.”
“I am freezing to death. Maybe you chilly chaps from your icebox world can live at this temperature—but I can’t. So give me some clothes or kill me quickly now.”
I think I half meant it. There really did seem to be little left to live for at this point. He thought about it for a bit, then exited. But returned fairly soon with four helpers and a padded coverall. They took off the fetters and dressed me. I made no protests while this was happening because one of them held a fully charged pistol, the muzzle of which he put directly into my mouth. His finger was bent, the trigger half pulled. I knew he meant it. I did not move or twitch while I was being dressed and the heavy boots slipped over my feet. The gun stayed there until the locks on the cuffs clicked shut once more.
It took days to reach our destination. My captors were the worst conversationalists in the galaxy and refused to respond to even my wittiest and most insulting sallies. The food was completely unpalatable but, I am sure, nourishing. The only drink was water. A portapotty took care of my sanitary needs and I was getting bored out of my skull. My thoughts were constantly on escape and many and fearful were the plans I devised. All of them useless, of course. Singlehanded, without a weapon, I would never be able to take control of the ship even if I could break out of this room. Which I could not. I was sinking into a coma of boredom by the time we finally landed.
“Where are we?” I asked the guards who came to get me. “Come on you chatterboxes, speak up. Would you be shot if you at least told me the name of the planet? Do you think I will tell anyone else?”
They thought about this for quite awhile until one of them finally made up his mind. “Kekkonshiki,” he said.
“You’re excused—but don’t wipe your nose with the back of your hand. Ha-ha.” I had to laugh at my own sallies. No one else would.
But it was ironic. Here I was, bearer of the information that would put an end to the gray men menace forever. The name of their world—and its location. And I couldn’t pass it on. If I had any trace of psi ability I could have the troops rushing there in a minute. I did not. I had tried and been psi-tested often enough in the past. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.
At least the unaccustomed action gave me something new to think about, to take my mind off of the depression that had depressed me for days. At last it was time to think about escape again.
Nor was I mad to consider it at this time. We had landed and would be leaving the ship soon. They were taking me someplace where it was guaranteed not-very-good-things would happen to me. I did not yet know what they were and, as far as I was concerned, life would be far more peaceful if I never found out. We would leave this ship, and even for a very brief spell, we would be in transit. That would be the time to act. The mere fact that I did not have the slightest idea of what would be waiting outside was completely and totally beside the point. I had to do something.
Not that they made it very easy for me. I tried to act indifferent when they stripped off my chains and produced a metal collar and snapped it around my neck. Although my blood ran chill on the instant. I had worn that collar before. A thin cable ran from the collar to a small box that one of them held in his hand.
“No need to demonstrate,” I said in what was meant to be a light and bantering tone and certainly was not. “I’ve worn one of these before and your friend Kraj—you must remember Kraj?– demonstrated its working to me over quite a period of time.”
“I can do this,” my captor said, poising a finger over one of the many buttons on the box.
“It’s been done,” I shouted, pulling back. “Those very same words, I know, you never change your routines. You press the button and…”
Fire washed over me. I was blind, burning to death, my skin aflame, my eyes seared out. Every one of my pain nerves switched on to full by the neural currents generated by the box. I knew this but it did not help. The pain was real and it went on and on and on.
When it ended I found myself lying on the floor, curled up, drained of energy and almost helpless. Two of them lifted me to my feet and dragged me, legs flopping, down the corridor. My master with the box walked behind, giving me a little tug on the neck from time to time to remind me who was in charge. I did not argue with him. I could stumble along by myself after a bit, but they still kept their hands locked tight on my arms.
I liked that. I fought hard not to smile. They were so sure I could not escape.
“Getting cold out?” asked when we reached the airlock. No one bothered to answer me. But they were pulling on gloves and fur hats which certainly meant something. “How about some gloves for me?” I was still ignored.
When the lock door swung open I knew why the preparations. A swirl of snow was blown in on a wave of arctic air that chilled, then numbed. It certainly wasn’t summer outside. I was dragged forth into the blizzard.
Maybe not a blizzard, but some very heavy flurries. There was a blinding wave of flakes about us that was gone in a few moments. A thin sun shone down on the blindingly white landscape. Snow, nothing but snow in all directions. Wait, something dark ahead, a stone wall or building of some kind, obscured an instant later. We plodded on and I tried to ignore the numbness in my hands and face. Yet our destination was still a good two hundred meters away. My body and feet were warm enough, but my exposed skin was something else again.
We were roughly halfway from the ship to our waiting warm haven when another miniblizzard swept down upon us, a roaring snow squall. Just before it hit I slipped and fell, pulling one of my captors down with me as he slid on the icy surface. He made no complaints, though the sadist holding the torture box did give me a quick blast of pain as a warning to watch my step. All done in silence. Silence on my part too because I had managed to get a loop of cable from the box over my shoulder when I went down and then caught it in my mouth. And bit it in two.
This is not as hard to do as it sounds, since under the caps of my front teeth were set serrated edges of silicon carbide. They were invisible to x-ray, having the same density as the enamel of my teeth—but were as hard as tool steel. The caps on my teeth chipped and splintered away as I ground down, chewing desperately before anyone noticed what was happening. The swirling snow concealed what I was doing for the vital seconds needed. The human jaw muscles can exert thirty-five kilos of pressure on each side and I was exerting, chomping and biting to my utmost.
The cable parted. As it did I twisted to the side and brought my knee up into the groin of the captor on my right. He grunted loudly and folded and released my arm. For a quick cross chop into the throat of the other man. Then my hands were free and I spun about.
The man behind me lost vital seconds depending on technology rather than on his reflexes. My back was to him all the time I was chopping up his partners. And he did nothing. Nothing that is other than push wildly at the buttons on the torture box. He was still pushing when my foot caught him in the pit of the stomach. As he fell I got under him so he collapsed onto my shoulder.
I did not stop to see who was doing the yelling as I staggered off with him into the snow-filled, storm-beaten, frozen wastes.
All of this may seem like madness—but what greater madness to go quietly to the slaughter at the hands of these creatures? I had been there once before and still had the scars. Now there was a good chance I would freeze to death. But that was also better than giving in to them. Plus the very remote chance that I might stay free for awhile, cause them trouble, anything.
Nor was I as weak as I pretended to be; this had been only a simple ruse to get them off guard. Though now I was weakening—and freezing—very fast. My limp ex-captor weighed at least as much as I did which necessarily slowed my pace. Yet I kept going, at right angles to our previous track, until I stumbled and fell headfirst into the snow. My face and hands were too numb to feel anything.
People were calling out on all sides, but none were in sight at the moment as the snow swirled down heavily. My fingers were like thick clubs as I pawed the man’s hat from his head and put it on mine. It was almost impossible to open the closures on his suit but I managed it finally. Then plunged my arms inside, pushing my hands up into his armpits. They burned worse than the torture had, as feeling began to return.
Unconscious as he was, this chill clasp brought the gray man around. As soon as his eyes opened I pulled one hand out just long enough to make a fist and drive it into his jaw. He slept better then and I crouched there, half-covered with snow, until most of the pain had gone. One of the pursuers went by, very close, but never saw us. I felt no compunction in taking my captive’s gloves, though I noticed he was stirring again as I pushed off through the snowdrifts.
After this I ran hard, panting but still going on. I was no longer cold and that was the only solace. When the rushing snowflakes began to thin I hurled myself backward into a snowbank, sinking well below the surface. There were still a lot of shouts, but they were weaker and in the distance now. I lay there until my breathing slowed down and I could feel the sweat freezing on my face. Only then did I roll over carefully and poke an opening in the side of the snow near my face.
There was no one in sight. I waited until the snowfall started again, then ran on—full-tilt into a chain-metal fence. It vanished in the snow in both directions and rose up high above me. If it were wired for an alarm I had already tripped it so I might as well keep going. I clambered halfway up it, thought better of the idea—then dropped back into the soft snow below.
If an alarm had gone off they would be converging on this spot. I was not going to make it easy for them. Instead of going over at this place I hurried along the fence, running as fast as I could for what I hoped was at least ten minutes. I saw no one. Then I climbed the fence, dropped over it, and headed into the white wilderness. Running until I dropped. Then lay, half-buried in the snow until I got my wind back, before taking a cautious look in all directions.
Nothing. Just snow. No footsteps or marks of any kind. No bushes, trees, rocks or signs of life. A sterile white waste that went on and on for as far as I could see, delimitated only by the snow flurries on the horizon. One of them opened for a bit and I had a glimpse of the dark construction I had done all this to avoid.
I turned my back on it and shambled off into the driving blizzard.
“You’re a free man, Jim, free. Free as the birds!”