Питер Филлипс - In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

“Now wait,” I said patiently. “Aren’t you going on guesswork. Nobody knows if Xantippe’s inhabited. And I doubt that this substitution you speak of can be done.”

“You don’t think so? For pity’s sake, Rip—for your own good, try to believe me! The Xantippean Field is a thought force, isn’t it? And listen—I know it if you don’t—this crew was picked for its hatred of Xantippe. Don’t you see why? The board expects that hatred to act as a mental ‘fender’—to partly ward off the field. They think there might be enough left of our minds when we’re inside the field to accomplish our objective. They’re wrong, Rip— wrong! The very existence of our communal hatred is the thing that has given us away. They have been ready for us for days now—and they are already doing their work aboard.”

He subsided, and I prodded him with gentle questions.

“How do you know the Xantippeans have taken away those three men?”

“Because I happened to overhear the Hartley twins talking in the messroom two days ago. They were talking about their orders. I know I should not have listened, but I was already suspicious.”

“They were talking about their orders? I understood that the orders were confidential.”

“They were. But you can’t expect the Hartleys to pay much attention to that. Anyway, Jo confided that a footnote on his orders had intimated that there was only one sane man aboard. Phil laughed that off. He said he knew he was sane, and he knew that Jo was sane. Now, I reason this way. Only a crazy man would question the league; a crazy man or an enemy. Now the Hartleys may be unbalanced, but they are still rational. They are still navy men. Therefore, they must be enemies, because navy men never question the league.”

I listened to that vague logic spoken in that intense, convincing voice, and I didn’t know what to think. “What about Bort Brecht—and yourself?”

“Bort! Ahh!” His lips curled. “I can sense an alien ego when I speak to him. It’s overwhelming. I hate Xantippe,” he said wildly, “but I hate Bort Brecht more! The only thing I could possibly hate more than Xantippe would be a Xantippean. That proves my point!” He spread his hands. “As for me—Rip, I’m going mad. I feel it. I see things—and when I do, I will be another of them. And then we will all be lost. For there is only one sane man aboard this ship, and that is me, and when I’m turned into a Xantippean, we will be doomed, and I want you to kill me!” He was half hysterical. I let him simmer down.

“And do I look crazy?” I asked. “If you are the only sane man—”

“Not crazy,” he said quickly. “A schizoid—but you’re perfectly rational. You must be, or you wouldn’t have remembered what color my book jacket was.”

I got up, reached out a hand to help him to his feet. He drew back. “Don’t touch me!” he screamed, and when I recoiled, he tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Rip, but I can’t be sure about anything. You may be a Xantippean by now, and touching me might . . . I’ll be going now . . . I—” He went out, his black, burning eyes half closed.

I stood at the door watching him weave down the alleyway. I could guess what was the matter. Paranoia—but bad! There was the characteristic persecution mania, the intensity of expression, the peculiar single-track logic—even delusions of grandeur. Hah! He thought he was the one mentally balanced man aboard!

I walked back to the chart table, thinking hard. Harry always had been pretty tight-lipped. He probably wouldn’t spread any panic aboard. But I’d better tip the captain off. I was wondering why the Hartley twins and Harry Voight had all been told that all hands but me were batty, when the skipper walked in.

“Rip,” he said without preamble. “Did you ever have a fight with Hoch McCory?”

“Good gosh, no!” I said. “I never saw him in my life until the day we sailed. I’ve heard of him, of course. Why?”

Parks looked at me oddly. “He just left my quarters. He had the most long-winded and detailed song and dance about how you were well known as an intersolar master saboteur. Gave names and dates. The names I know well. But the dates—well, I can alibi you for half of ’em. I didn’t tell him that. But—Lord! He almost had me convinced!”

“Another one!” I breathed. And then I told him about Harry Voight.

“I don’t imagine Doc Renn thought they would begin to break so soon,” said Parks when I had finished. “These boys were under laboratory conditions for three solid years, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I don’t know a damn thing that’s going on around here and I’d better learn something before I go off my kilter, too.”

“Why, Ripley,” he said mockingly. “You’re overwrought!” Well, I was. Parks said, “I don’t know much more than you do, but that goofy story of Harry Voight’s has a couple of pretty shrewd guesses in it. For instance, I think he was right in assuming that the board had done something to the minds of . . . ah . . . some of the crew as armor against the field. Few men have approached it consciously—those who have were usually scared half to death. It’s well known that fear forms the easiest possible entrance for the thing feared—ask any good hypnotist. Hate is something different again. Hate is a psychological block against fear and the thing to be feared. And the kind of hate that these guys have for Xantippe and the field is something extra special. They’re mad, but they’re not afraid—and that’s no accident. When we do hit the field, it’s bound to have less effect on us than it had on the crews of poor devils who tried to attack it.”

“That sounds reasonable. Er . . . skipper, about this ‘one sane man’ business. What do you think of that?”

“More armor,” said Parks. “But armor against the man himself. Harry, for instance, was made a paranoiac, which is a very sensible kind of nut; but at the same time he was convinced that he alone was sane. If he thought his mind had been actually tampered with instead of just—tested, he’d get all upset about it and, like as not, undo half the Psy Board’s work.”

Some of that struck some frightening chords in my memory. “Cap’n—do you believe that there is one sane, normal man aboard?”

“I do. One.” He smiled slowly. “I know what you’re thinking. You’d give anything to compare your orders with mine, wouldn’t you?”

“I would. But I won’t do it. Confidential. I couldn’t let myself do it even if you agreed, because—” I paused.

“Well?”

“Because you’re an officer and I’m a gentleman.”

In my bunk at last, I gave over wishing that we’d get to the field and have it over with, and tried to do some constructive thinking. I tried to remember exactly what Doc Renn had said, and when I did, I was sorry I’d made the effort. “You are sane,” and “You have been subjected to psychic forces that are sufficient to drive a normal man quite mad” might easily be totally different things. I’d been cocky enough to assume that they meant the same thing. Well, face it. Was I crazy? I didn’t feel crazy. Neither did Harry Voight. He thought he was going crazy, but he was sure he hadn’t got there yet. And what was “crazy,” anyway? It was normal, on this ship, to hate Xantippe so much that you felt sick and sweated cold when you thought of it. Paranoia—persecution. Did I feel persecuted? Only by the thought of our duty toward Xantippe, and the persecution was Xantippe, not the duty. Did I have delusions of grandeur? Of course not; and yet—hadn’t I blandly assumed that Voight had such delusions because he thought he was the one sane man aboard?

What was the idea of that, anyway? Why had the board put one sane man aboard—if it had? Perhaps to be sure that one man reacted differently to the others at the field, so that he could command. Perhaps merely to make each man feel that he was sane, even though he wasn’t. My poor, tired brain gave it up and I slept.