Breaking Point

by James E. Gunn

  III

  _The unfamiliar, you say, is the unseen, the completely new and strange? Not so. The epitome of the unfamiliar is the familiar inverted, the familiar turned on its head. View a familiar place under new conditions--a deserted and darkened theater, an empty night club by day--and you will find yourself more influenced by the emotion of strangeness than by any number of unseen places. Go back to your old neighborhood and find everything changed. Come into your own home when everyone is gone, when the lights are out and the furniture rearranged--there I will show you the strange and frightening ghosts that are the shapes left over when reality superimposes itself upon the images of memory. The goblins lurk in the shadows of your own room...._ Owen Miller Essays on Night and the Unfamiliar

  For one heart-stopping moment the darkness had seemed to swoop in uponthem like the clutching hand of death. Instinctively they had huddledtogether in the center of the room. But when the second look, and thethird, gave them reassurance that the effect was really there, thoughthe cause was still a mystery, then half the mystery was gone, and theybegan to drift apart. Each felt on trial, and held tight to himself andthe picture of himself he empathized in the others' eyes.

  The Captain said quietly, "It's just ... there. It doesn't seem to bespreading."

  Hoskins gazed at it critically. "About half a meter deep," he murmured."What do you suppose it's made of?"

  "Not a gas," said Paresi. "It has a--a sort of surface."

  Ives, who had frozen to the spot when first he saw the blackness on hisway to the port, took another two steps. The hand which had been halflifted to touch the control continued upward relievedly, as if glad tohave a continuous function even though its purpose had changed.

  "Don't touch it!" rapped the Captain.

  Ives turned his head to look at the Captain, then faltered and let thehand drop. "Why not?"

  "Certainly not a liquid," Paresi mused, as if there had been nointerruption. "And if it's a solid, where did that much matter comefrom? Through the hull?"

  Hoskins, who knew the hull, how it was made, how fitted, how treatedonce it was in place, snorted at the idea.

  "If it was a gas," said Paresi, "there'd be diffusion. _And_ convection.If it were poisonous, we'd all be dead. If not, the chances are we'dsmell it. And the counter's not saying a thing--so it's notradioactive."

  "You trust the counter?" asked Ives bitterly.

  "I trust it," said Paresi. His near-whisper shook with what sounded likepassion. "A man must have faith in something. I hold that faith in everysingle function of every part of this ship until each and every part isseparately and distinctly proved unworthy of faith!"

  "Then, by God, you'll understand my faith in my own two hands and whatthey feel," snarled Ives. He stepped to the bulkhead and brought hismeaty hand hard against it.

  "_Touche_," murmured Hoskins, and meant either Ives' remark or the flat,solid smack of the hand against the blackness.

  In his sleep, Johnny uttered a high, soft, careless tinkle of youthful,happy laughter.

  "Somebody's happy," said Ives.

  "Paresi," said the Captain, "what happens when he wakes up?"

  Paresi's eyebrows shrugged for him. "Practically anything. He's reacheddown inside himself, somewhere, and found a way out. For him--not forany of the rest of us. Maybe he'll ignore what we see. Maybe he'll thinkhe's somewhere else, or in some other time. Maybe he'll _be_ someoneelse. Maybe he won't wake up at all."

  "Maybe he has the right idea," said Ives.

  "That's the second time you've made a crack like that," said Paresilevelly. "Don't do it again. You can't afford it."

  "We can't afford it," the Captain put in.

  "All right," said Ives, with such docility that Paresi shot him astartled, suspicious glance. The big communications man went to hisstation and sat, half-turned away from the rest.

  "What are they after?" complained the Captain suddenly. "What do theywant?"

  "Who?" asked Paresi, still watching Ives.

  Hoskins explained, "Whoever it was who said 'Welcome to our planet.'"

  Ives turned toward them, and Paresi's relief was noticeable. Ives said,"They want us dead."

  "Do they?" asked the Captain.

  "They don't want us to leave the ship, and they don't want the ship toleave the planet."

  "Then it's the ship they want."

  "Yeah," amended Ives, "without us."

  Paresi said, "You can't conclude that, Ives. They've inconvenienced us.They've turned us in on ourselves, and put a drain on our intangibleresources as men and as a crew. But so far they haven't actually doneanything to us. We've done it to ourselves."

  Ives looked at him scornfully. "We wrecked the unwreckable controls,manufactured that case-hardened darkness, and talked to ourselves on anall-wave carrier with no source, about information no outsider couldget?"

  "I didn't say any of that." Paresi paused to choose words. "Of coursethey're responsible for these phenomena. But the phenomena haven't hurtus. Our reactions to the phenomena are what has done the damage."

  "A fall never hurt anyone, they told me when I was a kid," said Ivespugnaciously. "It's the sudden stop."

  Paresi dismissed the remark with a shrug. "I still say that while wehave been astonished, frightened, puzzled and frustrated, we have notbeen seriously threatened. Our water and food and air are virtuallyunlimited. Our ability to live with one another under emergencysituations has been tested to a fare-thee-well, and all we have to do isrecognize the emergency as such and that ability will rise to optimum."He smiled suddenly. "It could be worse, Ives."

  "I suppose it could," said Ives. "That blackness could move in until itreally crowded us, or--"

  Very quietly Hoskins said, "It _is_ moving in."

  Captain Anderson shook his head. "No...." And hearing him, they slowlyrecognized that the syllable was not a denial, but an exclamation. Forthe darkness was no longer a half-meter deep on the bulkhead. No one hadnoticed it, but they suddenly became aware that the almost-square cabinwas now definitely rectangular, with the familiar controls, thecommunications wall, and the thwartship partition aft of them formingthree sides to the encroaching fourth.

  Nude woman on chess motif.]

  Ives rose shaking and round-eyed from his chair. He made an unspellableanimal sound and rushed at the blackness. Paresi leaped for him, but notfast enough. Ives collided sickeningly against the strange jet surfaceand fell. He fell massively, gracelessly, not prone but on wide-spreadknees, with his arms crumpled beneath him and the side of his face onthe deck. He stayed there, quite unconscious, a gross caricature ofworship.

  There was a furiously active, silent moment while Paresi turned the fatman over on his back, ran skilled fingers over his bleeding face, hischest, back to the carotid area of his neck. "He's all right," saidParesi, still working; then, as if to keep his mind going with words toavoid conjecture, he went on didactically, "This is the other fearreaction. Johnny's was 'flight.' Ives' is 'fight.' The empirical resultis very much the same."

  "I thought," said Hoskins dryly, "that fight and flight were survivalreactions."

  Paresi stood up. "Why, they are. In the last analysis, so is suicide."

  "I'll think about that," said Hoskins softly.

  "Paresi!" spat Anderson. "Medic or no, you'll watch your mouth!"

  "Sorry, Captain. That _was_ panic seed. Hoskins--"

  "Don't explain it to me," said the engineer mildly. "I know what youmeant. Suicide's the direct product of survival compulsions--drives thattry to save something, just as fight and flight are efforts to savesomething. I don't think you need worry; immolation doesn't tempt me.I'm too--too interested in what goes on. What are you going to do aboutIves?"

  "Bunk him, I guess, and stand by to fix up that headache he'll wake upto. Give me a hand, will you?"

  Hoskins went to the bulkhead and dropped a second acceleration couch. Ittook all three of them, working hard,
to lift Ives' great bulk up to it.Paresi opened the first-aid kit clamped under the control console andwent to the unconscious man. The Captain cast about him for something todo, something to say, and apparently found it. "Hoskins!"

  "Aye."

  "Do you usually think better on an empty stomach?"

  "Not me."

  "I never have either."

  Hoskins smiled. "I can take a hint. I'll rassle up something hot andfilling."

  "Good man," said the Captain, as Hoskins disappeared toward the afterquarters. Anderson walked over to the doctor and stood watching himclean up the abraded bruise on Ives' forehead.

  Paresi, without looking up, said, "You'd better say it, whatever it is.Get it out."

  Anderson half-chuckled. "You psychic?"

  Paresi shot him a glance. "Depends. If you mean has a naturalsensitivity to the tension spectra coupled itself with some years ofpractice in observing people--then yes. What's on your mind?"

  Anderson said nothing for a long time. It was as if he were waiting fora question, a single prod from Paresi. But Paresi wouldn't give it.Paresi waited, just waited, with his dark face turned away, not helping,not pushing, not doing a single thing to modify the pressure thatchurned about in the Captain.

  "All right," said the Captain irritably. "I'll tell you."

  Paresi took tweezers, a retractor, two scalpels and a hypodermic caseout of the kit and laid them in a neat row on the bunk. He then pickedup each one and returned it to the kit. When he had quite finishedAnderson said, "I was wondering, _who's next?_"

  Paresi nodded and shut the kit with a sharp click. He looked up at theCaptain and nodded again. "Why does it have to be you?" he asked.

  "I didn't say it would be me!" said the Captain sharply.

  "Didn't you?" When the Captain had no answer, Paresi asked him, "Thenwhy wonder about a thing like that?"

  "Oh ... I see what you mean. When you start to be afraid, you start tobe unsure--not of anyone else's weaknesses, but of your own. That whatyou mean?"

  "Yup." His dark-framed grin flashed suddenly. "But you're not afraid,Cap'n."

  "The hell I'm not."

  Paresi shook his head. "Johnny was afraid, and fled. Ives was afraid,and fought. There's only one fear that's a real fear, and that's the onethat brings you to your breaking point. Any other fear is small potatoescompared with a terror like that. Small enough so no one but me has toworry about it."

  "Why you, then?"

  Paresi swatted the first-aid kit as he carried it back to its clamp."I'm the M. O., remember? Symptoms are my business. Let me watch 'em,Captain. Give me orders, but don't crowd me in my specialty."

  "You're insubordinate, Paresi," said Anderson, "and you're a greatcomfort." His slight smile faded, and horizontal furrows appeared overhis eyes. "Tell me why I had that nasty little phase of doubt aboutmyself."

  "You think I can?"

  "Yes." He was certain.

  "That's half the reason. The other half is Hoskins."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Johnny broke. Ives broke. Your question was, 'who's next?' You doubtthat it will be me, because I'm _de facto_ the boy with all the answers.You doubt it will be Hoskins, because you can't extrapolate how he mightbreak--or even if he would. So that leaves you."

  "I hadn't exactly reasoned it out like that--"

  "Oh yes you had," said Paresi, and thumped the Captain's shoulder. "Nowforget it. Confucius say he who turn gaze inward wind up crosseyed.Can't afford to have a crosseyed Captain. Our friends out there are dueto make another move."

  "No they're not."

  The doctor and the Captain whirled at the quiet voice. "What does thatmean, Hoskins?"

  The engineer came into the cabin, crossed over to his station, and beganopening and closing drawers. "They've moved." From the bottom drawer hepulled out a folded chessboard and a rectangular box. Only then did helook directly at them. "The food's gone."

  "Food?... gone where?"

  Hoskins smiled tiredly. "Where's the port? Where's the outboardbulkhead? That black stuff has covered it up--heating units,foodlockers, disposal unit, everything." He pulled a couple of chairsfrom their clips on the bulkhead and carried them across the cabin tothe sheet of blackness. "There's water," he said as he unfolded thechairs. On the seat of one he placed the chessboard. He sat on the otherand pushed the board close to the darkness. "The scuttlebutt's inboard,and still available." His voice seemed to get fainter and fainter as hetalked, as if he were going slowly away from them. "But there's no food.No food."

  He began to set up the pieces, his face to the black wall.