FullReads

“By my beard!” snorted Matsukuo. “Such blather!”

“I’ll be willing to wager my beautiful hacienda in the lovely countryside of Aragon against your miserable palm-leaf nipi shack on Oahu that you have no beard,” said Juan Pedro.

“Hah!” said Matsukuo; “that’s all I need now–Castles in Spain.”

It was suddenly dizzying for Houston. Here were five people, doomed to slow, painful death, talking as though there were nothing to worry about. Within minutes, each had learned to know the others almost perfectly.

It was more than just the words each used. Talking aloud helped focus the thoughts more, but at the same time, thousands of little, personal, fringe ideas were present with the main idea transmitted in words. Houston had talked telepathically to Dorrine hundreds of times, but never before had so much fine detail come through.

Why? Was there something different about space that made mental communication so much more complete?

“No, not that, I think,” said Matsukuo. “I believe it is because we have lost our fear–not of death; we still fear death–but of betrayal.”

That was it. They knew they were going to die, and soon. They had already been sentenced; nothing further could frighten them. Always before, on Earth, they had kept their thoughts to themselves, fearing to broadcast too much, lest the Normals find them out. The little, personal things that made a human being a living personality were kept hidden behind heavy mental walls. The suppression worked subconsciously, even when they actually wanted to communicate with another Controller.

But out here, there was nothing to fear on that score. Why should they, who were already facing death, be afraid of anything now?

So they opened up–wide. And they knew each other as no group of human beings had ever known each other. Every human being has little faults and foibles that he may be ashamed of, that he wants to keep hidden from others. But such things no longer mattered out here, where they had nothing but imminent death and the emptiness of space–and each other.

Physically, they were miserable. To be chained in one position, with very little room to move around, for three weeks, as Sonali had been, was torture. Sonali had been there longer than the others–for three days, there had been no one but herself out there in the loneliness of space.

But now, even physical discomfort meant little; it was easy to forget the body when the mind was free.

“What of the others?” Dorrine asked. “Where are the ones who were sentenced before us?”

* * * * *

Houston thought of Robert Harris. What had happened to the young Englishman?

“Space is big,” said Juan Pedro. “Perhaps they are too far away for our thoughts to reach them–or perhaps they are already dead.”

“Let’s not talk of death.” Sonali Siddhartha’s thought was soft. “We have so many things to do.”

“We will have a language session,” said Juan Pedro. “Si?”

Matsukuo chuckled. “Good! Houston, until you’ve tried to learn Spanish, Hindustani, Arabic, Japanese, and French all at once, you don’t know what a language session is. We–“

The Hawaiian’s thought was suddenly broken off by a shrieking burst of mental static.

The effect was similar to someone dropping a handful of broken glass into an electric meat grinder right in the middle of a Bach cantata.

It was Sager, coming out of his coma.

Almost automatically, the five contacted his mind to relax him as he awoke. They touched his mind–and were repelled!

Stay out of my mind!

With almost savage fury, the still half-conscious Sager hurled thoughts of hatred and fear at the five minds who had tried to help him. They recoiled from the burst of insane emotion.

“Leave him alone,” Houston thought sharply. “He’s a tough fighter.”

* * * * *