Breaking Point Read online

  VII

  _... We are about to land. The planet is green and blue below us, and the long trip is over.... It looks as if it might be a pleasant place to live...._

  _A fragment of Old Testament verse has been running through my mind--from Ecclesiastes, I think. I don't remember it verbatim, but it's something like this:_

  _To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted._

  _For me, anyway, I feel that the time has come. Perhaps it is not to die but something else, less final or more terrible._

  _In any case, you will remember, I know, what we decided long ago--that a man owes one of two things to his planet, to his race: posterity, or himself. I could not contribute the first--it is only proper that I should offer the second and not shrink if it is accepted...._ --From a letter by Peter Hoskins to his wife.

  In the quiet and the dark, Hoskins moved.

  "Checkmate," he said.

  He rose from his chair and crossed the cabin. Ignoring what was on thetable, he opened a drawer under the parts cabinet and took out a steelrule. From a book rack he lifted down a heavy manual. He sat on the endof the couch with the manual on his knees and leafed through it,smoothing it open at a page of physical measurements. He glanced at thefloor, across it to the black curtain, back to the one exposed bulkhead.He grunted, put the book down, and carried his tape to the steel wall.He anchored one end of it there by flipping the paramagnetic control onthe tape case, and pulled the tape across the room. At the blackness hetook a reading, made a mark.

  Then he took a fore-and-aft measurement from a point opposite theforward end of the table to one opposite the after end of the bunk.Working carefully, he knelt and constructed a perpendicular to thisline. He put the tape down for the third time, arriving again at theoutboard wall of darkness. He stood regarding it thoughtfully, and thenunhesitatingly plunged his arm into it. He fumbled for a moment, movinghis hand around in a circle, pressing forward, trying again. Suddenlythere was a click, a faint hum. He stepped back.

  Something huge shouldered out of the dark. It pressed forward towardhim, passed him, stopped moving.

  It was the port.

  Hoskins wiped sweat away from his upper lip and stood blinking into theairlock until the outer port opened as well. Warm afternoon sunlight anda soft, fresh breeze poured in. In the wind was birdsong and the smellof growing things. Hoskins gazed into it, his mild eyes misty. Then heturned back to the cabin.

  The darkness was gone. Ives was sprawled on the after couch, apparentlyunconscious. Johnny was smiling in his sleep. The Captain was snoringstertorously, and Paresi was curled up like a cat on the floor. Thesunlight streamed in through the forward viewports. The manual wheelgleamed on the bulkhead, unbroken.

  Hoskins looked at the sleeping crew and shook his head, half-smiling.Then he stepped to the control console and lifted a microphone from itshook. He began to speak softly into it in his gentle, unimpressivevoice. He said:

  "Reality is what it is, and not what it seems to be. What it seems to beis an individual matter, and even in the individual it variesconstantly. If that's a truism, it's still the truth, as true as thefact that this ship cannot fail. The course of events after our landingwould have been profoundly different if we had unanimously accepted thething we knew to be true. But none of us need feel guilty on that score.We are not conditioned to deny the evidence of our senses.

  "What the natives of this planet have done is, at base, simple andstraightforward. They had to know if the race who built this ship coulddo so because they were psychologically sound (and therefore capable ofreasoning out the building process, among many, many other things) orwhether we were merely mechanically apt. To find this out, they testedus. They tested us the way we test steel--to find out its breakingpoint. And while they were playing a game for our sanity, I played agame for our lives. I could not share it with any of you because it wasa game only I, of us all, have experience in. Paresi was right to acertain degree when he said I had retreated into abstraction--theabstraction of chess. He was wrong, though, when he concluded I had beendriven to it. You can be quite sure that I did it by choice. It wassimply a matter of translating the contactual evidence into anequivalent idea-system.

  "I learned very rapidly that when they play a game, they abide by therules. I know the rules of chess, but I did not know the rules of theirgame. They did not give me their rules. They simply permitted me toconvey mine to them.

  "I learned a little more slowly that, though their power to reach ourminds is unheard-of in any of the seven galaxies we know about, it stillcannot take and use any but the ideas in the forefront of ourconsciousness. In other words, chess was a possibility. They could beforced to take a sacrificed piece, as well as being forced to lose oneof their own. They extrapolate a sequence beautifully--but they can beout-thought. So much for that: I beat them at chess. And by confining myefforts to the chessboard, where I knew the rules and where theyrespected them, I was able to keep what we call sanity. Where you weredisturbed because the port disappeared, I was not disturbed because thedisappearance was not chess.

  "You're wondering, of course, how they did what they did to us. I don'tknow. But I can tell you what they did. They empathize--that is, seethrough our eyes, feel with our fingertips--so that they perceive whatwe do. Second, they can control those perceptions; hang on a distortioncircuit, as Ives would put it, between the sense organ and the brain.For example, you'll find all our fingerprints all around the portcontrol, where, one after the other, we punched the wall and thought wewere punching the button.

  "You're wondering, too, what I did to break their hold on us. Well, Isimply believed what I knew to be the truth; that the ship is unharmedand unchanged. I measured it with a steel tape and it was so. Why didn'tthey force me to misread the tape? They would have, if I'd done thatmeasuring first. At the start they were in the business of turning everypiece of pragmatic evidence into an outright lie. But I outlasted thetest. When they'd finished with their whole arsenal of sensory lies,they still hadn't broken me. They then turned me loose, like a rat in amaze, to see if I could find the way out. And again they abided by theirrules. They didn't change the maze when at last I attacked it.

  "Let me rephrase what I've done; I feel uncomfortable cast as asuperman. We five pedestrians faced some heavy traffic on a surfaceroad. You four tried nobly to cross--deaf and blindfolded. You were allcasualties. I was not; and it wasn't because I am stronger or wiser thanyou, but only because I stayed on the sidewalk and waited for the lightto change....

  "So we won. Now ..."

  Hoskins paused to wet his lips. He looked at his shipmates, each inturn, each for a long, reflective moment. Again his gentle face showedthe half-smile, the small shake of the head. He lifted the mike.

  "... In my chess game I offered them a minor piece in order to achievea victory, and they accepted. My interpretation is that they want _me_for further tests. This need not concern you on either of the scoreswhich occur to you as you hear this. First: The choice is my own. It isnot a difficult one to make. As Paresi once pointed out, I have a highidealistic quotient. Second: I am, after all, a very minor piece and thegame is a great one. I am convinced that there is no test to which theycan now subject me, and break me, that any one of you cannot pass.

  "But you must in no case come tearing after me in a wild and thoughtlessrescue attempt. I neither want that nor need it. And do not judge thenatives severely; we are in no position to do so. I am certain now thatwhether I come back or not, these people will make a valuable additionto the galactic community.

  "Good luck, in any case. If the tests shouldn't prove too arduous, I'llsee you again. If not, my only regret is that I
shall break up what hasturned out to be, after all, a very effective team. If this happens,tell my wife the usual things and deliver to her a letter you will findamong my papers. She was long ago reconciled to eventualities.

  "Johnny ... the natives will fix your lighter....

  "Good luck, good-bye."

  Hoskins hung up the microphone. He took a stylus and wrote a line:"_Hear my recording. Pete._"

  And then, bareheaded and unarmed, he stepped through the port, out intothe golden sunshine. Outside he stopped, and for a moment touched hischeek to the flawless surface of the hull.

  He walked down into the valley.