Intermission Time

The ship had a frightening smell. It caught John in the pit of the stomach and he stopped midway along the elevator ramp. It was not the friendly smell of coal or oil or gasoline, but the sharp ozone sting of outer space, and counterfeit worlds where it was unnatural for men to be.

He glanced upward at the great scarred tube. He had seen the shining arcs in the night sky, but he had never been this near to a ship before. He glanced at his own slender white hand resting on the railing and wondered what kind of men could build such ships as these.

“Move along there!”

He closed his mind to wonder and concentrated on the steel deck of the ramp beneath his feet.

In his stateroom John sat down carefully on the bed near the large main port. He had a sudden curious feeling of numbness as if the whole world were something that was happening to him.

He saw in the west, beyond the city, the mile-wide crater now filled with water, like some pleasant lake with the afternoon sun glistening on it. He couldn't see the high, electric fence that walled off the entire area as too contaminated for human occupancy. He didn’t know how, but he had a feeling that it concerned him, deeply.

Below the steel column of the ship, the ground — almost two hundred feet away — was littered with moving people, movements at once erratic and purposeful. They were something happening to him, too.

And the girl, the girl in the flame-red dress. She had happened to him.

It had always been that way; it was a little frightening to recognize that all his life things and people had happened to him as if he were a prop on some fantastic stage.

He stood up and tried to shrug off the feeling. He heard Doris, unseen beyond the door of her adjacent stateroom, moving luggage, snapping lids, and closing drawers with shattering efficiency. Things didn't happen to her; she did the shaping. The world of Doris Carwell was exactly the way she wanted it to be.

Without unpacking, John shoved his hands in his pockets and strode from the room. He made his way through the corridors, unaware of where he was going, half-angry with himself for not knowing. Abruptly, he found himself in the main lounge. The huge hall was dark and, he thought, unoccupied. Then he spotted a familiar flash of color in a far corner.

It was too much to expect, but there she was, the girl he had met at the gate. She was sitting curled up with a plain yellow cat on her lap. Her fingers stroked its ears gently.

He couldn’t have told why it gave him such pleasure to see her. But there was a sudden sense of loss, too, as he remembered her final words. “I hadn’t hoped to see you again so soon,” he said. “Do you mind if I join you and —?”

“Toby,” she said. “This is Toby; they let me bring him along. I’m not supposed to be down here, but he got away when I took him from the baggage room, and I chased him in here.

“I guess we don’t have very long before take-off, do we?”

“I didn’t understand what you said at the gate,” John said. “What was that about a Control? I’ve heard the word, but it’s always been used like a nasty name.”

“Maybe it is. The recruiting-agent who signed me up said different.” She mimicked: “‘You will be giving the same selfless, devoted service to mankind that is being offered by those even in Alpha Colony.’ Anyway, I wouldn’t have come except as a Control.”

“What does it mean?”

“They explained that when a scientist conducts an experiment he performs his work on one batch of material, and leaves another completely untouched in order to compare the two and see what changes are made by his experiment.

“So, on Planet 7 there are colonies of people who live in completely natural circumstances, self-governed and uncared-for, except as they can find subsistence out of the jungle itself. The products of the experimental colonies are then compared with us unfettered Controls to see what the benefits are.”

“I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to set up special Control-colonies on Planet 7; Earth itself should be sufficient.”

“There are too many random factors — social and economic — all of which are too hard to evaluate. At least, that’s the way they explained it to me.”

“But how can you get away from these things out in the Alpha system? The technology is there; people retain their memories and the same social and economic problems exist.”

“On a slightly different level,” she said. “When you’re turned loose in a jungle, and have to scratch with your bare hands for existence most of the extraneous factors are gradually dropped. That’s the word they used, extraneous.”

John sat back, horrified. “You mean that’s the kind of existence you’re going to for the rest of your life? A primitive jungle-life, with no civilization whatever? It would kill you or make a savage out of you.”