Rocket to Limbo

For the barest instant Lars felt her fear, the shadow of doubt flitting through her mind, as though he had torn open a door that had long been closed, arousing some timeless, shapeless fear. But then the door closed again, leaving only puzzlement and confusion. You must go back. You must not come here again.

Why not? What were you before the Masters came?

Later, he saw what he couldn’t see just then. “She couldn’t answer the question because she didn’t understand it,” he told Peter, back in their room. “Whatever the Masters were, they obviously blocked out whole chunks of these people’s minds.”

“But why?” said Peter.

“We may learn that when we learn what the Masters were. But I don’t think the City-people are going to tell us. I don’t think they know themselves!” .

It was Peter who finally broke the deadlock, though in quite a different way than he imagined.

Day had followed day among the City-people of Wolf IV with no appreciable change. Every day both Lars and Peter had two and even three sessions with their tutors, and still they seemed to come no closer to the answers they sought than before. If anything the City-people and their reasons for singling out the two youngest crewmen for attention became more imponderable than ever as the boys saw more of the workings of the city.

They did learn bits and snatches. They learned that death was all but unknown in the city. There were people of all ages there, old and young, but when a death did occur it was a source of city-wide mourning.

Furthermore, Lars was able to confirm his conclusion that he and Peter were allowed to remain awake, of all the crewmen, because of their age. But try as he would he could not discover why their age was considered so important. Even direct questions brought only confused replies. Why are you keeping us here? he asked the woman who was working with him, flashing the thought at her without warning. Why didn’t you put us to sleep, too?

She stared at him for a moment in amazement. Then: But we could not do that! The Masters would never allow it. You are like us, not like the others.

Lars had recounted the matter to Peter that evening as they lay in the darkness of their room. “These Masters!” Peter burst out. “Every time we get them in a corner, they bring in the Masters to settle the question as though they were the last possible authority! Have you noticed that? Every time!”

“I know. It’s a brick wall. We keep slamming head-on into it. We can’t seem to get over it and we can’t get under it.” Lars stared glumly at the ceiling. “I think they’re getting uneasy, too. My ‘lesson’ today didn’t go well. I still don’t know what they expect me to do, but I wasn’t doing it. The man was ready to walk out mad.”

“So you’ve noticed that too,” said Peter. “I don’t like it. You know what worries me? Suppose they decide that we can’t be taught whatever they’re trying to teach us? What then? Do we get put to sleep too?”

Lars shivered. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

Peter sat up on the edge of his bed. “I’ve thought of it plenty. I’ve also been thinking that there’s more than one way to get through a brick wall. If you can’t climb it, or dig under it, you can try smashing a hole in it.” He jumped up, rubbing his hands together, sat down again for a moment, then stood up and went to the window. “I tell you, we’ve got to do something besides sit here! I don’t care what, take a knife to one of them, or something, just to do something.”

“You’d never get away with it. They’d spot you in a minute.”

“Yes, that’s just it! Everything we do or think, they know about. All they have to do is dip into our skulls and they know everything that’s going on in there. But I think maybe their guard is down a little. They don’t watch us so much now, and I’ve noticed that nobody pays much attention to us when we move around. Nobody has done any probing for days except during the lessons.”

Lars nodded slowly. “That’s true. So what?”

“So suppose we move fast and quietly and try to get out of here.”

“Where to? Over the hills? They’d have us back the minute they missed us.”

“Not if we had a Koenig drive pushing us, they wouldn’t.”

Lars stared. “You mean steal a ship?”

“Better than that.” A flush of excitement rose in Peter’s cheeks. “Look. We know where the men are sleeping. Suppose we went down there and woke them up. Not all of them, just enough to man a ship. If we could somehow keep our minds blank enough so that nobody would pick us up beforehand, we might be able to make a break for the Ganymede and get her aloft before they could stop us.” He regarded Lars with a grin. “We wouldn’t have to be very far out to throw in the drive. And once home, we could come back here with an armada if necessary.”