John swore. "You can"t ask an insane sister what she wants!"
"Insane? Don"t use that word!"
"Insane she is," John said, bluntly. "For honesty"s sake, call a spade a spade. There was no question of asking her to come on this trip. We simply had to make her do it, that"s all."
Listening to them talk, Lisabeth"s white fingers trembled on the caged room wall. They were like voices from some warm dream, far away, on a telephone, talking in another language.
"The sooner we get her there and settled on Asteroid Thirty-six, the sooner I can get back to New York," the man was saying in this incomprehensible telephone talk she was eavesdropping on. "After all, when you have a woman thinking she"s Catherine the Great-"
"I am, I am, I am!" screamed Lisabeth out of her window into their midst. "I am Catherine!" It was as if she had shot a lightning bolt into the room. The three people almost flew apart. Now Lisabeth raved and cried and clung drunkenly to the cell bars and shouted out her belief in herself. "I am, oh, I am!" she sobbed.
"Good heavens," said Alice.
"Oh, Lisabeth!"
The man, with a look of startled concern, came to the window and looked in with the false understanding of a person looking down upon a wounded rabbit. "Lisabeth we"re sorry. We understand. You are Catherine, Lisabeth."
"Then call me Catherine!" screamed the wild thing in the room.
"Of course, Catherine," insisted the man, swiftly. "Catherine, your Highness, we await your commands."
This only made the pale thing writhing against the door the wilder. "You don"t believe, you don"t really believe. I can tell by your awful faces, I can tell by your eyes and your mouths. Oh, you don"t really believe. I want to kill you!" She blazed her hatred out at them so the man fell away from the door. "You"re lying, and I know it"s a lie. But I am Catherine and you"ll never in all your years understand!"
"No," said the man, turning. He went and sat down and put his hands to his face. "I guess we don"t understand."
"Good grief," said Alice.
Lisabeth slipped to the red velvet floor and lay there, sobbing away her great unhappiness. The room moved on in s.p.a.ce, the voices outside the room murmured and argued and talked on and on through the next half hour.
They placed a food tray inside her door an hour later. It was a simple tray with simple bowls of cereal and milk and hot buns on it. Lisabeth did not move from where she lay. There was one regal thing in the room-this red velvet on which she sprawled in silent rebellion. She would not eat their nasty food for it was most probably poisoned. And it did not come in monogrammed dishes with monogrammed napkins on a regally monogrammed tray for Catherine, Empress of All the Russias! Therefore she would not eat.
"Catherine! Eat your food, Catherine."
Lisabeth said nothing. They could go on insisting. She wanted only to die now. n.o.body understood. There was an evil plan to oust her from her throne. These dark, wicked people were part of the plan.
The voices murmured again.
"I have important business in New York, too, just as important as yours. Alice," said the man. "The Amus.e.m.e.nt Park for one; those rides have to be installed next week, and the gambling equipment I bought in Reno, that has to be shipped East by next Sat.u.r.day. If I"m not there to do it, who"ll attend to the job?"
Murmur, murmur, dream soft, listen, far away voices.
Alice said, "Here it is autumn and the big fashion show tomorrow and here I am going off in s.p.a.ce to some ridiculous planet for heaven knows what reason. I don"t see why one of us couldn"t have committed her."
"We"re her brother and sisters, that"s why," the man snapped.
"Well, now that we"re talking about it, I don"t understand it all. About Lisabeth and where we"re taking her. What is this Asteroid Thirty-six?"
"A civilization."
"It"s an insane asylum, I thought."
"Nonsense, it"s not." He struck a cigarette into fire, puffing. "We discovered, a century ago, that the asteroids were inhabited, inside. They"re really a series of small planets, inside of which people breathe and walk around."
"And they"ll cure Lisabeth?"
"No, they won"t cure her at all."
"Then, why are we taking her there?" Helen was mixing a drink with a brisk shaking of her hands, the ice rattling in the container. She poured and drank. "Why?"
"Because she will be happy there, because it will be the environment for her."
"Won"t she ever come back to Earth?"
"Never."
"But how silly. I thought she"d be cured and come home."
He crushed out one cigarette, snapped another into light, smoked it hungrily, lines under his eyes, his hands trembling.
"Don"t ask questions. I"ve got some radioing to do back to New York." He walked across the cabin and fussed with some equipment. There was a buzzing and a bell sound. He shouted, "h.e.l.lo, New York! Hang it. Get me through to Sam Norman on Eighth Avenue, Apartment C." He waited. Finally. "h.e.l.lo, Sam. My, but that was a slow connection. Look, Sam, about that equipment-What equipment? The gambling equipment, where"s your brain!"
"While you have the contact through to Earth-" said Helen.
"What? Sam-What?" He turned to glare at Helen.
"While you"ve the contact through," said Helen, holding his elbow urgently, "let me call my beauty operator, I want an appointment for Monday. My hair"s a mess."
"I"m trying to talk to Sam Norman," John objected. To Sam he said. "What did you say?" To Helen: "Go away."
"But I want to talk-"
"You can when I"m finished!" He talked with Sam for five minutes, very loud, and then hung up.
"Oh." Helen gasped.
"I"m sorry," he said, tiredly. "Call Earth back yourself and get your fool hairdresser." He lighted another cigarette while she dialed and called into the speaker.
He looked at Alice who was emptying her fourth c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s. "Alice, you know, Lisabeth"s not really insane."
Helen, who was calling Earth, said "Shh!" then turned to her brother blankly. "Not insane?" To the s.p.a.ce phone: "Hold on a minute, there." To her brother: "What do you mean, not insane?"
"It"s relative. She is insane to us. She wants to be Catherine of Russia. That"s illogical, to us. To her it is logical in the extreme. We are now taking her to a planet where it will be logic itself."
He got up, walked to the door and looked in at the lovely pale rec.u.mbent Catherine the Great. He put his hand to the bars, the cigarette tremoring out nervous smoke. He spoke quietly: "Some times, I envy her. I"ll envy her even more every hour. She"ll stay and be happy. And we? We"ll go back, back to New York, back to big roulettes and big dice." He looked at Helen. "Back to hairdressers and men." He looked at Alice, "Back to c.o.c.ktails and straight gin."
"I don"t like insults," cried Alice.
"I wasn"t insulting anybody," he replied.
"Just a moment!" said Helen. "New York?"
John sat wearily down. "Anyway, it"s all relative. These asteroids are amazing places; all kinds of cultures. You know that."
Lisabeth leaned against the cell door which swayed ever so quietly outward. It was unlocked. Her gaze dropped to the catch and her eyes widened. Escape. These talking fools, who didn"t understand, were trying to kill her. She might run out of the cell quickly, across the room and into the other little room, where there were all kinds of weird mechanisms. If she managed to reach that room, she could smash and tangle wires and boxes with her hands!
"I don"t even know what insanity is," said Alice, far away.
"It"s a rebellion. Against the mores or ethical setup in a society. That"s what it is," said the man.
Lisabeth opened the door slowly, gathering herself.
Helen was still on the phone, her back turned.
Lisabeth ran, laughing. The three people looked up and cried out as she darted by them. She was across the room and into the automatic pilot room in an instant, lightly. There was a hammer and she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, shouting against all of them, and crashed it down upon the wires and the mechanisms. There were explosions, dancing lights, the shuddering of the ship in s.p.a.ce, a revolving, a flying free. The man rushed into the room as she hammered and rehammered the controls into dented ma.s.ses of fusing metal!
"Lisabeth!" a woman screamed.
"Lisabeth!" The man struck at her, missed, then struck again. The hammer flew from her fingers. She collapsed into dizziness. In the darkness, in the pain, she felt him groping with the controls, trying to make amends.
He was babbling hysterically.
"Ah! The control!"
Alice and Helen were swaying against the wildly rocking walls of the ship. Gravity suddenly went insane and shot them against the ceiling.
"Down!" cried the man. "Strap yourselves. We"re crashing! There"s a planetoid!"
A dark shape ran up onto the port of the ship, black and swift. The two women were sobbing hysterically, calling out to him to do something.
"Shut up, shut up, and let me think!" he cried. He did something with a control, the ship righted itself.
"We"ll be killed, we"ll be killed!" wailed the sisters. "No, no," he said, and before the planetoid loomed too close he threw his whole body against the one metal rod that was stuck and would not give. But it gave now, with a shudder of grating metal, as he fell forward.
The ship blacked out, something hit, struck, twisted, turning, shook them around. Lisabeth felt herself lifted, whirled, and brought down with stunning force upon the floor. That was all. She remembered no more. . . .
A voice was saying, "Where are we, where are we-where?"
Dimly, Lisabeth heard the voice. There was a smell of alien atmosphere. Words came in over a m.u.f.fled phone: "Planetoid One-Oh-One. Planetoid One-Oh-One. Calling crashed ship Earth Two! Crash ship Earth Two! Can you give us a bearing on you? We"ll try to send a rescue craft along."
"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, Planetoid One-Oh-One, Radio." Lisabeth opened her eyes. John and the two women were huddled about the radio set, working it in the dim light. Through the port she could see the bleak and cold asteroid plain.
"You"d better try to get up from there," said the radio voice. "That"s bad territory you"re in."
"What does he mean?" asked Alice, leaning down over the man.
"This is killing land."
"Killing?"
"Killers, from Earth. Insane killers. Brought here. Dropped off to spend the rest of their lives, killing. They"re happy that way."
"You"re-you"re joking."
"Oh, am I?"
The radio voice said. "We"ll run through as soon as possible. Don"t go outside, whatever you do. There"s an atmosphere, yes, but there"s likely to be some of the Inmates, too."
Alice ran to the port. "John!" She pointed down. "Down there! There are some men out there now!"
Helen seized John"s arm. "Get us out of here, get us out of here!"
"They can"t hurt us. Let go of me, for Pete"s sake! They can"t get inside." John stood staring moodily out the port.
Lisabeth lay easily, luxuriating in the nearness of death. Outside the ship. Killing Land. Killers. Her men, of course. Catherine of Russia"s bodyguard! Come to rescue her!
She arose. Silently she tiptoed across the room. The man and the two women still stared fascinated out the port. They did not hear her. What would it be like to go below, to open the air lock wide to the terrible killers outside? Wouldn"t that be fine? Let them in to kill, to destroy, to annihilate her captors! How wonderful, how simple.
Where was the air lock? Below somewhere. She was out of the room with no sound. She slipped through the lounge on the soft blue carpeting, came to the spiral ladder and descended it, smiling quietly to herself. She reached the lower deck. The air lock stood shining there.
She stabbed her hands at all kinds of red b.u.t.tons, trying to find the one that yanked the lock open.
Above, she heard a frantic, surprised voice: "Where"s Lisabeth?"
"Below!" Feet began running. "Lisabeth!"
"Quick!" cried Lisabeth to her hands. "Quick!"
Click! A hiss. The air lock groaned open.
Behind her, on the ladder, John leaped down. "Lisabeth!"
The lock was open. The smell of an alien world came in.
The men who had been waiting outside rushed forward, silently. They filled the lock, ten, twelve of them! They were pale and thin and trembling.
Lisabeth smiled, jerking her hand at John and crying out to the alien men. "This man held me prisoner!" she said. "Kill him!"
The alien men seemed stupefied. They stood. Their full eyes only gazed at Lisabeth and John.
"No," one of them said, at last, as John waited for them to rush forward in the silent room. "No," the alien man said, dully. "We do not kill. We are the ones who are killed. We die. We wish to die. We do not care to live anymore, ever."
There was a silence.
"You heard what I said!" cried Lisabeth.
"No," the men replied. They stood, swaying in the silence.
John fell back against a wall, sighing. Then, after a time he began to laugh with exhausted moves of his body. "Ah-ha! I see. I see!"