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Title: Patrol
Author: Richard H. Nelson
Release Date: July 26, 2021 [eBook #65925]
Language: English
Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PATROL ***
PATROL
By Richard H. Nelson
MacMartree knew that Man was omnipotent--Master
of the Universe. But could he expect his
patrol to fight and conquer an invisible enemy?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
October 1952
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They made their camp high on the breast of the gently swelling hill. As
the small planet turned toward the sunset, MacMartree stood a moment on
the hillside, watching. Far out on the grass-covered plain their ship
stood gleaming, a slender candle, touched by the flame of the sinking
sun. Then, quickly, the far horizon caught the sun and pulled it under,
and the gloom of night rushed in to drown the pale twilight.
"Night comes so fast here," Abner said, at MacMartree's side.
"Yes," MacMartree agreed, turning to him. "And day comes even faster.
Time for sleep now, with morning only four hours away."
"I can't get used to it," Abner said as they moved back into the camp
area. "Sleeping and waking in four hour bits!"
MacMartree laughed at that. "Abner, you're getting old. You can't adapt
anymore."
Abner laughed, too, and unrolled his sleep-kit for the night.
MacMartree walked to the place where Phillips and Cole lay on the
ground, talking casually and watching the stars.
"Time to switch on the screen, Phillips," MacMartree reminded the
younger man.
Phillips nodded, sat up and reached for the control box that lay on the
earth beside him. He closed the circuit, and the force-screen bloomed
around them, glimmering softly like a thin veil of glowing fireflies.
"Kind of useless, that, don't you think?" Cole asked.
MacMartree sat down beside them.
"It's one of the rules, and no patrol ever came to grief by following
the rules."
Phillips lay back on the turf. "No patrol ever came to grief at all,
you mean. I'm bored to death."
MacMartree smiled tolerantly. "I know. It's a quiet life."
Abner came over and joined them, completing the party. "What're you
three up to?" he wanted to know.
MacMartree yawned. "They're trying to get me to argue with them, as an
excuse for not sleeping."
"Not a bad idea, either," Cole grinned.
"You youngsters will be the death of me," MacMartree complained. "Don't
you know an old man needs his sleep?"
"Come on, Mac," Phillips teased. "Tell us why the patrols are
necessary."
* * * * *
They all laughed then, and MacMartree grinned. "I know how it is with
you young ones," he said. "You're tired of the dull and safe life back
home and joined the Service, only to find it just as dull and safe as
anything else."
"Tell me," Phillips put in, "can't anything happen to us anymore?"
"Yes," Cole said. "We can die of old age."
It didn't take much. The three young men had known it wouldn't take
much to get MacMartree started ... it seldom did.
"Youth never fails to amaze me," he said. The younger men recognized it
as a preamble, and settled themselves comfortably in the warm darkness
to listen.
"Look at you now," he went on. "You complain that your life here on
Patrol is tedious and uninteresting. Nothing ever happens, you say.
And it means nothing to you that the dangers and misfortunes you talk
of never threaten you because you have been given the power to prevent
and cope with anything."
He sat up now, warming to his subject. "You take no pride in your
heritage. Man is completely sufficient unto himself, and beyond that.
There is an old word I have found in my reading...." He paused, trying
to remember.
"Omnipotent," he said at last. "Man is omnipotent."
"All-potent?" Abner asked. "All-powerful?"
"That's right ... it's an archaic word, but it fits," MacMartree told
them. "But you don't appreciate your power, because you don't realize
what your life would be without it.
"In my books, I've read of the things our species suffered, before our
knowledge reached fulfillment. When we were bound to Earth, there were
wars; men--killed one another."
The young men shook their heads, wondering at the folly of their kind
many thousands of years before.
"And there were other things, too. As we cut ourselves loose from
Earth, and burrowed into the farthest reaches of the Galaxies, looking
for new worlds like this one, there were terrible dangers, dreadful
enemies and elements to cope with. And at first, man was foolish ...
continually meeting his enemies on their own ground. Until at last, our
wisdom prevailed.
"We devised ways and means to detect and destroy anything that
endangered us, long before the danger could be manifested. Like here,
on this planet ... but you know about that."
"Radiation, wasn't that it?" said Cole.
"Yes," MacMartree said. "The discovery ship took its readings from out
there somewhere, out where this place was only a dust mote in the glare
of its sun. They drained off the radiation, scattered it into the void,
then seeded the place with grass and went away."
"But that's what I don't understand," Phillips objected. "Why must we
patrol? When the discoverers found this planet, they destroyed the only
thing about it that could be harmful to man ... so why must we be here?"
* * * * *
MacMartree shrugged. "Caution, boy ... call it caution. We are here
to see and observe. The discoverers do not accept their readings as
infallible, though I suspect that they are. We're here on the one
chance in a hundred million that somewhere on this little world,
there's a being or an element that might bear enmity toward mankind."
Abner sighed. "And so we patrol ... for a year."
"Yes," MacMartree agreed. "For a year. And after the year, another
patrol, and another year, and so on through a hundred patrols and
years, until the place is classified safe for colonization."
"I think my species is cowardly," Cole said, a trifle hotly.
"Cautious," MacMartree corrected gently. "Only cautious. It's as it
should be ... they have set up rules of caution, and we've never
suffered for it."
"Except from boredom," Phillips cut in, and they all laughed again.
"Really though," said MacMartree, "you should be proud, not bored.
Think of it, if the sun that just rolled down the horizon should
suddenly begin to expand into a super-nova, it's within our ability
to restore it to its normal status. Should a comet sweep this planet
tonight and drag a tail of poisonous gases over us as we sleep, our
force screen would protect us, and our mechanisms and devices would
make the air sweet and clean for us in minutes. If--oh, but you know.
Appreciate your power, your ability. Be glad you are what you are!"
The young men smiled in the darkness, because, of course, they _were_
proud, and satisfied, and pleased with their own omnipotence.
MacMartree slept the sleep of the aged, curled in the clinging, billowy
warmth of his sleep-kit. It took him a minute to rouse, when Cole came
and shook him by the shoulder.
"It's Phillips," Cole was saying. "Come and see him, Mac, come and see."
"Eh?" MacMartree questioned. "What about Phillips?"
"There's something--something wrong with him. I don't know ... come and
see, Mac!"
Abner lighted the lamp, and MacMartree blinked against the glare that
flooded the area within the screen. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed
to the brilliance, he saw what was happening to Phillips.
"You see?" Cole said, in great agitation. "Something is wrong with him."
As they watched, the stricken Phillips retched and vomited again.
MacMartree's nostrils crinkled at the offensive odor of it.
"Throw a disposal over that," he directed Abner. The younger man went
to his pack and returned with the disposal unit. One of the disposal
wafers took care of the mess Phillips had made.
"What's wrong with him?" Abner asked, completely bewildered.
MacMartree searched his memory for the word. "Sick," he said at last.
"Phillips is sick."
"Sick?" Cole echoed.
"What's that?" Abner wanted to know.
"I don't know, exactly. I've only read about it, in my books. A long
time ago, men got sick, like this."
"But why?" Abner and Cole said it together.
"I don't know." He bent down over Phillips. "Are you going to do that
anymore?" he asked.
Phillips looked up at him dully. "I ... I don't think so," he said,
weakly and breathlessly.
"Lie back," MacMartree commanded. "Close your eyes. Sleep if you can.
Maybe we can help you."
* * * * *
Phillips nodded, lips bluish and tight, his whole face a ghastly pewter
hue. He put his head down, eyelids fluttered shut. MacMartree regarded
him in silence for several minutes.
"This could be what you've been wanting," he said at last to Cole and
Abner.
"Wanting?"
"Something's happening, isn't it? Something we didn't look for. Maybe
there's reason for patrols after all, eh?"
Cole frowned. "You mean...." He didn't finish it. He got up quickly,
and strode to the scanner.
"Everything's all right outside," he said, after a moment. "Everything
outside the screen is just as it was at sundown."
MacMartree shrugged. "Nothing from out there could do this to Phillips
anyway. Nothing gets through the screen."
Cole returned and squatted down with the others. He picked up a handful
of pebbles and began flicking them, one at a time, at the force-screen,
watching them bounce back into the area.
"There's an explanation for this, of course," MacMartree said, with a
tone of confidence he did not feel.
The others nodded. After a time, Phillips' breathing grew more regular
and he slept. As they watched, the rest of them saw the color creep
back into his face, and sensed that he was better now. But still, it
was a puzzling thing. Phillips had been ... what was the word?...
Sick. According to MacMartree's histories, no man had been sick for the
last thousand years.
They decided to return to their sleep-kits for the remaining hour of
darkness, but they never got there.
Rising from his position beside the sleeping Phillips, Abner's long
frame lurched suddenly forward. He sprawled at the feet of MacMartree
and Cole ... and both men heard the dull snap as Abner hit the ground,
his left arm caught beneath his body.
MacMartree cursed. "Blast it, Abner, pick up your feet!" Then to Cole:
"Is the bone-mending stuff here, or in the ship?"
Cole started to say that he had brought it along, all right, but he was
interrupted by Abner's scream.
The sound of it rasped across their nerves. They stared down at
the writhing Abner, their brains numbed by that horrible, entirely
unfamiliar sound.
"What is it?" Cole questioned, finding his voice after a moment.
MacMartree ignored him, kneeling beside Abner.
Abner's wind sucked into his lungs, and was expelled in another fearful
scream. In spite of himself, MacMartree felt a prickling along the back
of his neck....
"Abner," he said intensely, "Abner, listen to me!"
But the younger man was doubled in a knot of agony, screaming and
screaming and screaming.
* * * * *
MacMartree struck him in the face, with his open palm at first, but
when that did no good, with doubled fists, hard. Finally Abner's
screams stopped. Then MacMartree tried again.
"Listen, Abner ... can you hear me now?"
Abner's voice came twisting up, thin and quavery.
"I--hear you ... yes, I hear you...."
"Your arm, is that what makes you scream? Your arm?"
"Yes, yes," moaning now ... "yes, my arm ... I want to die ... let me
die, please Mac, please...."
"Listen to me," MacMartree commanded fiercely. "Get hold of yourself
and listen! This thing in your arm, it's a _hurt_. Your brain should
be blocking it from your consciousness, but somehow it isn't. Do you
understand me?"
"Hurt," Abner echoed. Then he began to croon it, as though there was
something soothing in the sound of it: "Hurt, hurt, hurt in my arm...."
He made a twisted little hymn of it, singing it over and over again.
"That's right," MacMartree was saying, "Your brain isn't killing the
hurt, as it should. You must _think_, Abner, think of your arm, whole
and well, and with no hurt in it. _Think!_"
But Abner only repeated that ancient, awful word: "Hurt in my arm ...
hurt, _hurt_...."
MacMartree shrugged, and looked up at Cole, who was still standing
helplessly by.
"Fetch the serum," MacMartree said. "I'll try setting the bone...." He
grasped the twisted arm as he spoke, and one, tearing, final scream
broke out of Abner's throat. Before MacMartree could react, Abner went
rigid in every limb, then as suddenly relaxed and was still.
"He's dead," Cole choked. "Abner is dead!"
MacMartree felt for the heartbeat, shook his head.
"Only unconscious. The hurt did that, I suppose." He sat back on his
haunches, thoroughly baffled. Cole sat, too, and a few yards away,
where they had left him, Phillips stirred. He rolled over on his side
and propped himself shakily on one elbow, roused by that last, ringing
shriek of Abner's.
"It isn't right," MacMartree said, to neither of them. "The hurt, that
went with sickness--a thousand years ago." He looked up at them.
"I read about these things, you see," he told them. "There was hurt,
and there was sickness. When they knew enough about the human brain,
scientists simply bred into the part of our minds that makes us aware
of hurt the power to shut it off, automatically, before we're even
conscious it exists. And as for sickness...." He looked at Phillips,
shaking his head. "They got rid of that, too, and now...."
Neither of the younger men said anything for a time. They waited,
desperately relying on the older man to help them, to bring them
through this, whatever it was, into familiar ground again. At length,
Cole spoke.
"Mac," he began softly.
MacMartree looked at him, waiting.
"Mac, I ... I feel something ... I don't know ... perhaps it's
sickness ... or hurt ... I've never known those things...." He held
forth his hands, and they were twitching and trembling.
MacMartree's teeth ground together. "Another obsolescent word I'll have
to teach you," he said to them. "It is _fear_."
He went to work on Abner's broken arm, setting it and injecting the
serum that would cause the fracture to knit in a matter of minutes.
And as he worked, he tried to drive the nagging thought from his
mind ... sickness for Phillips, hurt for Abner, fear for Cole ...
_what for MacMartree?_ He was the oldest. He was leader of the patrol.
Perhaps a little of _all_ these horrors?
To keep his mind occupied, he counted off the required minutes for
the serum to take effect. Then, when the time had passed, he gave the
injured arm an experimental twist.
It flapped loosely at the break, as before, and Abner stirred and
moaned behind the veil of his unconsciousness.
The serum had failed. _Unheard of!_
* * * * *
Straightening, MacMartree felt his particular affliction engulf him.
Anger, wild, unreasoning anger at this intangible, invisible enemy that
tormented them so. Cursing, he scooped up the vial of serum, flung
it to clatter against the shimmering force-screen. But it did not.
It passed through the curtain which was suddenly nothing more than
thinning mist ... and then not even that.
"Weapons!" MacMartree cried, his voice a hoarse bellow. "Weapons and
positions! Quickly!"
Phillips and Cole scrambled to obey. The three conscious men huddled
back to back around the body of the unconscious one. Their weapons
were small and unfamiliar in their waiting hands, and not the least
bit reassuring. They waited for whatever it was that stalked them from
beyond the ring of their glaring lamplight to come for them, battle
with them, make itself known.
"MacMartree," Phillips whispered in the throbbing stillness.
"Well? Are you sick again?"
"No, no--I just thought...."
"Yes?"
"The screen, the serum ... failing that way. What if ... the
_weapons_...."
A piece of eternity passed them by before MacMartree could make his
lips form the command.
"Test--your weapons."
Nothing.
Tentatively, fearfully, the three squeezed the metal in their icy
hands. _Nothing._ No rush of power, no leaping death to meet their
adversary when it came. Their weapons, too, had failed them.
Behind him, MacMartree heard the racking sobs begin in Cole. He did
not recognize them as sobs, but he sensed their meaning, and knew, of
course, what caused them.
He also heard Phillips scramble to his feet, his wind sucking in and
out of his throat in short, gasping shudders. He waited for Phillips
to break and run into the darkness, fleeing in blind panic for the
distant sanctuary of the ship on the plain below. But the darkness that
surrounded them stared Phillips down, sent him grovelling back to the
earth, a whipped and whimpering cur.
And then, MacMartree was alone. He had never felt so lonely in his life
before. The three younger men were there, of course, but they, too,
were lost in voids of aloneness. He envied the unconscious Abner, until
he felt Abner stir slightly on the ground behind him, and then go tense
with waking. So they were all to meet it, and be aware when it came.
But, such _loneliness_! Such a need he felt, for something to hold to,
to reach for, to depend on. Another of their weapons? He knew better.
There had to be something, there had to be. But what? Beaten,
vanquished, he covered his face with his hands, and waited.
The little planet rolled steadily toward the sunrise, the cold stars
glided above them. Quietly, the dawn breeze simpered among the grasses.
Quite slowly, MacMartree raised his head.
"Abner, Phillips, Cole...." They didn't answer, but he knew they heard
him, and were listening, within their individual worlds of aching
loneliness and fear.
"I ... I know what our Enemy is," MacMartree said.
They came a little closer to him then, venturing out of themselves a
fraction to hear what he said.
"Our Enemy," MacMartree told them, "is God."
* * * * *
After a pause, the inevitable question came. Phillips voiced it for the
rest.
"What is--God?"
MacMartree shook his head. "A myth--a legend--I thought. There were so
many things in all those ancient books I read ... how was I to know?"
"This is something you read, too?"
"Yes, in a very old book. In many of them, actually, but one in
particular. A book called--" the name eluded him. He let it go. "God
was a deity. People worshipped Him, thousands of years ago."
Cole had stopped his crying.
"The book was written as the Word of God. I--I remember a part of
it...."
"Tell us," dully, from Abner.
"'I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.' I think that explains it best."
He sighed. "It's my fault, I suppose. Man is omnipotent, I said. Man is
all-powerful. Man can do _anything_! Yes, it was enough to rouse the
anger of a jealous God."
"Is He going to kill us, then?"
"I don't know, Phillips. He could have, long before this...."
"How can we fight Him," Cole whispered. "How?"
"We can't," the old man said. "God is the only omnipotent One. We are
not." He got to his feet, came around to face them.
"One thing we can do."
"What?" they wanted to know. "What can we do?"
"We can try to--talk to Him."
The grassy world sped softly toward its dawning. Beyond the hill that
rose above them, lean fingers of light came creeping from the lifting
sun. It seemed to come in answer to those stumbling, clumsy, fervent
prayers--the first prayers that had touched the lips of men in a
thousand years.
Lost in concentration, MacMartree felt the sweet breath of the sun's
first warmth upon his back. He opened his eyes, found them dimmed
somehow, and a wetness on his cheeks.
Wonderingly, they looked at one another, awed by what they read upon
each other's faces.
"I forgot," MacMartree said softly. "I forgot that He is also
merciful...."
Abner slowly raised his arm.
"It's healed," he said.
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