Two sounds answered him in the silence: the drone of the generator and the beating of Galt’s heart.
“The mixed series!” ordered Ferris, waving one finger at the mechanic.
The shocks now came at irregular, unpredictable intervals, one after another or minutes apart. Only the shuddering convulsions of Galt’s legs, arms, torso or entire body showed whether the current was racing between two particular electrodes or through all of them at once. The needles on the dials kept coming close to the red marks, then receding: the machine was calculated to inflict the maximum intensity of pain without damaging the body of the victim.
It was the watchers who found it unbearable to wait through the minutes of the pauses filled with the sound of the heartbeat: the heart was now racing in an irregular rhythm. The pauses were calculated to let that beat slow down, but allow no relief to the victim, who had to wait for a shock at any moment.
Galt lay relaxed, as if not attempting to fight the pain, but surrendering to it, not attempting to negate it, but to bear it. When his lips parted for breath and a sudden jolt slammed them tight again, he did not resist the shaking rigidity of his body, but he let it vanish the instant the current left him. Only the skin of his face was pulled tight, and the sealed line of his lips twisted sidewise once in a while. When a shock raced through his chest, the gold- copper strands of his hair flew with the jerking of his head, as if waving in a gust of wind, beating against his face, across his eyes. The watchers wondered why his hair seemed to be growing darker, until they realized that it was drenched in sweat.
The terror of hearing one’s own heart struggling as if about to burst at any moment, had been intended to be felt by the victim. It was the torturers who were trembling with terror, as they listened to the jagged, broken rhythm and missed a breath with every missing beat. It sounded now as if the heart were leaping, beating frantically against its cage of ribs, in agony and in a desperate anger. The heart was protesting; the man would not. He lay still, his eyes closed, his hands relaxed, hearing his heart as it fought for his life.
Wesley Mouch was first to break. “Oh God, Floyd!” he screamed.
“Don’t kill him! Don’t dare kill him! If he dies, we die!”
“He won’t,” snarled Ferris. “He’ll wish he did, but he won’t! The machine won’t let him! It’s mathematically computed! It’s safe!”
“Oh, isn’t it enough? He’ll obey us now! I’m sure he’ll obey!”
“No! It’s not enough! I don’t want him to obey! I want him to believe! To accept! To want to accept! We’ve got to have him work for us voluntarily!”
“Go ahead!” cried Taggart. “What are you waiting for? Can’t you make the current stronger? He hasn’t even screamed yet!”
“What’s the matter with you?” gasped Mouch, catching a glimpse of Taggart’s face while a current was twisting Galt’s body: Taggart was staring at it intently, yet his eyes seemed glazed and dead, but around that inanimate stare the muscles of his face were pulled into an obscene caricature of enjoyment.
“Had enough?” Ferris kept yelling to Galt. “Are you ready to want what we want?”
They heard no answer. Galt raised his head once in a while and looked at them. There were dark rings under his eyes, but the eyes were clear and conscious.
In mounting panic, the watchers lost their sense of context and language—and their three voices blended into a progression of indiscriminate shrieks: “We want you to take over!... We want you to rule!
... We order you to give orders!... We demand that you dictate!
... We order you to save us!... We order you to think!...”
They heard no answer but the beating of the heart on which their own lives depended.
The current was shooting through Galt’s chest and the beating was coming in irregular spurts, as if it were racing and stumbling—when suddenly his body fell still, relaxing: the beating had stopped.
The silence was like a stunning blow, and before they had time to scream, their horror was topped by another: by the fact that Galt opened his eyes and raised his head.
Then they realized that the drone of the motor had ceased, too, and that the red light had gone out on the control panel: the current had stopped; the generator was dead.
The mechanic was jabbing his ringer at the button, to no avail. He yanked the lever of the switch again and again. He kicked the side of the machine. The red light would not go on; the sound did not return.
“Well?” snapped Ferris. “Well? What’s the matter?”
“The generator’s on the blink,” said the mechanic helplessly.
“What’s the matter with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, find out and fix it!”
The man was not a trained electrician; he had been chosen, not for his knowledge, but for his uncritical capacity for pushing any buttons; the effort he needed to learn his task was such that his consciousness could be relied upon to have no room for anything else. He opened the rear panel of the machine and stared in bewilderment at the intricate coils: he could find nothing visibly out of order. He put on his rubber gloves, picked up a pair of pliers, tightened a few bolts at random, and scratched his head.
“I don’t know,” he said; his voice had a sound of helpless docility.
“Who am I to know?”
The three men were on their feet, crowding behind the machine to stare at its recalcitrant organs. They were acting merely by reflex: they knew that they did not know.
“But you’ve got to fix it!” yelled Ferris. “It’s got to work! We’ve got to have electricity!”
“We must continue!” cried Taggart; he was shaking, “It’s ridiculous!
I won’t have it! I won’t be interrupted! I won’t let him off!” He pointed in the direction of the mattress.
“Do something!” Ferris was crying to the mechanic. “Don’t just stand there! Do something! Fix it! I order you to fix it!”
“But I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” said the man, blinking.
“Then find out!”
“How am I to find out?”
“I order you to fix it! Do you hear me? Make it work—or I’ll fire you and throw you in jail!”
“But I don’t know what’s wrong with it.” The man sighed, bewildered. “I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s the vibrator that’s out of order,” said a voice behind them; they whirled around; Galt was struggling for breath, but he was speaking in the brusque, competent tone of an engineer. “Take it out and pry off the aluminum cover. You’ll find a pair of contacts fused together. Force them apart, take a small file and clean up the pitted surfaces. Then replace the cover, plug it back into the machine—and your generator will work.”
There was a long moment of total silence.
The mechanic was staring at Galt; he was holding Galt’s glance—and even he was able to recognize the nature of the sparkle in the dark green eyes; it was a sparkle of contemptuous mockery.
He made a step back. In the incoherent dimness of his consciousness, in some wordless, shapeless, unintelligible manner, even he suddenly grasped the meaning of what was occurring in that cellar.
He looked at Galt—he looked at the three men—he looked at the machine. He shuddered, he dropped his pliers and ran out of the room.
Galt burst out laughing.
The three men were backing slowly away from the machine. They were struggling not to allow themselves to understand what the mechanic had understood.
“No!” cried Taggart suddenly, glancing at Galt and leaping forward, “No! I won’t let him get away with it!” He fell down on his knees, groping frantically to find the aluminum cylinder of the vibrator.
“I’ll fix it! I’ll work it myself! We’ve got to go on! We’ve got to break him!”
“Take it easy, Jim,” said Ferris uneasily, jerking him up to his feet.
“Hadn’t we... hadn’t we better lay off for the night?” said Mouch pleadingly; he was looking at the door through which the mechanic had escaped, his glance part-envy, part-terror.
“No!” cried Taggart, “Jim, hasn’t he had enough? Don’t forget, we have to be careful.”
“No! He hasn’t had enough! He hasn’t even screamed yet!”
“Jim!” cried Mouch suddenly, terrified by something in Taggart’s face. “We can’t afford to kill him! You know it!”
“I don’t care! I want to break him! I want to hear him scream! I want—”
