of the lounge. He looked frightened. Sue was moaning and thrashing, paying no attention to his efforts.
Steve pushed through to her. “All the metal is heating up,” Davis shouted. “We’ve got to get her hearing aid out.”
“Infirmary,” Sue shouted.
Four of them took Sue down the hall to the infirmary. She was still crying and struggling feebly when they got her in, but Jim was there ahead of them with a spray hypo. He used it and she went to sleep.
The four watched anxiously as Jim went to work. The autodoc would have taken precious time for diagnosis. Jim operated by hand. He was able to do a fast job, for the tiny instrument was buried just below the skin behind her ear. Still, the scalpel must have burned his fingers before he was done. Steve could feel the growing warmth against the soles of his feet.
Did the aliens know what they were doing?
Did it matter? The ship was being attacked. His ship.
Steve slipped into the corridor and ran for the control room. Running on magnetic soles, he looked like a terrified penguin, but he moved fast. He knew he might be making a terrible mistake; the aliens might be trying desperately to reach the
The shoes burned his feet. He whimpered with the pain, but otherwise ignored it. The air burned in his mouth and throat. Even his teeth were hot.
He had to wrap his shirt around his hands to open the control-room door. The pain in his feet was unbearable; he tore off his sandals and swam to the control board. He kept his shirt over his hands to work the controls. A twist of a large white knob turned the drive on full, and he slipped into the pilot seat before the gentle light pressure could build up.
He turned to the rear-view telescope. It was aimed at the solar system, for the drive could be used for messages at this distance. He set it for short range and began to turn the ship.
The enemy ship glowed in the high infrared.
“It will take longer to heat the crew-carrying section,” reported the Alien Technologies Officer. “They’ll have temperature control there.”
“That’s all right. When you think they should all be dead, wake up the Telepath and have him check.” The Captain continued to brush his fur, killing time. “You know, if they hadn’t been so completely helpless I wouldn’t have tried this slow method. I’d have cut the ring free of the motor section first. Maybe I should have done that anyway. Safer.”
The A-T Officer wanted all the credit he could get. “Sir, they couldn’t have any big weapons. There isn’t room. With a reaction drive, the motor and the fuel tanks take up most of the available space.”
The other ship began to turn away from its tormentor. Its drive end glowed red.
“They’re trying to get away,” the Captain said, as the glowing end swung toward them. “Are you sure they can’t?”
“Yes, sir. That light drive won’t take them anywhere.”
The Captain purred thoughtfully. “What would happen if the light hit our ship?”
“Just a bright light, I think. The lens is flat, so it must be emitting a very wide beam. They’d need a parabolic reflector to be dangerous. Unless—” His ears went straight up.
“Unless what?” The Captain spoke softly, demandingly.
“A laser. But that’s all right, sir. They don’t have any weapons.”
The Captain sprang at the control board. “Stupid!” he spat. “They don’t know weapons from sthondat blood. Weapons Officer! How could a telepath find out what they don’t know? WEAPONS OFFICER!”
“Here, sir.”
“Burn—”
An awful light shone in the control dome. The Captain burst into flame, then blew out as the air left through a glowing split in the dome.
Steve was lying on his back. The ship was spinning again, pressing him into what felt like his own bunk.
He opened his eyes.
Jim Davis crossed the room and stood over him. “You awake?”
Steve sat bolt upright, his eyes wide.
“Easy.” Jim’s gray eyes were concerned.
Steve blinked up at him. “What happened?” he asked, and discovered how hoarse he was.
Jim sat down in one of the chairs. “You tell me. We tried to get to the control room when the ship started moving. Why didn’t you ring the strap-down? You turned off the drive just as Ann came through the door. Then you fainted.”
“How about the other ship?” Steve tried to repress the urgency in his voice, and couldn’t.
“Some of the others are over there now, examining the wreckage.” Steve felt his heart stop. “I guess I was afraid from the start that alien ship was dangerous. I’m more psychist than emdee, and I qualified for history class, so maybe I know more than is good for me about human nature. Too much to think that beings with space travel will automatically be peaceful. I tried to think so, but they aren’t. They’ve got things any self-respecting human being would be ashamed to have nightmares about. Bomb missiles, fusion bombs, lasers, that induction injector they used on us. And antimissiles. You know what that means? They’ve got enemies like themselves, Steve. Maybe nearby.”
“So I killed them.” The room seemed to swoop around him, but his voice came out miraculously steady.
“You saved the ship.”
“It was an accident. I was trying to get us away.”
“No, you weren’t.” Davis’ accusation was as casual as if he were describing the chemical makeup of urea. “That ship was four hundred miles away. You would have had to sight on it with a telescope to hit it. You knew what you were doing, too, because you turned off the drive as soon as you’d burned through the ship.”
Steve’s back muscles would no longer support him. He flopped back to horizontal. “All right, you know,” he told the ceiling. “Do the others?”
“I doubt it. Killing in self-defense is too far outside their experience. I think Sue’s guessed.”
“Oooo.”
“If she has, she’s taking it well,” Davis said briskly. “Better than most of them will, when they find out the universe is full of warriors. This is the end of the world, Steve.”
“What?”
“I’m being theatrical. But it is. Three hundred years of the peaceful life for everyone. They’ll call it the Golden Age. No starvation, no war, no physical sickness other than senescence, no permanent mental sickness at all, even by our rigid standards. When someone over fourteen tries to use his fist on someone else we say he’s sick, and we cure him. And now it’s over. Peace isn’t a stable condition, not for us. Maybe not for anything that lives.”
“Can I see the ship from here?”
“Yes. It’s just behind us.”
Steve rolled out of bed, went to the window.
Someone had steered the ships much closer together. The Kzinti ship was a huge red sphere with ugly projections scattered at seeming random over the hull. The beam had sliced it into two unequal halves, sliced it like an ax through an egg. Steve watched, unable to turn aside, as the big half rotated to show its honeycombed interior.
“In a little while,” said Jim, “the men will be coming back. They’ll be frightened. Someone will probably insist that we arm ourselves against the next attacks, using weapons from the other ship. I’ll have to agree with him.
“Maybe they’ll think I’m sick myself. Maybe I am. But it’s the kind of sickness we’ll need.” Jim looked desperately unhappy. “We’re going to become an armed society. And of course we’ll have to warn the
