Quick, hopeful hubbub; then Fung Bohsien himself heavily, "One of my eyes perhaps opened just a bit. Probably someone lifted the lid; it is nothing."
"I do not altogether agree, Comrade Fung," said Shum diffidently. "It is very much, I think. It implies that our perceptual systems are not destroyed. That has implications, I believe."
"Say what those implications are!" barked Angorak.
"Why, that we are paralyzed, yes, but not in coma."
"Of course we are not in coma! We are speaking to each other, are we not? Oh, Shum, what a fool you are! You see hope in what is the worst truth of all—that we are not dead, nor even in terminal coma, but condemned to be awake in this prison forever!"
"Shut up, Angorak," said Fung roughly. "Shum is right. Listen! Everyone! If we can do nothing but think, at least let us think logically." He paused the microsecond that amounted to a meaningful delay in their lightning exchanges to see if there was any dispute. There was none.
"Very well, then. Let us see what we know. First, we have suffered a cerebrovascular incident. Does anyone doubt this?" There was no doubt, only murmurs. Dejected murmurs. "Second, it is not overwhelmingly serious, for as Shum has said, we are at least able to communicate with one another—many of us are, at least," he qualified. Again there was no dispute. "Third, it is true, I believe, that we saw a flicker of light some full seconds, perhaps minutes, ago." Concurrence to that. "The question then," finished Manyface, "is whether we can exercise any motor control over any part of our body. Has anyone felt kinesthesia?" Doubtful denials, except for Potter Alicia's even more doubtful possible yes. "Shall we try to effect some muscular movements?" More confident yes—not confident, exactly, perhaps, but certainly more affirmative. "Then the eye," instructed Fung to his cohort. "Let us see if without bickering among ourselves or wasting energy in panic we can perhaps open one eye. Shall we do that? All right then; let us try!"
"I can't," whimpered Su Wonmu, but was at once drowned out by all the surviving fragments: You can! You really can. No, probably you can't, you pompous fool, but at least be still so the rest of us can try! And try they did—over and over—endlessly, repeatedly, in that faster-than-life time that they shared inside Manyface's great skull.
They did not succeed.
"Try something else," suggested Shum, almost panting with effort—if a fragment of brain tissue could pant. "Try speaking, please. Try to warn the others—"
And try that they did, with no more success. With certainly far less success, in fact, for the warring scraps of tissue could not agree on what it was they should say; and the eons that were hours wore on, until—
"What was that?" gasped Potter Alicia. "Oh, Fung! Have we died?"
It was not Fung who answered but Angorak, roughly. He had felt the same queer thrill in the tired sensors of Fung Bohsien's old body, but recognized it faster. "We haven't died, foolish woman!" he bellowed. "We would not be speaking if we had! We have gone through the spaceway, that is all—and, oh, comrades, are we too late? Is the issue already decided while we are trapped here?"
Was the issue decided? It was not only the clumps of cells in Manyface's brain that wondered. Tsoong Delilah wondered, too, and so did Castor, and even Miranda and Jupiter were nervous and irritable under unidentified strains of feeling. The spaceway had caught them all as unaware as Manyface. Delilah's first impulse was to slide as inconspicuously as she could back to the pilot's place. Miranda had been bending over the old man's unre-sponding head, staring hard as she pillowed the great mass in her lap. "I could have sworn I saw his eyelid move," she offered, "but then there was nothing—"
And then she had frozen, as the strange, slipping feeling came over them all. "We're through!" she gasped. From the controls Delilah confirmed,
"Yes, a successful transit. Look—" And the screen that had flickered to static now lit itself again with a picture of Earth and the Moon peeping bright from behind it.
Jupiter said joyfully, "Then the plan is working! And I don't have to bother with this old man anymore." He let go of the electrodes, flexing his fingers. Surprised again at the looks he got, he said defensively, "Well, after all, we've lost direct contact, haven't we?"
"What a sod you are," said Miranda in disgust, but then she forgot about Jupiter. The eyes opened again. "He's awake!" she cried. "I—I think he's trying to talk."
"That's good," said Jupiter eagerly, generosity sparked by the promise that they wouldn't have to live with spoiling meat for the next days.
"Shut up!" she ordered, bending her head close to Manyface's lips. "What?" she whispered, and the faint breath of voice tried again:
"Don't..." it said—was that what it said?—and stopped.
"Yes, yes?" Miranda encouraged. "Don't what, Fung?"
"Don't... let... the... erks... destroy... the... Earth."
"What?" she asked, incredulous. It was a pointless thing to say; the old man hardly had the strength to go through that again. "He said, 'Don't let the erks destroy the Earth,'" she repeated for the others, then bent back to Manyface. Worriedly she said, "Oh, but they won't, Fung. I mean, I know you're a patriotic Han and all that, and maybe there'll be some damage to China—but all they want to do really is free America."
The eyes stared at her mournfully. The lips moved again, but no sound came out.
She said sorrowfully, "You're wearing yourself out for nothing, Fung. Don't try to talk. I promise it will be all right—"
The tongue reached out to lick the dry lips. Then, faint as breath itself, one more word: "Please."
She shook her head, then looked up, startled, as she felt a sidewise thrust. She called to Delilah: "What are you doing?"
"Course correction," said Delilah briefly, eyes locked to the controls, fingers busy. There was something strange about the way she held herself. It was strange, too, that Castor, who had been intent on listening to Manyface, began idly to move between Jupiter and Delilah, his eyes fixed on the other man as though expecting something— "What is going on?" Miranda demanded; and, belatedly, Jupiter came to, dived for his bag, came up with a stun weapon pointed at Delilah.
"Treason!" he shouted. "Stop there, Tsoong! Don't touch anything else!" Delilah froze. Stun weapons didn't kill, but no one wanted the vicious pins-and-needles agony of recovering from a shot—not to mention that while stunned she could hope to do nothing to save her world. Castor froze, too, for the same reasons, multiplied by the fact that he was closer. Even Miranda froze, mouth open in an uncomprehending gape, and that drove Jupiter to fury. "Why are you sisters so stupid?" he demanded. "Can't you see what they were doing? You were right; they are out to betray us!"
"But, Jupiter," she began reasonably, a beginning for a sentence for which she had no clear ending in mind.
"Don't argue! Let go of that stupid old man! Take Delilah's place at the controls." She could not move. "Now!" he shouted angrily. "She was going to destroy the spaceway ship! Push her away! Save America!"
VI
Save America. Well, there was a clear-cut directive. The words moved Miranda out of the reflexes of all her life. She felt nothing, understood nothing; she was numb, but she heard the call to action. She gently lowered old Manyface's head to its cocoon and moved toward the control couches, always careful not to get between Jupiter's gun and Tsoong Delilah. "Excuse me, please," she said absently to the older woman, and didn't even notice Delilah's look of surprise. Miranda wasn't looking at her. She was looking over the pilot board, where the display screen was showing the blue-white marble with its soiled aspirin-tablet companion. "Jupiter? What did he mean about the erks destroying the Earth?" she asked, gazing at the planet.