He lay watching as other men came into the cage from time to time, and took bunks. Out of the habits of his training, he kept automatic count, and even though his eyes were half-closed, he knew after a while that all the other bunks had been filled. By this time there was a good deal of low-voiced conversation amongst the other occupants of the cage, and from the cages on either side of them. Hal tried to pay no attention. He made, in fact, an effort to block the voices out; and he was beginning at last to think that he might be on the verge of drifting off to sleep when his outer leg was sharply poked.
"You!" He recognized the rusty voice of the man on the lower bunk opposite and opened his eyes. "Sit up and talk for a minute. Where you from?"
"Earth," said Hal. "Old Earth." Effortfully, he pulled himself up and swung his legs over the edge to sit on the side of the bunk.
"Old Earth, is it? This is the first time you've been on Coby?"
"Yes," said Hal. Something about this conversation was wrong. There was a falseness about the other man's tone that triggered off all the alertness that Malachi had trained into him. Hal could feel his heartbeat accelerating, but he forced himself to yawn.
"How d'you like it here?"
The carver had shifted his position to the head of his bed, so that he now sat with his back braced against one of the upright posts at the end of his bunk, the darkness of the solid rock wall half a meter behind him. He continued to carve.
"I don't know. I haven't seen much of it, here," Hal said. He turned, himself, so as to face more directly the man and the end wall behind him. He did not want to make enemies in this new environment, but the feeling of uneasiness was strong, and he wished the other would come to the point of this sudden impulse to make conversation.
"Well, you've got a lot to see. A lot," said the carver. "If you've never been here before, and haven't seen much, I take it you've never been down in a mine, either."
"No," said Hal. "I haven't."
He was conscious that the conversation had died in the other bunks. The rest of the men in the cage must either be asleep, or listening. Hal felt the concentration of attention upon him. Like a wild animal, himself, or like a very young child, he was paying less attention to what the man was saying to him, than he was to how the other was saying it - the tone of voice, the way the man sat, and all the other non-verbal signals he was broadcasting.
"… you're in for something you'll never forget, first time you go down in a mine," the carver was saying. "Everybody thinks we just punch buttons down there, nowdays. Hell, no, we don't punch buttons. On Coby we don't just punch buttons. You'll see."
"What do you mean?" Hal asked.
"You'll see - " said the carver. One of the other occupants of the room, in an upper bunk near the door, unexpectedly began to whistle, and the carver raised his voice. "Most of the time you're working in a stope so tight you can't stand up in it, carving out the ore, and the heat from the rock gas your torch's boiling off as it cuts builds up until it could cook you."
"But that sort of work's easily done by machines," said Hal, remembering part of his studies. "All it needs - "
"Not on Coby," said the carver. "On Coby, you 'n me are cheaper than machines. You'll see. They hang a man here for being late to work too many times."
Hal stared at the other. He could not believe what he had just heard.
"That's right, you think about it," said the carver, whittling away. "You think all that they told you about the Judge-Advocate can't be true? Listen, he can pull your fingernails out, or anything else, to make you talk. It's legal here; and they do it just on general principles in case you've got something to tell them they don't know about, once you're arrested. Three days under arrest and I've seen a man age twenty years - "
It all happened very quickly. Later on, Hal was to guess that the uneasy animal/child part of him must have caught some slight sound that warned him; but at the time all he knew was that something made him glance around suddenly, toward the entrance end of the cage. In the instant, he saw the faces of all the other occupants looking over the edges of their bunks, watching avidly; and, almost upon him from the entrance, coming swiftly, a tall, rawboned man in his forties, with a wedge-shaped face twisted with insane fury, one of the metal mugs held high in one hand, sweeping toward the back of Hal's head.
Hal reacted as instinctively as he might have put out a hand to keep himself from falling. From a time before he could remember, he had exercised under the direction of Malachi; and his exercises had long since lost all conscious connection with the real purpose for which they had originally been designed. They were simply physical games that made him feel good, the way swimming or running did. But now, when there was no time for thought, his body responded automatically.
There was a suddenness of action; no blurring - everything very clear and very fast. He had risen, turned and caught hold of the oncoming man before he had hardly realized it himself, levering and carrying the heavy attacking body forward into the air on its own momentum, to smash against the rock wall. The man struck with a heavy, sodden sound and collapsed at the foot of the wall, to lie there without any motion whatsoever.
Again, with no conscious time lag, Hal found himself turned back and watching all the others in the cage, wire-taut, balanced and waiting. But the rest lay as they had been, motionless, some still with the avid look not yet gone from their faces. But, as he watched, it faded where it still existed, leaving them all looking at him, dull-faced and stupid with astonishment.
Hal continued to stand, motionless, where he was. He felt nothing, but he would have reacted at the slightest movement from any of them; and each of them there seemed to understand this. They breathed through open mouths without sound, watching him… and the moment stretched out, and stretched out, as some of the tension in the cage began to trickle away like sands from a broken hourglass.
Gradually, the man on the bottom bunk farthest from Hal on his right slowly put one leg out and lowered a foot to the floor, slowly followed it with the second, and gradually stood up. Carefully, he backed away until he had passed out through the door of the cage. Then he turned and walked away swiftly. Hal stayed as he was, without moving, while, one by one, the others cautiously departed in turn. He was left at last alone, with the motionless figure on the floor.
The occupants of the other cages around him were utterly silent. He looked right and left and everyone he saw was looking away from him. He turned to stare down again at the body lying huddled against the wall. For the first time it occurred to him that the man might be dead. He had been flung head-first against a stone wall - it could be that his neck had broken.
All emotion in Hal was still lost in wariness and tension, but now, gradually, his mind was beginning to work again. If the man who had attacked him was dead… Hal had only been defending himself. But if the others who had been in the cage should all testify that he had been the aggressor…
Plainly, he understood now that they all must have known that the man was coming, and that he would be likely to attack anyone using his bunk. He had been drunk, drugged or paranoid, possibly all three; and they had all been waiting for his return and probable attack on Hal. Perhaps, thought Hal emptily, they were all friends of his. Possibly they had even sent word to him that some stranger had taken his place - since obviously the carver had deliberately lied to Hal and even tried to set him up to be hit from behind, by moving so that Hal would have to turn his back to the cage entrance.