“You can’t count on the men being able to kill unless they are taught to kill. An early figure given was on the order of sixty per cent who never fired directly at the enemy… The enemy is always the objective, never a man, or a group of men, or a town of people. It’s a platoon, or the target, or the objective. You can shoot anything at an objective. An objective doesn’t die, it is merely met and taken. You don’t hate the enemy, men. You can’t afford to hate the enemy because hatred involves the emotions and a man with emotions driving him is not a man to be trusted in war. You all measured up; those who didn’t measure up were mustered out of the army.”
He heard the words as if from a great distance, unaware that he was saying them. How do I know they all measured up? he asked, questioning the voice that seemed so unrelated to him.
Because they’ve all been to Tarbo.
He dropped a rock and stood still for a long time, and he was not seeing the glaring red world of rocks and desert, but the soft misty forests of Tarbo, and he saw all of it. That was where they were sorted. Those who could and did kill from those who couldn’t or didn’t. Some were assigned to the Fleet. Some of them never left Tarbo. He saw again the smoking revolver in Brunce’s hand, saw the spreading blood on Gene Connor’s shoulder, in the back. Fishing in stocked waters, Gene had said. He had guessed. Those who knew the truth about Tarbo didn’t leave it.
A gust of wind drove a handful of sand against Trace’s face mask and he jerked. He shook his head hard and pulled away from the wall of the passage that was supporting him. He didn’t know how long he had been leaning against it. He could see into the valley; it was striped black and white with phantom sand figures rising, swirling, falling. Without looking at the wall he had been building, he left the passage and crossed the valley floor, his head bowed against the driving sand and wind, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He knew the heat and wind and sand were beating him after all. He didn’t care any longer. Inside his dinghy he pulled off his suit and fell down on the seat-bed. There was no water. He could not even take any more of the anti-fever capsules. He could only wait, and hope for sleep.
You’re army, Trace. Forget her.
“Shut up, Duncan! I wanted you to stay with me and you wouldn’t, now just shut up!”
We need the reinforcement of others of our own kind, trained men as we have been trained, murderers, just as we are murderers. Or else we might start to think. Can’t have that, old man. Just do, never think. Who said that? His father? He stared wildly about the dinghy. What was his father doing in it? He hadn’t seen him since… when? He didn’t know. Seventh birthday? Sixth? A convenience, dear, that’s all.
They were gone. He turned to the other seat-bed and said in his croaking voice, “I tried to save you, Duncan, you know that.”
But only because you were afraid to be alone, Trace. Afraid to think…
“You went there too, Duncan. We all did. Part of the training. We weren’t responsible for it…”
Sure, Trace. Sure. Forget it. Forget her. Not human, even. You know what they’re good for.
There was no let-up. His body twitched now and then and the only sounds that he made were groans and indecipherable mutterings, but there was no quiet. The winds howled through the valley and he didn’t hear them.
On the other side of the valley the wind hurled tons of sand through the passageway. Much of it was blown straight through, high over the meagre wall of stone. Some of it was caught by the wall, and in turn served as a trap for more of the sand. A mound of it grew. When the wind passed its most furious peak and gentled again, the top of the mound was levelled. The black still night settled over the planet, but there was no quiet in the dinghy until exhaustion dragged Trace from the clamouring voices, shutting them out finally so he could sleep. It was dawn, and in the dawn the winds returned. Sand was added to the accumulation in the passage, mounded again, this time ten feet high, and then levelled once more, and the new level was only seven feet, flush with the ground beyond the passage at the far end of it, the end through which the robot would try to gain entry.
The sound of the radiation alarm woke Trace. It was coming! His eyes were bright with fever and his hand trembled when he adjusted the screen to focus in on the target. It was still four miles from him, but coming steadily. His mouth was partially open; he couldn’t close it. He touched his tongue and found it hot and dry, swollen. He was dying. Shaking violently, he started the engines of the dinghy. He would die, but not under the beam of the laser, not from the robot. He eased the dinghy to the mouth of the chimney and stopped it again, without turning off the engine immediately. He would wait until the robot started to enter the valley, and then he would leave it, go as far as his fuel would take him, and die alone. He felt eager to be off, to get started on that, his last retreat.
He watched its progress on his screen, sometimes seeing it singly, sometimes seeing an infinite regression of screens, each with the moving speck of light, stretching out endlessly before him, and he waited. He shook now and again, heaving spasms that left him gasping. “Come on,” he coaxed it. “Come on!” It circled the valley, like a sniffing dog circling a lake to find where its quarry had entered the water. It found the blocked passage and tried it, and was turned back by the sand that filled the narrow cut from wall to wall. It continued its circle. It came to the next passage and hesitated a second. Trace saw the passage through its eyes then: an apparent floor that was fairly level, dotted with rocks and boulders, no different from the rest of the hellish terrain.
It rolled into the passage, its wheels finding traction on the rock base covered with sand. The dot of light moved on the screen. Trace drew in a long, painful breath and held it. The robot moved slowly; having learned that one passage was blocked, it was alert for blockage in this one. Behind it the sand was flattened, small rocks were crushed, glinting new cuts to the sun. Nothing was there to be seen except the trail of crushed rocks and packed sand. The trail grew longer, at a maddeningly slow pace. The sand under its wheels deepened somewhat and it stopped again. It moved forward once more, using the treads now. The sound of rocks being ground to powder was the only sound to be heard. It was as if a shadow passed over the ground, and when it moved on there was new sand where there had been rocks. From both sides of the trail it made, sand trickled in to fill the depressions its treads left. It was unbalanced by the abrupt drop concealed with sand, and for a moment it hung, braking, but under the treads the slithery sand shifted and it was further unbalanced. Behind it where sand trickled into one of the ruts it had left, a rounded rock followed the sand and gravity pulled it, keeping it in the smooth track. It hit the robot from behind, lodging under the tread. Another rock followed, and then another. The robot hung unmoving then; its eight tons against the unsettled sand proved too much, and it slipped four feet before it could make an effort to stop itself. The sudden surge of its weight on the sand pressing against the loosely piled rock wall was more than the wall could bear. It gave way and there was a crash of rocks and sand pouring through the break, as water pours through a broken dam. The robot toppled when the sand shifted from under it. With a thunderous crash, it hit the ground where the grade was steepest. It rolled, and over and around it fell an avalanche of rocks and sand, sweeping up everything in its path. Rocks struck the walls, were dashed back, hit the robot’s screen, and penetrated it. The force shield protected it from high energy impact of any sort, but the rocks were of low energy yield and they hit the robot, as did the sand. In the first ten seconds after its fall the screen controls and the remote control for the dinghy’s screen were inactivated; in the next ten seconds one of the flexible, handlike waldoes was torn loose. It withdrew all other appendages and closed all its apertures, but sand had entered and damage was done.