The Stars My Brothers Read online

Fivemust exist, that the Earth, the people, the time he knew, must still besomewhere out there. This could be some kind of a joke, or some kind ofpsychological experiment. That was it--the space-medicine boys werealways making way-out experiments to find out how men would bear up inunusual conditions, and this must be one of them--

  A woman came into the room. She was a dark woman who might have beenthirty years old, and who wore a white shirt and slacks. She would, hethought, have been good-looking if she had not looked so tired and soedgy.

  She came over and looked down at him and said to him,

  "Don't try to get up yet. You'll feel better very soon."

  Her voice was a slightly husky one. It was utterly familiar to Kieran,and yet he had never seen this woman before. Then it came to him.

  "You were the one who talked to me," he said, looking up at her. "In thedreams, I mean."

  She nodded. "I'm Paula Ray and I'm a psychologist. You had to bepsychologically prepared for your awakening."

  "Prepared?"

  The woman explained patiently. "Hypnopedic technique--establishing factsin the subconscious of a sleeping patient. Otherwise, it would be tooterrific a shock for you when you awakened. That was proved when theyfirst tried reviving space-struck men, forty or fifty years ago."

  * * * * *

  The comfortable conviction that this was all a fake, an experiment ofsome kind, began to drain out of Kieran. But if it was true--

  He asked, with some difficulty, "You say that they found out how torevive space-frozen men, that long ago?"

  "Yes."

  "Yet it took forty or fifty years to get around to reviving me?"

  The woman sighed. "You have a misconception. The process of revival wasperfected that long ago. But it has been used only immediately after awreck or disaster. Men or women in the old space-cemeteries have notbeen revived."

  "Why not?" he asked carefully.

  "Unsatisfactory results," she said. "They could not adjustpsychologically to changed conditions. They usually became unbalanced.Some suicides and a number of cases of extreme schizophrenia resulted.It was decided that it was no kindness to the older space-struck casesto bring them back."

  "But you brought me back?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "There were good reasons." She was, clearly, evading that question. Shewent on quickly. "The psychological shock of awakening would have beendevastating, if you were not prepared. So, while you were still undersedation, I used the hypnopedic method on you. Your unconscious wasaware of the main facts of the situation before you awoke, and thatcushioned the shock."

  Kieran thought of himself, lying frozen and dead in a graveyard that wasspace, bodies drifting in orbit, circling slowly around each other asthe years passed, in a macabre sarabande-- A deep shiver shook him.

  "Because all space-struck victims were in pressure-suits, dehydrationwas not the problem it could have been," Paula was saying. "But it'sstill a highly delicate process--"

  He looked at her and interrupted roughly. "What reasons?" And when shestared blankly, he added, "You said there were good reasons why youpicked me for revival. What reasons?"

  Her face became tight and alert. "You were the oldest victim, in pointof date. That was one of the determining factors--"

  "Look," said Kieran. "I'm not a child, nor yet a savage. You can dropthe patronizing professional jargon and answer my question."

  Her voice became hard and brittle. "You're new to this environment. Youwouldn't understand if I told you."

  "Try me."

  "All right," she answered. "We need you, as a symbol, in a politicalstruggle we're waging against the Sakae."

  "The Sakae?"

  "I told you that you couldn't understand yet," she answered impatiently,turning away. "You can't expect me to fill you in on a whole worldthat's new to you, in five minutes."

  She started toward the door. "Oh, no," said Kieran. "You're not goingyet."

  He slid out of the bunk. He felt weak and shaky but resentment energizedhis flaccid muscles. He took a step toward her.

  The lights suddenly went dim, and a bull-throated roar sounded fromsomewhere, an appalling sound of raw power. The slight tingling thatKieran had felt in the metal fabric around him abruptly became avibration so deep and powerful that it dizzied him and he had to grabthe stanchion of the bunk to keep from falling.

  Alarm had flashed into the woman's face. Next moment, from some hiddenspeaker in the wall, a male voice yelled sharply,

  "Overtaken--prepare for extreme evasion--"

  "Get back into the bunk," she told Kieran.

  "What is it?"

  "It may be," she said with a certain faint viciousness, "that you'reabout to die a second time."

  3.

  The lights dimmed to semi-darkness, and the deep vibration grew worse.Kieran clutched the woman's arm.

  "What's happening?"

  "Damn it, let me go!" she said.

  The exclamation was so wholly familiar in its human angriness thatKieran almost liked her, for the first time. But he continued to holdonto her, although he did not feel that with his present weakness hecould hold her long.

  "I've a right to know," he said.

  "All right, perhaps you have," said Paula. "We--our group--are operatingagainst authority. We've broken laws, in going to Earth and revivingyou. And now authority is catching up to us."

  "Another ship? Is there going to be a fight?"

  "A fight?" She stared at him, and shock and then faint repulsion showedin her face. "But of course, you come from the old time of wars, youwould think that--"

  Kieran got the impression that what he had said had made her look at himwith the same feelings he would have had when he looked at a decent,worthy savage who happened to be a cannibal.

  "I always felt that bringing you back was a mistake," she said, with asharpness in her voice. "Let me go."

  She wrenched away from him and before he could stop her she had got tothe door and slid it open. He woke up in time to lurch after her and hegot his shoulder into the door-opening before she could slide it shut.

  "Oh, very well, since you insist I'm not going to worry about you," shesaid rapidly, and turned and hurried away.

  Kieran wanted to follow her but his knees were buckling under him. Hehung to the side of the door-opening. He felt angry, and anger was allthat kept him from falling over. He would not faint, he told himself. Hewas not a child, and would not be treated like one--

  He got his head outside the door. There was a long and very narrowcorridor out there, blank metal with a few closed doors along it. Onedoor, away down toward the end of the corridor, was just sliding shut.

  * * * * *

  He started down the corridor, steadying himself with his hand againstthe smooth wall. Before he had gone more than a few steps, the angerthat pushed him began to ebb away. Of a sudden, the mountainous andincredible fact of his being here, in this place, this time, this ship,came down on him like an avalanche from which the hypnopedicpre-conditioning would no longer protect him.

  _I am touching a starship, I am in a starship, I, Reed Kieran of MidlandSprings, Ohio. I ought to be back there, teaching my classes, stoppingat Hartnett's Drug Store for a soft drink on the way home, but I am herein a ship fleeing through the stars ..._

  His head was spinning and he was afraid that he was going to go outagain. He found himself at the door and slid it open and fell ratherthan walked inside. He heard a startled voice.

  This was a bigger room. There was a table whose top was translucent andwhich showed a bewildering mass of fleeting symbols in bright light,ever changing. There was a screen on one wall of the room and thatshowed nothing, a blank, dark surface.

  Vaillant and Paula Ray and a tall, tough-looking man of middle age werearound the table and had looked up, surprised.

  Vaillant's face flashed irritation. "Paula, you were supposed to keephim in his cabin!"

  "I didn't think he was strong enough to follow," she said.

  "I'm not," said Kieran, and pitched over.

  The tall middle-aged man reached and caught him before he hit the floor,and eased him into a chair.

  He heard, as though from a great distance, Vaillant's voice sayingirritatedly, "Let Paula take care of him, Webber. Look at this--we'regoing to cross another rift--"

  There were a few minutes then when everything was very jumbled up inKieran's mind. The woman was talking to him. She was telling him thatthey had prepared him physically, as well as psychologically, for theshock of revival, and that he would be quite all right but had to