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“When a resolution is once taken,” observed Polybius nearly two millennia before, “nothing tortures men like the wait before it can be executed.”
Tony kept on at his work, tormented by a torture of his own. Together with Eliot James and Vanderbilt, who had been less hurt than he, Ransdell had now recovered from his wounds.
For his part in the great adventure which James had reported in detail, the pilot would have become popular, even if he had not also proved the discoverer of the metal that would not melt. That by itself would have lifted him above every other man in the camp.
Not above Hendron in authority; for the flyer never in the slightest attempted to assert authority. Ransdell became, indeed, even more retiring and reserved than before; and so the women of the camp, and especially the younger ones, worshiped him.
When Eve walked with Ransdell, as she often did, Tony became a potential killer. In reaction, he could laugh at himself; he knew it was the hysteria working in him—his fear and terrors at facing almost inevitable and terrible death, and at knowing that Eve also must be annihilated. It was these emotions that at moments almost broke out in a demonstration against Ransdell.
Almost but never did—quite.
When Tony was with Eve, she seemed to him less the civilized creature of cultured and sophisticated society, and more an impulsive and primitive woman.
Her very features seemed altered, bolder, her eyes darker and larger, her lips softer, her hair filled with a bright fire. She was stronger, also, and more taut.
“We’re going to get over,” she said to him one day. “To get over” meant to make the passage successfully to Bronson Beta, when it returned. The camp had phrases and euphemisms of its own for the hopes and fears it discussed.
“Yes,” agreed Tony. No one, now, openly doubted it, whatever he hid in his heart. “How do you—” he began, and then made his challenge less directly personal by adding: “How do you girls now like the idea of ceasing to be individuals and becoming ‘biological representatives of the human race’—after we get across?”
He saw Eve flush, and the warmth in her stirred him. “We talk about it, of course,” she replied. “And—I suppose we’ll do it.”
“Breed the race, you mean,” Tony continued mercilessly. “Reproduce the type—mating with whoever is best to insure the strongest and best children for the place, and to establish a new generation of the greatest possible variety from the few individuals which we can hope to land safely. That’s the program.”
“Yes,” said Eve, “that’s the purpose.”
For a minute he did not speak, thinking how—though he temporarily might possess her—so Ransdell might, too. And others. His hands clenched; and Eve, looking at him, said:
“If you get across, Tony, there probably must be other wives—other mates—for you too.”
“Would you care?”
“Care, Tony?” she began, her face flooded with color. She checked herself. “No one must care; we have sworn not to care—to conquer caring. And we must train ourselves to it now, you know. We can’t suddenly stop caring about such things, when we find ourselves on Bronson Beta, unless we’ve at least made a start at downing selfishness here.”
“You call it selfishness?”
“I know it’s not the word, Tony; but I’ve no word for it. Morals isn’t the word, either. What are morals, fundamentally, Tony? Morals are nothing but the code of conduct required of an individual in the best interests of the group of which he’s a member. So what’s ‘moral’ here wouldn’t be moral at all on Bronson Beta.”
“Damn Bronson Beta! Have you no feeling for me?”
“Tony, is there any sense in making more difficult for ourselves what we may have to do?”
“Yes; damn it,” Tony burst out again, “I want it difficult. I want it impossible for you!”
Wanderers from other places began to discover the camp. While they were few in number, it was possible to feed and clothe and even shelter them, at least temporarily. Then there was no choice but to give them a meal and send them away. But daily the dealings with the desperate, reckless groups became more and more ugly and hazardous.
Tony found that Hendron long ago had forseen the certainty of such emergencies, and had provided against it. Tony himself directed the extension of the protection of the camp by a barrier of barbed-wire half a mile beyond the buildings. There were four gates which he sentineled and where he turned back all vagrant visitors. If this was cruelty, he had no alternative but chaos. Let the barriers be broken, and the settlement would be overwhelmed.
But bigger and uglier bands continued to come. It became a commonplace to turn them, back at the bayonet-point and under the threat of machine-guns. Tony had to forbid, except in special cases, the handing out of rations to the vagrants. The issuance of food not only permitted the gangs to lurk in the neighborhood, but it brought in others. It became unsafe for any one—man or woman—to leave the enclosure except by airplane.
Rifles cracked from concealments, and bullets sang by; some found their marks.
Ransdell scouted the surroundings from the air; and Tony and three others, unshaven and disheveled, crept forth at night and mingled with the men besieging the camp. They discovered that Hendron’s group was hopelessly outnumbered.
“What saves us for the time,” Tony reported to Hendron on his return, “is that they’re not yet united. They are gangs and groups which fight savagely enough among themselves, but in general tolerate each other. They join on only one thing. They want to get in here. They want to get us—and our women.
“There are women among them, but not like ours; and they are too few for so many men. Our women also would be too few—but they want them.
“They talk about smashing in here and getting our food, our shelters—and our women. They’d soon be killing each other in here, after they wiped us out. That desire—and hate of us—is their sole force of cohesion.”
