Breaking Point | Page 8

it, drew a long slow puff.
"Man, that goes good...."
The cigarette was not lighted. Hoskins turned away, an expression of sick pity on his face. Ives reached abruptly for his own lighter, and the doctor checked him with a gesture.
"Every time I see a hot pilot work I'm amazed," Paresi said conversationally. "Such concentration ... you must be tuckered, Johnny."
Johnny puffed at his unlit cigarette. "Tuckered," he said. "Yeah." There were two odd undertones to his voice suddenly. They were fatigue, and eagerness. Paresi said, "You're off-watch, John. Go stretch out."
"Real tired," mumbled Johnny. He lumbered to his feet and went aft, where he rolled to the couch and was almost instantly asleep.
The others congregated far forward around the controls, and for a long moment stared silently at the sleeping pilot.
"I don't get it," murmured Ives.
"He really thought he flew us out, didn't he?" asked Hoskins.
Paresi nodded. "Had to. There isn't any place in his cosmos for machines that don't work. Contrary evidence can get just so strong. Then, for him, it ceased to exist. A faulty cigarette lighter irritated him, a failing airlock control made him angry and sullen and then hysterical. When the drive controls wouldn't respond, he reached his breaking point. Everyone has such a breaking point, and arrives at it just that way if he's pushed far enough."
"Everyone?"
Paresi looked from face to face, and nodded somberly. Anderson asked, "What knocked him out? He's trained to take far more strain than that."
"Oh, he isn't suffering from any physical or conscious mental fatigue. The one thing he wanted to do was to get away from a terrifying situation. He convinced himself that he flew out of it. The next best thing he could do to keep anything else from attacking him was to sleep. He very much appreciated my suggestion that he was worn out and needed to stretch out."
"I'd very much appreciate some such," said Ives. "Do it to me, Nick."
"Reach your breaking point first," said the doctor flatly, and went to place a pillow between Johnny's head and a guard-rail.
Hoskins turned away to stare at the peaceful landscape outside. The Captain watched him for a moment, then: "Hoskins!"
"Aye."
"I've seen that expression before. What are you thinking about?"
The engineer looked at him, shrugged, and said mildly, "Chess."
"What, especially?"
"Oh, a very general thing. The reciprocity of the game. That's what makes it the magnificent thing it is. Most human enterprises can gang up on a man, slap him with one disaster after another without pause. But not chess. No matter who your opponent might be, every time he does something to you, it's your move."
"Very comforting. Have you any idea of how we move now?"
Hoskins looked at him, a gentle surprise on his aging face. "You missed my point, Skipper. We don't move."
"Oh," the Captain whispered. His face tautened as it paled, "I ... I see. We pushed the airlock button to get out. Countermove: It wouldn't work. We tried the manual. Countermove: It broke off. And so on. Now we've tried to fly the ship out. Oh, but Hoskins--Johnny broke. Isn't that countermove enough?"
"Maybe. Maybe you're right. Maybe the move wasn't trying the drive controls, though. Maybe the move was to do what was necessary to knock Johnny out." He shrugged again. "We'll very soon see."
The Captain exhaled explosively through his nostrils. "We'll find out if it's our move by moving," he gritted. "Ives! Paresi! We're going to go over this thing from the beginning. First, try the port. You, Ives."
Ives grunted and went to the ship's side. Then he stopped.
"Where is the port?"
Anderson and Paresi followed Ives' flaccid, shocked gaze to the bulkhead where there had been the outline of the closed port, and beside it the hole which had held the axle of the manual wheel, and which now was a smooth, seamless curtain of impenetrable black. But Hoskins looked at the Captain first of all, and he said "Now it's our move," and only then did he turn with them to look at the darkness.

III
The unfamiliar, you say, is the unseen, the completely new and strange? Not so. The epitome of the unfamiliar is the familiar inverted, the familiar turned on its head. View a familiar place under new conditions--a deserted and darkened theater, an empty night club by day--and you will find yourself more influenced by the emotion of strangeness than by any number of unseen places. Go back to your old neighborhood and find everything changed. Come into your own home when everyone is gone, when the lights are out and the furniture rearranged--there I will show you the strange and frightening ghosts that are the shapes left over when reality superimposes itself upon the images of memory. The goblins lurk in the shadows of your own room.... Owen Miller Essays on Night