Sergeant Briggan opened the door of the sedan and stood leaning against it, holding a dispersal ray in his left hand. The Sergeant was badly wounded. His right arm was an unrecognizable, bleeding pulp; he was too weak to stand alone. So Tynia had told the truth, Tchassen thought; she actually had shot him. The Captain felt a surge of relief and hope. Perhaps he could rely on Tynia, after all. But now it was too late! The blast from the Sergeant's weapon had paralyzed Tchassen's motor control; he was helpless.
The Sergeant, obviously, assumed that Tchassen was dead. Ignoring him, he ordered Tynia to pile the canned food in the back of the sedan. She moved toward him slowly.
"You're the Earthman," she said dully. "And I thought Captain Tchassen—"
"The farce is over, Tynia. You and Tchassen made a fine game of it for a while, but I've been in the service long enough to spot a fake security officer."
"The Captain and I?" she repeated.
"Do I have to draw you a blueprint? You two are in this together. You're both natives."
For a moment she seemed to recover her self-assurance. "So that's how you're going to play it, Sergeant. Just who do you think you'll take in with such nonsense?"
"I'm through batting words around with you, Tynia. Put the food in the car. Help me push the machine out to the road."
"Why bother, Sergeant? If you stay right here, the natives will be along soon enough."
"I'm glad you admit that, Tynia." Briggan laughed sourly. "But it's my duty to get through to the base—just as it's your duty, I suppose, to try to stop me."
"Why do you still want to make me believe that, Sergeant? What difference does it make now?"
Tchassen, paralyzed and unable to speak, suddenly realized the truth. Each of them feared the other. All four survivors had assumed that one of the others had to be an Earthman. We put our faith in machines, he thought; we were too certain that the robot ship couldn't crash simply because something had gone wrong with the beam. Our real trouble is we have no faith in ourselves. None of us was an Earthman; the Earth people had nothing to do with the destruction of the Nevada station.
He wanted desperately to shout that out. After a supreme effort, he was able to make his lips move a fraction of an inch; and that was all.
Tynia put the canned food in the sedan. Briggan waved her to the back of the car with his weapon. He held the beam leveled at her while she pushed the sedan toward the road. The clearing was built on a slight slant and she had no trouble moving the heavy vehicle. As the wheels began to turn, Tynia pretended to slip and fall into the slushy water.
Briggan was distracted by the motion of the sedan. Tynia rolled toward Tchassen and snatched up his dispersal ray. The Sergeant realized what she intended to do and lifted his weapon awkwardly in his left hand.
No! Stop! Don't be fools! The words sang through Tchassen's mind, but he could not speak. Briggan and Tynia fired simultaneously. The beam caught the Sergeant squarely in the face. He died in a blaze of energy. The sedan rolled into the road and Tynia fell unconscious beside Tchassen.
He wanted to help her, but he was still not able to move. In another half hour the paralysis would be gone, but by that time it would be too late to do anything for Tynia. Furiously he drove his body to respond and he managed to turn on his side.
The exertion was too much for him. The haze swam in painful waves across his mind. Just before unconsciousness came, he saw a band of natives on the edge of the clearing.
The swaying motion of the stretcher shook him awake. The Earthmen were carrying him along a narrow mountain trail, past deep drifts of snow. His wound, where Briggan's beam had hit him, was neatly bandaged; he could smell the odor of a disinfectant. It surprised him that the Earth people knew so much about medicine; but it surprised him more that they had tried to save his life.
He listened to his captors when they talked. He was able to understand a few phrases of the native dialect which every man assigned to the occupation had to learn, but what he had been taught was sadly inadequate. When one of his stretcher bearers saw that the Captain was conscious, he spoke to him in the cultured language of the civilized galaxy. The syntax was awkwardly handled, yet Tchassen was amazed that the Earthman used it so well.
"Be no fear," the native said. "You get living again."
"Tynia. The girl with me—"
"Wound bad; she dead before we come. We follow from prison and try help all four you. You fight each other. You have evil weapons. We can save only you."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Make you well; send you back."
The answer came as a shock to Tchassen; it was what a civilized people would have said. But the Earth natives were savages—brilliant, inventive individualists, but nonetheless social barbarians. It would have seemed much more logical if the native had said he was keeping Tchassen for a religious ceremonial sacrifice.
"As soon as my wounds are healed," Tchassen repeated, "you'll let me go?"
The native ran his hand over the Captain's bandages. "This wound is a little thing, of no importance." He touched Tchassen's head. "Here is your real sickness, in the brain. We teach you how to think like a man; then you go home."
"You're going to teach me? Me? Do you realize, I come from the civilized galaxy?" Tchassen began to laugh; he wondered if he had been taken prisoner by a band of madmen.
"We show you how to be human," the native answered blandly. "Not fight and kill each other, the way you and the others did when the post blow up. We know meaning for civilization; you have none. It is easy secret. We learn after the invasion, when our world destroyed. Real civilized people get along; live in peace; give help to each other. Your people and ours: we can be brothers here on the Earth, and on your other worlds, too."
Tchassen's laughter was touched with hysteria. Have we failed? He knew the answer now: for the captives, the dispossessed men of the Earth, would become the teachers of the conquerors—and teach them what the conquerors had come to build on the Earth. No, we have not failed; we have simply misunderstood the strange genius of the quixotic Earth. The defeated would one day rise up and conquer the galaxy. Tchassen saw that clearly, but no longer in fear. He wanted to make their stamina, their grit, their ability to survive a part of himself. He wanted to make himself over—as an Earthman.