Sound of Terror Part 3

"... 100,000...." The sky was glistening black, he was pa.s.sing from the earth's envelope of air into the nothingness that was s.p.a.ce. Now.

Now.

Now it was time to change angle, flatten the s.h.i.+p out, bring it into position to run around the earth. _Once around lightly._

There was a high-pitched scream in his earphones. He remembered it had been there for long, and wondered if he had told Control.

He flicked the switch that ignited the powerful steering rockets, and the whine grew louder, unbearably loud. It sang to him, his b.i.t.c.h sang, _I had a true wife, but I left her ... oh, oh, oh._

He began to feel a light tingle over his body, tiny needles delicately jabbing every inch. His face became wooden, felt p.r.i.c.kly. He tried to lick his lips and could feel no sensation there. His vision fogged again, and he knew it was not from acceleration this time, it was something else.

Something else.

_What's it like out there?_

His belly told him. Fear.

He reached out his hand to touch the control panel, and his arm did not respond. It was shaking, uncontrollably, and moved off to the right of where he wanted it to go. When he tried to correct, it swung too far to the left, waving as if it were alive. It hung there before him as in a dream, oscillating back and forth.

He could not control his body, and the realization nurtured the tiny seed of panic that lay heavily in his belly.

_Dump it...._

What did that mean? _Dump it ... go home now, baby ... _I had_ a true ..._

Decision ... there was a decision he had to make, but he was too frightened to know what it was.

He had been born in fear and lived in fear and his body was full of it, quivering to the lover's touch of fear. Falling, darkness, the fear of dying, the unknown, the unimaginable always lurking just out of the corner of his eye.

He wanted to scream and the fear choked it off. His hands were at his sides, limply useless, dangling at the seat. He had to hang on to something. His hand found a projection at the side of the seat. He clutched it desperately.

He knew he would fall, down, spiraling, weightless, off the cliff as in a dream, off the ladder, the tree, he was a child and his toes were tingling as he stood too near the edge of the cliff, knowing he might fall.

He clutched tightly, putting every ounce of his strength into holding on to the lever, the single solid reality in a world of s.h.i.+fting unreality.

He was going to fall he was falling I love you I hate you I had a true wife ...

There was softness beneath his back, and he moved his hands, feeling the crispness of sheets. There was a low murmur of voices. He raised his hands to his eyes and the voices stopped. There were heavy bandages on his eyes.

"Colonel?" came a questing voice, and Johnny realized it was Doctor Lambert. "Awake?"

"I can't see. Why can't I see?"

"You'll be all right. It's all right."

"What happened?"

"How much do you remember?" asked the voice. "The blast-off?"

"Yes--yes, I remember that."

"The orbit? The landing?"

"No," he said. "Not that."

"You did it," said the voice. "You made it."

_This is my day. Once around lightly._

"Johnny," said the voice. "I don't know just how to say this. We know what was wrong with s.h.i.+p I, and why it killed Mitch. We know--h.e.l.l, we don't even begin to realize what we have at our fingertips now. It's so big it's impossible to evaluate."

"What? I don't--"

"Sound, Johnny, sound. Or rather, vibration. It's something we're just beginning to learn about. We know a few things; we know you can boil water with sound if the frequency is high enough. And you can drill metal with it--and it does things to the human body.

"There are frequencies of sound which can act directly on human nerves, directly on the human brain. It means that if we know the right frequency, we'll be able to produce any state we want in a man, any emotion. Fear, anguish, anything.

"When the steering rockets were cut in, the s.h.i.+p began to vibrate. It generated frequencies so high that ordinary human senses couldn't detect them. And when your nerves were exposed to those vibrations, it produced fear. Pure and absolute fear. Motor control went, rational processes went, all the nervous functions of the body went out of control. Your body became a giant tuning fork, and the frequency to which it vibrated was fear.

"I can't remember--"

"Sanity went, too, Johnny," said the man softly. "You could not stand that fear and remain sane, so something cut off. That was what happened to Mitch."

"How did I get back?"

"We don't know. The films show your face suddenly going blank. Then you flew. That's all. We hoped you could tell us."

"No. No--I don't remember--"

"There was something in you so strong it overrode everything else, even the fear. We'd like to know what it is. We'll find out, Johnny, and it will mean a lot to the human race when we do."

_This is my day._

"Is my wife here?"

There was a cool hand on his forehead. "Yes, Johnny."

"Well," he said helplessly. "Well, how are you?"

"I'm fine, Johnny," she whispered, and there was the sound of tears in her voice. "I'm just fine."

He felt the warm softness of her lips on his.

_I had a true wife but I left her ... oh, oh, oh._

And then he came home again.