THE OUTER QUIET
BY HERBERT D. KASTLE
Fear is often Man's greatest enemy. But
when there is nothing left to lose, there is
everything to gain.... And with everything
to gain, where is the enemy?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on the cot, listening to the breathing of the six men who shared apartment 2-B with him, and the panic fluttered deep in his stomach, threatening to break upward and out in a wild scream. He fought it by telling himself it was foolish for a man who had lived through the destruction of New York and eight months imprisonment to feel this way.
He peered toward the window and tried to see the morning sun; not as a pale, shimmery fog but as the bright Spring yellow he knew it was. But the fog remained, no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes with saliva-wet fingers. It was as if he were seeing everything under water—a world of shimmery, hazy objects.
The panic rose again. The Conquerors' beam had done its work well, and his chances of finding Adele before death found him, were now terribly small. The first punishment had brought only a slight blur, this one had almost blinded him, and it was only a matter of time before he committed the third offense. It made no difference that Conqueror Punitive assured all trainees that the degree of blindness decreased as the years went by. He knew that his third offense would come sooner than any improvement in his ability to see. And the third offense was punishable by death.
Before another rush of fear could churn his brain, the morning whistle sounded. Shrill, commanding, it began each day of aimless wandering—the silent stroll over pavement connecting the five buildings of what had once been Brooklyn's prize housing development; a constant walk which destroyed those Americans unable to show complete obedience and turned the others into slaves.