"No, not that, I think," said Matsukuo. "I believe it is because we have lost our fear—not of death; we still fear death—but of betrayal."
That was it. They knew they were going to die, and soon. They had already been sentenced; nothing further could frighten them. Always before, on Earth, they had kept their thoughts to themselves, fearing to broadcast too much, lest the Normals find them out. The little, personal things that made a human being a living personality were kept hidden behind heavy mental walls. The suppression worked subconsciously, even when they actually wanted to communicate with another Controller.
But out here, there was nothing to fear on that score. Why should they, who were already facing death, be afraid of anything now?
So they opened up—wide. And they knew each other as no group of human beings had ever known each other. Every human being has little faults and foibles that he may be ashamed of, that he wants to keep hidden from others. But such things no longer mattered out here, where they had nothing but imminent death and the emptiness of space—and each other.
Physically, they were miserable. To be chained in one position, with very little room to move around, for three weeks, as Sonali had been, was torture. Sonali had been there longer than the others—for three days, there had been no one but herself out there in the loneliness of space.
But now, even physical discomfort meant little; it was easy to forget the body when the mind was free.
"What of the others?" Dorrine asked. "Where are the ones who were sentenced before us?"
Houston thought of Robert Harris. What had happened to the young Englishman?
"Space is big," said Juan Pedro. "Perhaps they are too far away for our thoughts to reach them—or perhaps they are already dead."