The Man In The Maze

1

He spent three weeks absorbing all that was known of the giant extragalactic beings. At his insistence he did not set foot on Earth during that time, nor was his return from Lemnos made known to the public. They gave him quarters in a bunker on Luna and he lived quietly beneath Copernicus, moving like a robot through steely gray corridors lit by warm glowing torches. They showed him all the cubes. They ran off a variety of reconstructs in every sensory mode. Muller listened. He absorbed. He said very little.

They kept well away from him, as they had on the voyage from Lemnos. Whole days passed in which he saw no human being. When they came to him they remained at a distance of ten meters and more.

He did not object.

The exception was Boardman, who visited him three times a week and made a point always of coming well within the pain range. Muller found that contemptible. Boardman seemed to be patronizing him with this voluntary and wholly unnecessary submission to discomfort. “I wish you’d keep away,” Muller told him on the fifth visit. “We can talk by screen. Or you could stay by the door.”

“I don’t mind the close contact.”

“I do,” said Muller. “Has it ever occurred to you that I’ve begun to find mankind as odious as mankind finds me? The reek of your meaty body, Charles—it goes into my nostrils like a spike. Not just you; all the others too. Sickening. Hideous. Even the look of your faces. The pores. The stupid gaping mouths. The ears. Look at a human ear closely some time, Charles. Have you ever seen anything more repulsive than that pink wrinkled cup? You all disgust me!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Boardman said.

The briefing went on and on. Muller was ready after the first week to undertake his assignment, but no, first they had to feed him all the data in the bank. He absorbed the information with twitchy impatience. A shadow of his old self remained to find it fascinating, a challenge worth accepting. He would go. He would serve as before. He would honor his obligation. At last they said he could depart.

From Luna they took him by iondrive to a point outside the orbit of Mars, where they transferred him to a warp-drive ship already programmed to kick him to the edge of the galaxy. Alone. He would not, on this voyage, have to take care not to distress the crew by his presence. There were several reasons for this, the most important being that the mission was officially considered close to suicidal; and, since a ship could make the voyage without the use of a crew, it would have been rash to risk lives—other than his, of course. But he was a volunteer, Besides, Muller had requested a solo flight.

He did not see Boardman during the five days prior to his departure, nor had he seen Ned Rawlins at all since their return from Lemnos. Muller did not regret the absence of Boardman, but he sometimes wished he could have another hour with Rawlins. There was promise in that boy. Behind all the confusion and the foggy innocence, Muller thought, lay the seeds of manhood.

From the cabin of his small sleek ship he watched the technicians drifting in space, getting ready to sever the transfer line. Then they were returning to their own ship. Now he heard from Boardman, a final message, a Boardman special, inspirational, go forth and do your duty for mankind, et cetera, et cetera. Muller thanked him graciously for his words.

The communications channel was cut.

Moments later Muller entered warp.

2

The aliens had taken possession of three solar systems on the fringes of the galactic lens, each star having two Earth-settled planets. Muller’s ship was aimed at a greenish-gold star whose worlds had been colonized only forty years before. The fifth planet, dry as iron, belonged to a Central Asian colonization society which was trying to establish a series of pastoral cultures where nomad virtues could be practiced. The sixth, with a more typically Earthlike mixture of climates and environments, was occupied by representatives of half a dozen colonization societies, each on its own continent. The relations between these groups, often intricate and touchy, had ceased to matter within the past twelve months, for both planets now were under control of extragalactic overseers.

Muller emerged from warp twenty light-seconds from the sixth planet. His ship automatically went into an observation orbit, and the scanners began to report. Screens showed him the surface picture; via template overlay he was able to compare the configurations of the outposts below with the pattern as it had been prior to alien conquest. The amplified images were quite interesting. The original settlements appeared on his screen in violet, and the recent extensions in red. Muller observed that about each of the colonies, regardless of its original ground plan, there had sprouted a network of angular streets and jagged avenues. Instinctively he recognized the geometries as alien. There sprang to mind the vivid memory of the maze; and though the patterns here bore no resemblance to those of the maze, they were alike in their lack of recognizable symmetries. He rejected the possibility that the labyrinth of Lemnos had been built long ago by direction of the radio beings. What he saw here was only the similarity of total difference. Aliens built in alien ways.

In orbit, seven thousand kilometers above the sixth planet, was a glistening capsule, slightly longer on one axis than on the other, which had about the mass of a large interstellar transport ship. Muller found a similar capsule in orbit about the fifth world. The overseers.

It was impossible for him to open communications with either of these capsules or with the planets beyond. All channels were blocked. He twisted dials fitfully for more than an hour, ignoring the irritable responses of the ship’s brain which kept telling him to give up the idea. At last he conceded.

He brought his ship close to the nearer orbiting capsule. To his surprise the ship remained under his control. Destructive missiles that had come this close to alien overseers had been commandeered, but he was able to navigate. A hopeful sign? Was he under scan, and was the alien able to distinguish him from a hostile weapon? Or was he being ignored?

At a distance of one million kilometers he matched velocities with the alien satellite and put his ship in a parking orbit around it. He entered his drop-capsule. He ejected himself and slid from his ship into darkness.

3

Now the alien seized him. There was no doubt. The drop-capsule was programmed for a minimum-expenditure orbit that would bring it skimming past the alien in due time, but Muller swiftly discovered that he was deviating from that orbit. Deviations are never accidental. His capsule was accelerating beyond the program, which meant that it had been grasped and was being drawn forward. He accepted that. He was icily calm, expecting nothing and prepared for everything. The drop-capsule eased down. He saw the gleaming bulk of the alien satellite now.

Skin to metal skin, the vehicles met and touched and joined.

A hatch slid open.

He drifted within.

His capsule came to rest on a board platform in an immense cavernous room hundreds of meters long, high, and broad. Fully suited, Muller stepped from it. He activated his gravity pads; for, as he had anticipated, gravity in here was so close to null that the pull was imperceptible. In the blackness he saw only a faint purplish glow. Against a backdrop of utter silence he heard a resonant booming sound, like an enormously amplified sigh, shuddering through the struts and trusses of the satellite. Despite his gravity pads he felt dizzy; beneath him the floor rolled. Through his mind went a sensation like the throbbing of the sea; great waves slammed against ragged beaches; a mass of water stirred and groaned in its global cavity; the world shivered beneath the burden. Muller felt a chill that his suit could not counteract. An irresistible force drew him. Hesitantly he moved, relieved and surprised to see that his limbs still obeyed his commands though he was not entirely their master. The awareness of something vast nearby, something heaving and pulsating and sighing, remained with him.

He walked down a night-drowned boulevard. He came to a low railing—a dull red line against the deep darkness—and pressed his leg against it, keeping contact with it as he moved forward. At one point he slipped and as he hit the railing with his elbow he heard the clang of metal traveling through the entire structure. Blurred echoes drifted back to him. As though walking the maze he passed through corridors and hatches, across interlocking compartments, over bridges that spanned dark abysses, down sloping ramplike debouchments into lofty chambers whose ceilings were dimly visible. Here he moved in blind confidence, fearing nothing. He could barely see. He had no vision of the total structure of this satellite. He could scarcely imagine the purpose of these inner partitions.

From that hidden giant presence came silent waves, an ever-intensifying pressure. He trembled in its grip. Still he moved on, until now he was in some central gallery, and by a thin blue glow he was able to discern levels dwindling below him, and far beneath his balcony a broad tank, and within the tank something sparkling, something huge.

“Here I am,” he said. “Richard Muller. Earthman.”

He gripped the railing and peered downward, expecting anything. Did the great beast stir and shift? Did it grunt? Did it call to him in a language he understood? He heard nothing. But he felt a great deal: slowly, subtly, he became aware of a contact, of a mingling, of an engulfment.

He felt his soul escaping through his pores.

The drain was unrelenting. Yet Muller chose not to resist; he yielded, he welcomed, he gave freely. Down in the pit the monster tapped his spirit, opened petcocks of neural energy, drew forth from him, demanded more, drew that too.

“Go on,” Muller said, and the echoes of his voice danced around him, chiming, reverberating. “Drink! What’s it like? A bitter brew, eh? Drink! Drink!” His knees buckled, and he sagged forward, and he pressed his forehead to the cold railing as his last reservoirs were plumbed.

He surrendered himself gladly, in glittering droplets. He gave up first love and first disappointment, April rain, fever and ache. Pride and hope, warmth and cold, sweet and sour. The scent of sweat and the touch of flesh, the thunder of music, the music of thunder, silken hair knotted between his fingers, lines scratched in spongy soil. Snorting stallions; glittering schools of tiny fish; the towers of Newer Chicago; the brothels of Under New Orleans. Snow. Milk. Wine. Hunger. Fire. Pain. Sleep. Sorrow. Apples. Dawn. Tears. Bach. Sizzling grease. The laughter of old men. The sun on the horizon, the moon on the sea, the light of other stars, the fumes of rocket fuel, summer flowers on a glacier’s flank. Father. Mother. Jesus. Mornings. Sadness. Joy. He gave it all, and much more, and he waited for an answer. None came to him. And when he was wholly empty he lay face downward, drained, hollow, staring blindly into the abyss.

4

When he was able to leave, he left. The hatch opened to pass his drop-capsule, and it rose toward his ship. Shortly he was in warp. He slept most of the way. In the vicinity of Antares he cut in the override, took command of the ship, and filed for a change of course. There was no need to return to Earth. The monitor station recorded his request, checked routinely to see that the channel was clear, and allowed him to proceed at once to Lemnos. Muller entered warp again instantly.

When he emerged, not far from Lemnos, he found another ship already in orbit and waiting for him. He started to go about his business anyway, but the other ship insisted on making contact. Muller accepted the communication.

“This is Ned Rawlins,” a strangely quiet voice said. “Why have you changed your flight plan?”

“Does it matter? I’ve done my job.”

“You haven’t filed a report.”

“I’m reporting now, then. I visited the alien. We had a pleasant, friendly chat. Then it let me go home. Now I’m almost home. I don’t know what effect my visit will have on the future of human history. End of report.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Go home, I said. This is home.”

“Lemnos?”

“Lemnos.”

“Dick, let me come aboard. Give me ten minutes with you—in person. Please don’t say no.”

“I don’t say no,” Muller replied.

Soon a small craft detached itself from the other ship and matched velocities with his. Patiently, Muller allowed the rendezvous to take place. Rawlins stepped into his ship and shed his helmet. He looked pale, drawn, older. His eyes held a different expression. They faced one another for a long silent moment. Rawlins advanced and took Muller’s wrist in greeting.

“I never thought I’d see you again, Dick,” he began. “And I wanted to tell you—”

He stopped abruptly. “Yes?” Muller asked.

“I don’t feel it,” said Rawlins. “I don’t feel it!”

“What?”

“You. Your field. Look, I’m right next to you. I don’t feel a thing. All that nastiness, the pain, the despair—it isn’t coming through!”

“The alien drank it all,” said Muller calmly. “I’m not surprised. My soul left my body. Not all of it was put back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I could feel it soaking up everything that was within me. I knew it was changing me. Not deliberately. It was just an incidental alteration. A byproduct.”

Rawlins said slowly, “You knew it, then. Even before I came on board.”

“This confirms it, though.”

“And yet you want to return to the maze. Why?”

“It’s home.”

“Earth’s your home, Dick. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back. You’ve been cured.”

“Yes,” said Muller. “A happy ending to my doleful story. I’m fit to consort with humanity again. My reward for nobly risking my life a second time among aliens. How neatly done! But is humanity fit to consort with me?”

“Don’t go down there, Dick. You’re being irrational now. Charles sent me to get you. He’s terribly proud of you. We all are. It would be a big mistake to lock yourself away in the maze now.”

“Go back to your own ship, Ned,” Muller said.

“If you go into the maze, so will I.”

“I’ll kill you if you do. I want to be left alone, Ned, do you understand that? I’ve done my job. My last job. Now I retire, purged of my nightmares.” Muller forced a thin smile. “Don’t come after me, Ned. I trusted you, and you would have betrayed me. Everything else is incidental. Leave my ship now. We’ve said all that we need to say to each other, I think, except goodbye.”

“Dick—”

“Goodbye, Ned. Remember me to Charles. And to all the others.”

“Don’t do this!”

“There’s something down there I don’t want to lose,” Muller said. “I’m going to claim it now. Stay away. All of you. Stay away. I’ve learned the truth about Earthmen. Will you go now?”

Silently Rawlins suited up. He moved toward the hatch. As he stepped through it, Muller said, “Say goodbye to all of them for me, Ned. I’m glad you were the last one I saw. Somehow it was easier that way.”

Rawlins vanished through the hatch.

A short while later Muller programmed his ship for a hyperbolic orbit on a twenty-minute delay, got into his drop-capsule, and readied himself for the descent to Lemnos. It was a quick drop and a good landing. He came down right in the impact area, two kilometers from the gateway to the maze. The sun was high and bright. Muller walked briskly toward the maze.

He had done what they wanted him to do.

Now he was going home.

5

“He’s still making gestures,” Boardman said. “He’ll come out of there.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Rawlins. “He meant that.”

“You stood next to him, and you felt nothing?”

“Nothing. He doesn’t have it any more.”

“Which he realizes?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll come out, then,” Boardman said. “We’ll watch him, and when he asks to be taken off Lemnos, we’ll take him off. Sooner or later he’ll need other people again. He’s been through so much that he needs to think everything through, and I guess he sees the maze as the best place for that. He isn’t ready to plunge back into normal life again. Give him two years, three, four. He’ll come out. The two sets of aliens have cancelled each other’s work on him, and he’s fit to rejoin society.”

“I don’t think so,” Rawlins said quietly. “I don’t think it cancelled out so evenly. Charles, I don’t think he’s human at all—anymore.”

Boardman laughed. “Shall we bet? I’ll offer five to one that Muller comes out of the maze voluntarily within five years.”

“Well—”

“It’s a bet, then.”

Rawlins left the older man’s office. Night had fallen. He crossed the bridge outside the building. In an hour he’d be dining with someone warm and soft and willing, who was awed beyond measure by her liaison with the famous Ned Rawlins. She was a good listener, who coaxed him for tales of daring deeds and nodded gravely as he spoke of the challenges ahead. She was also good in bed.

He paused on the bridge to look upward at the stars.

A million million blazing points of light shimmered in the sky. Out there lay Lemnos, and Beta Hydri IV, and the worlds occupied by the radio beings, and all man’s dominion, and even, invisible but real, the home galaxy of the others. Out there lay a labyrinth in a broad plain, and a forest of spongy trees hundreds of meters high, and a thousand planets planted with the young cities of Earthmen, and a tank of strangeness orbiting a conquered world. In the tank lay something unbearably alien. On the thousand planets lived worried men fearing the future. Under the spongy trees walked graceful silent creatures with many arms. In the maze dwelled a… man.

Perhaps, Rawlins thought, I’ll visit Muller in a year or two.

It was too early to tell how the patterns would form. No one yet knew how the radio people were reacting, if at all, to the things they had learned from Richard Muller. The role of the Hydrans, the efforts of men in their own defense, the coming forth of Muller from the maze, these were mysteries—shifting, variable. It was exciting and a little frightening to think that he would live through the time of testing that lay ahead.

He crossed the bridge. He watched starships shattering the darkness overhead. He stood motionless, feeling the pull of the stars. All the universe tugged at him, each star exerting its finite power. The glow of the heavens dazzled him. Beckoning pathways lay open. He thought of the man in the maze. He thought too of the girl, lithe and passionate, dark-eyed, her eyes mirrors of silver, her body awaiting him.

Suddenly he was Dick Muller, once also twenty-four years old, with the galaxy his for the asking. Was it any different for you, he wondered? What did you feel when you looked up at the stars? Where did it hit you? Here. Here. Just where it hits me. And you went out there. And found. And lost. And found something else. Do you remember, Dick, the way you once felt? Tonight in your windy maze, what will you think about? Will you remember?

Why did you turn away from us, Dick?

What have you become?

He hurried to the girl who waited for him. They sipped young wine, tart, electric. They smiled through a candle’s flickering glow. Later her softness yielded to him, and still later they stood close together on a balcony looking out over the greatest of all man’s cities. Lights stretched toward infinity, rising to meet those other lights above. He slipped his arm around her, put his hand on her bare flank, held her against him.

She said, “How long do you stay this time?”

“Four more days.”

“And when will you come back?”

“When the job’s done.”

“Ned, will you ever rest? Will you ever say you’ve had enough, that you won’t go out any longer, that you’ll take one planet and stick to it?”

“Yes,” he said vaguely. “I suppose. After a while.”

“You don’t mean it. You’re just saying it. None of you ever settle down.”

“We can’t,” he murmured. “We keep going. There are always more worlds… new suns…”

“You want too much. You want the whole universe. It’s a sin, Ned. You have to accept limits.”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” His fingers traveled over satin-smooth flesh. She trembled. He said, “We do what we have to do. We try to learn from the mistakes of others. We serve our cause. We attempt to be honest with ourselves. How else can it be?”

“The man who went back into the maze—”

“—is happy,” Rawlins said. “He’s following his chosen course.”

“How can that be?”

“I can’t explain.”

“He must hate us all terribly to turn his back on the whole universe like that.”

“He’s beyond hate,” Rawlins said. “Somehow. He’s at peace. Whatever he is.”

“Whatever?”

“Yes,” he said gently. He felt the midnight chill and led her inside. They stood by the bed. The candle was nearly out. He kissed her solemnly, and thought of Dick Muller again, and wondered what maze was waiting for him at the end of his own path. He drew her into his arms and felt the impress of hardening flesh against his own cool skin. They lowered themselves. His hands sought, grasped, caressed. Her breath grew ragged.

When I see you again, Dick, I have much to tell you, he thought.

She said, “Why did he lock himself into the maze again, Ned?”

“For the same reason that he went among aliens in the first place. For the reason that it all happened.”

“And that reason was?”

“He loved mankind,” Rawlins said. It was as good an epitaph as any. He held the girl tightly. But he left before dawn.