Read Ebook: The square pegs by Bradbury Ray

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Ebook has 180 lines and 7700 words, and 4 pages

"I don't like insults," cried Alice.

"I wasn't insulting anybody," he replied.

"Just a moment!" said Helen. "New York?"

Lisabeth leaned against the cell door which swayed ever so quietly outward. It was unlocked. Her gaze dropped to the catch and her eyes widened. Escape. These talking fools, who didn't understand, were trying to kill her. She might run out of the cell quickly, across the room and into the other little room, where there were all kinds of weird mechanisms. If she managed to reach that room, she could smash and tangle wires and boxes with her hands!

"I don't even know what insanity is," said Alice, far away.

"It's a rebellion. Against the mores or ethical setup in a society. That's what it is," said the man.

Lisabeth opened the door slowly, gathering herself.

Helen was still on the phone, her back turned.

Lisabeth ran, laughing. The three people looked up and cried out as she darted by them. She was across the room and into the automatic pilot room in an instant, lightly. There was a hammer and she snatched it up, shouting against all of them, and crashed it down upon the wires and the mechanisms. There were explosions, dancing lights, the shuddering of the ship in space, a revolving, a flying free. The man rushed into the room as she hammered and rehammered the controls into dented masses of fusing metal!

"Lisabeth!" a woman screamed.

"Lisabeth!" The man struck at her, missed, then struck again. The hammer flew from her fingers. She collapsed into dizziness. In the darkness, in the pain, she felt him groping with the controls, trying to make amends.

He was babbling hysterically.

"Ah! The control!"

Alice and Helen were swaying against the wildly rocking walls of the ship. Gravity suddenly went insane and shot them against the ceiling.

"Down!" cried the man. "Strap yourselves. We're crashing! There's a planetoid!"

A dark shape ran up onto the port of the ship, black and swift. The two women were sobbing hysterically, calling out to him to do something.

"Shut up, shut up, and let me think!" he cried. He did something with a control, the ship righted itself.

"We'll be killed, we'll be killed!" wailed the sisters. "No, no," he said, and before the planetoid loomed too close he threw his whole body against the one metal rod that was stuck and would not give. But it gave now, with a shudder of grating metal, as he fell forward.

The ship blacked out, something hit, struck, twisted, turning, shook them around. Lisabeth felt herself lifted, whirled, and brought down with stunning force upon the floor. That was all. She remembered no more....

A voice was saying, "Where are we, where are we--where?"

Dimly, Lisabeth heard the voice. There was a smell of alien atmosphere. Words came in over a muffled phone: "Planetoid One-Oh-One. Planetoid One-Oh-One. Calling crashed ship Earth Two! Crashed ship Earth Two! Can you give us a bearing on you? We'll try to send a rescue craft along."

"Hello, hello, Planetoid One-Oh-One, Radio." Lisabeth opened her eyes. John and the two women were huddled about the radio set, working it in the dim light. Through the port she could see the bleak and cold asteroid plain.

"You'd better try to get up from there," said the radio voice. "That's bad territory you're in."

"What does he mean?" asked Alice, leaning down over the man.

"This is killing land."

"Killing?"

"Killers, from Earth. Insane killers. Brought here. Dropped off to spend the rest of their lives, killing. They're happy that way."

"You're--you're joking."

The radio voice said, "We'll run through as soon as possible. Don't go outside, whatever you do. There's an atmosphere, yes, but there's likely to be some of the Inmates, too."

Alice ran to the port. "John!" She pointed down. "Down there! There are some men out there now!"

Helen seized John's arm. "Get us out of here, get us out of here!"

"They can't hurt us. Let go of me, for Pete's sake! They can't get inside." John stood staring moodily out the port.

She arose. Silently she tiptoed across the room. The man and the two women still stared fascinated out the port. They did not hear her. What would it be like to go below, to open the air lock wide to the terrible killers outside? Wouldn't that be fine? Let them in to kill, to destroy, to annihilate her captors! How wonderful, how simple.

Where was the air lock? Below somewhere. She was out of the room with no sound. She slipped through the lounge on the soft blue carpeting, came to the spiral ladder and descended it, smiling quietly to herself. She reached the lower deck. The air lock stood shining there.

She stabbed her hands at all kinds of red buttons, trying to find the one that yanked the lock open.

Above, she heard a frantic, surprised voice: "Where's Lisabeth?"

"Below!" Feet began running. "Lisabeth!"

"Quick!" cried Lisabeth to her hands. "Quick!"

Behind her, on the ladder, John leaped down. "Lisabeth!"

The lock was open. The smell of an alien world came in.

The men who had been waiting outside rushed forward, silently. They filled the lock, ten, twelve of them! They were pale and thin and trembling.

Lisabeth smiled, jerking her hand at John and crying out to the alien men.

"This man held me prisoner!" she said. "Kill him!"

The alien men seemed stupefied. They stood. Their full eyes only gazed at Lisabeth and John.

"No," one of them said, at last, as John waited for them to rush forward in the silent room. "No," the alien man said, dully. "We do not kill. We are the ones who are killed. We die. We wish to die. We do not care to live any more, ever."

There was a silence.

"You heard what I said!" cried Lisabeth.

"No," the men replied. They stood, swaying in the silence.

John fell back against a wall, sighing. Then, after a time he began to laugh with exhausted moves of his body. "Ah-ha! I see. I see!"

The men blinked in bewilderment at him.

Lisabeth's eyes flashed. She made a helpless gesture.

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