effective! The radiations deadened the mind, gave one the feeling of
numbness, so that nothing mattered but the next meal, the next movie in
the recreation lounge, the next drink of water. Values changed and
shifted, and none of them seemed important.

The chains that began to bind him were far stronger than steel. The
chains were mental deterioration, degeneration, mutation within the very
cells of the mind. He knew that now he must tend this monster forever,
grease and wipe the ugly metal of it, and sit and talk idly to
MacNamara, its keeper. He realized it, and didn't know how to care!

The anger and hate came later. The real, abiding anger, and the living
hate. At first the numbness, the sudden incomprehensible enormity of
what had happened to him, then the anger. Hate churned and ground away
inside him, getting stronger by the hour. It all revolved around the
Captain who tramped eternally around the corridors bellowing orders,
punching with his huge fists. He knew there was more to it; the lying
owners of the Company, the bribe-taking officials, the health officers
who failed to examine the ships and the men and the ships' papers. But
somehow it all boiled down to the Captain.

Sometimes he was sure he must be crazy already. Sometimes he would wake
up screaming from a nightmare only to find reality more horrible.

Then he would go to Ann.

Ann was not the only woman aboard ship. There were three others, and to
the crew of twenty imprisoned, enslaved men they represented all beauty,
all womanhood. They lived with the men--as the men--and nobody cared.
Here, so close to the raging elementals of the pile, life itself was
elemental.

As one of them expressed it to Gene: "Why worry? We're all sterile from
the radioactivity anyway. Or didn't you know?" She had been on the ship
for years, and was covered with a fine fur, like a cat's. Her eyes were
wide, placid, empty; an animal's unthinking eyes. Gene prayed Ann would
never turn monster before his eyes; hoped desperately they could get
away in time.

"We've got to fight, Ann," he said to her one day. "We must find a way
to get off at the end of the trip, or it will be too late for us to live
normal lives. It's then or never. Besides that, we've got to warn people
of what's going on. They think space travel is safe. In time this could
effect the whole race. The world must be told, so something can be
done."

Ann's young face showed signs of the strain. The fear o