Just an Illusion

Uniform, sharp footsteps approaching, inexorably. The metallic walls of the corridor add a horrible echoing sound, the certainty that I can't escape them. I feel the pulse speed up in my throat; my heart's a flapping bird in a cage.

The footsteps slow down and stop. The electronic lock hums, the air softly whizzes when the door opens. An outline of a dark figure fills the doorway. That figure stands still, motionless, pausing for endlessly long seconds before entering.

I tell myself it's just a Covon trick. A primitive trick, part of their standard psychological treatment. But it's no use. My pulse still rises, my mouth is dry, my eyelids twitch nervously.

The Covon finally enters and the door closes. A powerful, seven-foot tall body, a spherical head, gigantic limbs, silver-grey skin. A proton blaster hooked to his belt.

A line of lights under the ceiling turns on in my darkish cell. The Covon coaxes me toward the treatment chair -- it's soft-seated, many levers on it. The back of the chair leans down, fetters lock up my wrists, ankles, forehead, and thorax.

I try to divert my thoughts from expectations of the procedure that is about to start. I doubt whether I'll have the strength to resist.

The treatment is always the same. Each consecutive stage tries to break me in a different way. But all look for that soft spot in my already exhausted body, in my tired, staggering brains. Yet, the Covon doesn't behave like an executioner. Actually, he hasn't even touched me yet. Perhaps his sensors do all the examinations needed and then some computer probably decides in what way treatment shall sally forth.

Unless the Covon himself is that computer.

Then, the Covon's voice starts to interrogate me. Stage one.

He has an imperious voice, but it doesn't sound a bit metallic. I'm answering him. Now, I know I have to answer him -- everything else would be much worse. In the beginning, I didn't know about that and I simply remained silent. But not for long. Suddenly, a current of some crawling energy ran through the hoops around my body and limbs. It grew stronger and stronger. It wasn't a simple electric surge; it was something far more sophisticated. I had a terrible feeling of weakness in my guts; I thought my insides would be reversed, turned around like a carelessly shed glove. Then, the Covon had left me to lie in my own excrement until the end of that treatment. From then on, I answered the voice, always.

"What is the real purpose of your expedition here, on Xanadis?" The standard first question. By the Covon's hand I see the RCT-Remote Control Tranquilliser. I know that device. Its purpose is to bring me under control with electric shocks, from a weak warning sting to the lethal stroke.

"I've told you earlier -- we explore this sector of space." I'm trying to speak calmly.

"You're lying, Jim, repeatedly. Admit that's just a pretense."

"No, it is not. Our only job is to measure the main physical parameters for our research on Earth."

"We know you're preparing a military strike against the Covons."

"That's not true. We're scientists, not soldiers."

"Another lie. Be careful, Jim; don't tease me. Where do you keep your strategy plans for the invasion on our planet?" He takes his RCT in his hand.

"I've no idea what you're talking about." I flinch because of a sharp twitch in my chest.

"Don't be cheeky, Jim. You should know by now that it doesn't pay. Where is Walt, your commander in chief?"

There we are. After a short introduction, every Covon's question revolves around the rest of our expedition -- the Walt's trinity.

"Out, somewhere; I really don't know where." Another smarting twinge.

"Which are the coordinates of your earlier base?"

I clench my teeth feeling a cold perspiration on my forehead. "I swear I've never been told about that." A twinge, again -- this time the pain is worse -- as if the Covon knows that's a lie.

The Covon isn't satisfied with any of my answers.. He tries to provoke me in many ways, convinced that some day he'll manage to drive me crazy and then I'll throw into that stiff mask of his face what he tries to pull out of me. Perseveringly, he returns to all the unanswered questions again and again.

Then, the Covon instantaneously changes his tactics. Like a bolt from the blue, he becomes empathetic, pleasant, and benevolent.

"Look, Jim. In fact, your comrades and you are merely a victim of the malicious sovereigns of the Earth! Those 'scientific measurements' of yours are only pretexts for the expansionistic purposes of your politicians. Do you understand that, Jim?"

"Yes." Oh, God, let him continue this way.

"Your generals on Earth have sent you against our noble and generous race. We, the Covons, bring deliverance for everybody, without any difference. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, I do." The only right answer.

"The sooner you realize your mistake, the better it'll be for you. We, the Covons won't do any harm to the rest of your misled comrades. We'll only help them to open their eyes. Okay?"

"Okay." For an instant, I freeze -- is that, maybe, a cheeky answer? But no shock came.

"That's the reason you have to help us to find Walt. We won't hurt him. We'll just explain to him how foolish his behaviour is, and that his place is here, among his real friends. Surely, you can understand that?"

"Yes, I do." I have to agree with the Covon. But I won't say anything about what he tries to worm out of me. I force my mind not to bend under his kindness in the same way I did not submit to his harshness.

I know what the Covon now offers me is just an illusion. But I won't give in to an illusion the Covon can stick in his orifice of choice, the damned fool.

I won't trust an illusion. Not me.

Then, after some time, from behind a large semicircle, like a tomograph device, covers my head and shoulders. Well, the next stage.

I know this too, from experience. That's some sort of improved polygraph, which is probably able to read one's thoughts. Now, it's going to be the worst of all; but, despite that, I know how to cope with the new situation. I must turn my thoughts away from the co-ordinates of the Primary Base before the radiation begins to take effect. I start to feel the first effects of the beams that are palpating my brains, so it's time for some more radical measures.

Now my earlier knowledge comes in handy: the knowledge I've gathered during the long, tiresome lessons of the autogenic training. I close my eyes, concentrate, and focus all my thoughts on my own body. I relax each of my muscles, one after another, systematically, in a hundreds of repeated sequences -- my toes, insteps, calves, thighs, abdomen, then my arms, shoulders, neck, jaws, cheeks, and forehead. I take my time. At the end, I push my tongue back into my throat and slowly exhale the air from my lungs.

Walt and I have been the undisputed champions in the catatonic exercises at our Astronautic Academy. But not even Walt could have achieved my excellent results: only three inhalations and fifteen heartbeats per minute, and, after a few hours, even my body temperature decreased to only twenty-eight degrees Celsius.

Now, I feel a complete tranquility and I don't care about the damned radiation. The penetrating beams, which would soften everybody else, can't do me any harm. All my senses become torpid, and Covon's questioning is now just a miserable, unimportant noise somewhere in the background. I'm simply resting here, on a soft, comfortable chair.

A few hours must pass before I regain all my senses again. Yet, I'm still a little bit dizzy. My limbs are flabby and it echoes inside my head. With some difficulty, I open my sticky, leaden eyelids. I rotate my eyeballs, brimming with tears, and hardly dare to catch my breath. I try to turn my head and surprisingly I've no problem with that. Now, it's twilight in my cell again. The Covon is gone.

When I came to my senses again I felt a kind of triumph. Even the beams I can take -- and reject, too -- as an illusion.

I'm sure I haven't told anything to him. Once again, they couldn't pry the Primary Base co-ordinates out of me. The top secret co-ordinates that only I was able to read through in the archival documentation just before the Covon attack. Maybe Walt and his comrades intended to hide themselves in the Primary Base, so I mustn't betray them in any way.

Walt.

My twin brother and -- in a way -- my second self from our early childhood on. My double and my indistinguishable schoolmate. How different could the identical twins be? We always lived through everything in the same way and at the same time. Walt felt a pain in his completely healthy right knee after I'd injured mine, and my perfectly healthy molar smarted for three days until the Walt's rotten one was pulled out.

After our common first year at the Astronaut Academy, Walt specialized in military navigation and I in cosmological research. Then, we were assigned to the same expedition shift, although we didn't ask for it -- Walt as the commanding officer and I as the astrophysicist. Although there was no sign there would be anything dangerous on Xanadis, the principled caution dictated that the expedition leader be military trained. And now it turned out that this once the generals were right.

My memory returned at the beginning of that sudden and absurd nightmare, when the Covons had attacked us.

A few months ago we knew next to nothing about the Covons. Their existence was merely a hypothesis based on our long-distance observations. Even the most anxious planners hadn't assumed that they might have attacked Xanadis. This asteroid with gravity three times weaker than the Earth's, was the place where the most remote human astrophysicist station had been placed twelve years ago.

On this cold, desolate rock, which floats aimlessly through the universe, was set up our surveillance base where the twelve-member crews change every eighteen months. Xanadis is not a hospitable place. Here the air is so thin it's not worth mentioning, the frost is biting, and there's no vegetation at all. Only rocks, dust, and everlasting night everywhere.

Our term at the Secondary Base presented no problems until the twenty-third rotation period on Xanadis. At the time mentioned, it suddenly happened the parabolic aerial, installed on the top of a mountain, needed immediate repairs. My twin brother Walt felt a personal responsibility for the repair of this vitally important installation.

Just before departure, he beckoned to me. We stepped aside and he neared his lips to my ear and whispered a short string of numbers in it.

"Jim, will you remember this or must I repeat it to you?"

"Of course I remembered -- but I've no idea..."

"That's a code for an evacuation of the Secondary Base. You use it only in an extreme emergency -- if this place is in danger of being destroyed."

I was puzzled. "But why... I mean -- your task is a simple repair and in a few hours you'll be back, anyway."

Walt smiled to me. "Relax, brother. That's a standard procedure, purely routine. I'll see you at supper, as you said."

So, he squeezed himself as the third one into a double-seated rocket module, next to Lydia, my beloved girlfriend, who navigated, and Hugh, the mechanic.

About two hours after they left, when I was working in the basement, I suddenly felt such an unbearable pain in the little finger of my left hand that I doubled over. I felt like a trolley has driven over it. Now the acute pain in my finger spread upwards into my arm. It seemed uninjured but it was a bit colder and whiter than my other fingers. In time, the pain slowly faded but I still couldn't move it. It was like it had instantaneously died.

Still, there was plenty to do in the Secondary Base so I simply had to continue working in the basement. Right before suppertime, I went up to the control room on the ground floor and began to work at the communication console.

About an hour afterwards, the house shook with a tremendous detonation and through the window I saw our dining container blow up into a glittery fireball. I shuddered with horror -- seven of my unlucky comrades were having supper there exactly at that time!

Somebody was attacking us -- that was my first panicked thought. After the first shock I recollected what Walt had told me before his leaving -- the emergency code! My fingers touched the keys on the keyboard in the right sequence and two lines of numbers appeared on the screen -- the top-secret coordinates of the Primary Base! While the blaster shots came nearer I tried to remember them and then I deleted them just at the moment when the invaders began smashing the door.

The last thing I managed to do was open the audio connection with Walt and shout in the mike: "They got us!"

There was no time to explain who got us and how they got us. The room was quickly filling with some gas and while I was losing my consciousness, a horrible doubt consumed me and I wondered whether Walt had understood me at all.

Now, locked in my prison, in the basement of our Secondary Base, I haven't so much doubt; Walt must have understood my warning. In any case, he had got enough, for he hasn't been gullible enough to return.

But, it was possible that all three were already dead by now. Maybe they couldn't reach the Primary Base or found any other sanctuary where they could survive. In that case, all my endurance at the Covon's treatments would be unnecessary. Yet, the Covons were were obviously afraid of them; any military-trained guerrilla was a serious threat for any army. Evidently, they assumed that Walt and his two comrades were hiding right there.

In the old days, the First Expedition had prepared the Primary Base with all necessary technical equipment. They also brought the Warrior along, a mighty war robot, with a tremendous destructive power. During our training on Earth, the instructors had showed us videotapes with the Warrior in action, and what we saw then was really impressive. If Hugh could activate the Warrior, the situation would be bad for the Covons. But I didn't know if the Primary Base had been maintained properly, after the much more modern, but, unfortunately, completely defenceless Secondary Base was built.

That's why the Covons still needed me -- as long as they hoped I might give away the co-ordinates of the Primary Base. After that, they wouldn't need me anymore. And that was one more reason to me to endure. I must stay alive until Walt comes and fetches me.

I didn't know what kind of body structure the Covons had; but I supposed that they were technologically perfected robots with an artificial intelligence implanted. I hadn't an idea if the Covons knew that I was Walt's brother, who was my only hope now. And, in a way, the only real hope for the Earth's safety, too. After all, it would be naive to expect the Covons would be satisfied with conquering Xanadis. Once they would have felt safe here, they'd continue their invasion of the Earth and then across the universe.

I knew there was no use expecting any help from our native planet. After the sudden interruption of the connections with our expedition, they'd probably guess about the reason for a very long time. In this way they'll, most likely, waste a year and a half of valuable time. And then the next regular spaceship will convey the new shift anyway, and fly straight into the Covon's arms.

One morning the Covon entered my cell with my breakfast on a tray.

"Hurry up, Jim," he said. "Today we are going to have a special program outside."

I relaxed a bit -- thank God, no treatment today. While I eagerly took my meal I ruminated about why it would take me outside. Anyway, whatever awaited me outside hardly could be worse than the treatment in my cell.

"Come with me, Jim. I wouldn't chain you, but no foolishness, understand?" His hand was reposing on his RCT. I nodded tacitly; I shouldn't provoke him in any way.

I started to walk along the long corridor and then upstairs, and the Covon shadowed me. A signal light beside the exit trapdoor was green, so the intermediate chamber was closed from the outside. On the wall near it, several thermosuits were hanging.

At the Covon's beckoning, I pulled one of them from the wall, put it on and adjusted my helmet. Oxygen switched on automatically as well as the heating. The Covon stood motionlessly beside me, with his blaster hung to his belt; obviously, he didn't need a thermosuit. Instantaneously, a bold idea struck me. Inside the tight intermediate chamber we'll sit very close one to another, and if I become the slightest opportunity to nick his blaster -- Before I could finish that thought, the Covon pressed the button and the trapdoor opened. When entering, I stumbled over the doorsill from excitement. The Covon followed me and sat on the bench so we nearly touched each other. Oh, God, please, help me now! There won't be much time for the aerial pump will equalize the air pressure within a minute or so. I clenched my teeth when my right hand fingered the Covon's belt but the bloody blaster wasn't anywhere, damn it!

Then the equalized tension indicator went green, the Covon seized the wall, pressed a button and the external trapdoor opened. At that instant my fingers finally felt the blaster and I undid it from the Covon's belt only a split second before we went out. My left hand convulsively squeezed the blaster against my left hip for I couldn't hide it anywhere.

A huge Covon spaceship, totally different from ours, was standing near the scorched leftovers of our container. There wasn't any doubt about its main purpose -- to kill and to destroy. It was horrifying and magnificent at the same time.

"Look and admire, Jim." The Covon spoke with conscious superiority. "Do you see these tubes on both sides? They are the protonic guns, the most powerful weapon in the universe. The dome at the top is the generator of a protecting shield, which is practically indestructible -- even to nuclear missiles."

The Covon observed me, obviously waiting for my reaction. I tried to feign indifference although I was scared to death about when he'd notice he didn't have his blaster any more.

"And down there is the most refined weapon of all -- a special electronic blocker." The Covon didn't hide his pride. "When we don't want to destroy our enemies we can paralyse them within an instant and they are unable to defend themselves."

He strode towards the mighty leg of the spaceship and gave a tap on its metallic surface, and now I was forced to hide quickly the blaster behind my back.

"Jim, you probably realize now that we are invincible, so your resistance is senseless. Sooner or later, we will break you; so it would be foolish to persist. Come on, be reasonable -- "

Now or never. I raised my trembling hand and when I aimed the blaster at Covon, he froze in the middle of his persuasion. He took a quick glance at me and then he headed toward me, without any haste, surprisingly unconcerned. Within seconds he cut the distance between us in half, and then he stretched his hand with the RCT towards me.

I clenched my teeth, and squeezed the trigger. At first, nothing happened -- oh, God -- in panic I'd forgotten to thumb the safety pin off! Now the blaster made a spiteful hissing sound and a glaring blaze hit the Covon's chest. His enormous strength allowed him to stand upright for the endless few seconds before he collapsed flat on his face with a thump.

I was standing there motionlessly, staring at the Covon's body crooked on the ground in an odd way. There was no blood at all. Yet, the silver-grey skin on his back was in tatters, black burn margins all-round of the hole size of a man's fist. Quickly, I diverted my glance from that horrifying scene.

I'd killed him.

It was over. Everything was over now. There was nothing else I cared to think about. Now I was shaken to the core of my spirit. My neck and shoulder muscles were smarting, and my knees grew weak, so I slowly slipped on the ground.

After a while, with a gulping effort I restrained myself. I was trying to make meaning of what just happened and dozen of questions flashed though my mind. How could the Covon have been so careless as to allow me to get his blaster? Why didn't he look too surprised when he'd caught sight of the blaster in my hand? How come he was so foolish to attack me anyway, only with the RCT in his hand? And where were the other Covons -- where was their sentry? They should have been here by now; but nothing happened, at least not yet.

Instantaneously, I caught sight of a something beside me.

It seemed to me the Covon's body had moved. Oh, nonsense. That simply wasn't possible. Not with the hole through his chest.

But then -- I couldn't believe my own eyes -- the Covon moved the upper part of his body again. Then his arms supported it, and finally, he slowly sat on the dusty ground. I shuddered at the horrifying sight of his chest and then I stared in horror at the unbelievable scene. Through the scorched remains of his skin I saw his odd, greyish flesh gradually filling up the enormous wound, then changing colour to silvery when the new skin began to cover it. It was as if I was watching a fast-forwarded month-long healing of a terrible wound.

The triumphant Covon's eyes stared at me, his voice sardonic.

"Impressed, huh? As you see, Jim, we are not only invincible but also invulnerable. Do you realize, finally, how useless your foolish resistance is?"

I just stood there, bewildered, depressed and beaten. Later, I hardly knew how we returned inside. In my cell, I collapsed on my bunk, exhausted physically and bodily, knowing another sleepless night awaited me.

Hours later, my wounded self-confidence slowly returned. Obviously, the Covons were extremely tough opponents; but they surely weren't almighty. After all, they hadn't succeeded in breaking me with the illusions. So, they tried to do it with the cruel reality. Yes, today's demonstration was impressive, but -- so what? If they thought that I would break and betray Walt and his two comrades, they were terribly wrong.

Slowly, I woke up. Still, I laid there for a while, trying to delay my return to reality. But at that moment, I saw something different in my cell.

A vertical strip of light intersected the dusky contours of shelves laden with many recorded tapes. A feeble light penetrated into the cell from outside. I compelled myself to stay concentrated. I didn't want to be disappointed again if this scene turned out to be some new Covon trick.

Was it possible the ever-organized Covons would have allowed themselves such negligence as an unlocked cell door? No, that had to be a trap. Probably they were waiting behind the door to fall upon me as soon as I pop my nose through it. Maybe...

I held my breath with my face approaching the rift, watchfully, listening for an entire minute. Nothing -- no sound at all. There wasn't any shadow of movement in the lit up, abandoned corridor. I pushed the door off with my shoe, slowly. The door swung and the narrow rift opened to a way out, wide enough for my shoulders. Now I could see to the end of the corridor. There was nobody in it and the staircase was empty, too.

Where had the Covons gone? Anyway, it hardly made sense that they'd all have gone together. How many of them were on the Xanadis, anyway? Five, twenty, a couple of hundred? I'd never seen more than one, the one that interrogated me -- if it was always the same. I hadn't seen any of them during their attack either.

I marched step by step along the corridor, nervously looking around, expecting an ambush, a sudden attack. But nothing happened. Like always, on the wall near the exit trapdoor, several thermosuits were hanging. I decided to believe in the unlikely. Cautiously, I picked out one of them and adjusted my helmet. I pressed the button and the trapdoor into the intermediate chamber opened. My pulse sped up while I heard the well-known noise of the aerial pump and then the equalized tension indicator went green.

Now I opened the external trapdoor and hesitated a bit, again. There must have been a catch somewhere. But where? Yet, after some time I stepped clumsily out onto the stony ground.

There was nobody outside the feebly illuminated polygon -- and the mighty Covon's spaceship has gone!

There were only the traces of it. An equilateral triangular imprint, penetrating about half a foot into the ground, proved the Covons had taken off from this spot. But where to? To search at random for Walt's crew? Back to their own planet? To conquer Earth? But, that just didn't make sense. I shuddered, although the thermostat was running faultlessly. The hopping cone of the light from my helmet got lost somewhere in the dark distance.

Suddenly, I caught sight of a faint flashing. A green light in equal intervals -- two long and three short signals and then stop -- and reiteration. The preconceived sign for a safe rendezvous. Still a bit suspicious, I staggered hesitatingly toward the signals, ready for anything. Finally, I came close enough and my light just brushed the familiar silhouette.

Our rocket module.

A sub-orbital aircraft in which Walt, Lydia and Hugh had flown away to repair the broken aerial. A figure, slender even in the thermosuit, climbed down the metallic ladder and fervently waved its gloved hand. And then it came to meet me.

I'd have recognized the slight, yet seductive swaying in the hips anywhere. Lydia! An immense joy at her being safe overflowed me entirely. I breathed jerkily while I sped up my hasty steps, stumbling at the rough terrain. Then Lydia stretched her hands out to me and our hands, in the awkward gloves, finally touched. Our thermosuits rustled and our two visors snapped together, when we tried to kiss each other. We laughed at that, both trying to speak at the same time.

"Come on, Jim. Watch your step."

Her voice sounded hollow through the microphone connection. She led me to the rocket. I helped her to enter the tight prechamber and then I waited impatiently for her to empty it. When I entered the cabin, she also helped me to take off my helmet. Before I could say a word I felt her lips on mine, my breath mixed with hers and everything bad stopped existing.

Finally, we recovered our breaths.

"Oh, Lydia, how -- "

"You know, honey -- "

We both started talking at one time and laughed.

"You first, Jim. My poor lad -- you're like a ghost. What's happened to you?"

I was trying to be as brief as I could. Lydia was listening attentively all the time, her eyes fixed on mine.

"I'm so sorry for you, sweetheart." Her tender whispering comforted me. "But now it's all over, for good. As you see, I'm okay, and so are Walt and Hugh. But without your warning, we'd have been dead. You know, only a few hours after Walt got your message the Covons found our aerial on the mountain and they completely destroyed it."

I tacitly nodded to her, eager to know everything at once.

"Right away after your warning we'd hidden ourselves in one of the deep canyons. It's not too far away from here, only a quarter of an hour flight. In that underground hideout we've set up a tolerable bivouac, only our meals have been extremely rationed."

I kissed her but she pushed me off gently.

"Let me finish, Jim. We'd hidden a camera on the surface, which, about sixteen hours ago, showed the Covon's spaceship leaving Xanadis. Walt believed it had flown away with the second orbital speed. You know what this means?"

"Sure -- their spaceship can't be on Xanadis anymore."

"Exactly. Still, Walt wanted to be sure whether the Secondary Base was safe again. So I took off with the module and landed here. Then, I observed the environment for several hours and I hadn't seen any sign of life. Finally, I've noticed a figure walking in a thermosuit, and -- oh, Jim -- my heart told me it was you."

Our embrace lasted a while before she could speak again.

"So, I found you and we're together again; all the rest is not important."

"I couldn't agree more, Lydia. Still, don't you think we must urgently inform Walt about all the events?"

"Of course, honey. But there is something even more urgent. Our bivouac in that damned canyon is tight and doesn't allow any privacy at all. Yet, here we're alone, understand?"

She laughed at my astonished face and started to strip my clothes off. Finally, I got a clue and I started to cooperate with her. Maybe even more fervently than her.

I was lying on my side, exhausted, but appeased and happy. My left arm was resting over Lydia's slender waist, and I felt her breath on my neck. She was muttering something in my ear. I didn't know exactly what she means and I didn't care much about that, either. Finally, through the dozing, I began to understand the meaning of her words.

"... glad that we're together again. Not just for our sakes but also because of the purpose of our expedition."

"Mhm." I just enjoyed the sound of her voice -- I'd missed it for so long.

"Jim, don't drop off now." Her hand shook my shoulder. "As you probably know, Walt isn't acquainted with the Primary Base's exact position. Only you know its co-ordinates."

I yawned. "Yes. I'll tell him when we meet again."

Lydia coaxingly whispered to me, caressing my neck.

"Listen, Jim, are you forgotten the basic rule -- how important is that everybody knows everything about what's of vital importance?"

"Of course I didn't forget it. Let me doze -- just for a few minutes more."

She tenderly nibbled at my ear lobe, her muttering continued. "This way every bit of information won't be lost if something happens to an individual. Jim, you must tell me where the Primary Base is located. Darling, we love each other so you have to trust me."

Instantly, I was wide-awake. An icy horror enveloped my heart and a shudder of fear crept down my backbone.

In the name of God! It can't be true -- not Lydia! Not Lydia -- or that creature, that fake of the gentle being I'd known, that illusion of a girl! Damn her! A blind rage boiled inside me. I rose up furiously, stretching both of my arms, my fingers violently clasped her tender, white throat, that didn't resist at all...

My convulsive sobbing was tearing my chest apart. Through the curtain of tears, that were endlessly sliding over my cheeks I caught sight of the Covon. He was standing quietly and motionlessly in the corner of my cell and watched unaffectedly how I was strangling a pillow on my bunk.

The footsteps.

Familiar footsteps, now stopping just in front of the door. The electronic lock hums, and the air softly whizzes when the door opens. The Covon enters. The well-known mighty trunk with the spherical head and the gigantic limbs. His proton blaster is hooked to his belt, as always. A line of lights under the ceiling turns on in my darkish cell. The Covon puts down a salver with my meal and withdraws to the cell corner.

There have been no any treatments for a few days now. That's, probably, just temporary. Maybe the Covons are just deliberating on what they have to change about the interrogation procedure. Every day the Covon brings me three meals in regular intervals. All the time while I'm eating, he stands rigid in the corner. I don't even know if he looks at me or just gazes into space. He simply waits until I'm done and he carries the dishes away.

Sometimes, a strange flash of thought enters my mind: the times when the Covon is standing in the corner of my cell are the safest and the best for me. Everything else -- all the treatments, torments and kindly persuasions, all those expertly done illusions, are much worse. As long as the Covon is standing in the corner, nothing bad happens. In a way, I've got used to the Covon. Actually, it's fine with me when he just stands there, beside me, in my closed, quiet, safe cell.

Everything goes as usual. Everything follows the steady routine. Everything's fine.

Then, suddenly -- a huge explosion!

Like a colossal fist, the immense burst thrusts me against the cell's wall, with the salver, my chair and my bunk. An insufferable pain explodes in my knee, blood flows from my forehead into my right eye. The door of my cell has gone; torn away from the frame, it hangs by a single hinge. In the corner the Covon lies on his belly, motionlessly. One of his arms is bent in an unnatural position, his belt is torn apart and his proton blaster lies in the middle of the ruins.

Awkwardly, I gather myself up and wipe the blood from my head; then I try to catch my breath, leaning against the wall.

Suddenly, I hear some steps tramping outside and a well-known voice calls my name. Through the doorway, I see a man dressed in thermosuit, with a blaster in his hand. He comes closer along the corridor, inspects the whole line of smashed doors, one after another. Then he calls me, again. When he approaches, I see an inscription on his helmet: HUGH.

"NO!" I've heard my own shout.

No new frauds! No new Covon imitations of people that I cherish. No more illusions!

Quickly, I pick up the blaster up from the floor and set it up to the maximum. My arms are shaking when I point at the figure that's now in the frame of my door. A jet of glittering flame rushes out of the barrel, a huge heat reflects from the opposite wall and singes my face. On the corridor wall a smoking burnt outline remains in the hardly recognizable form of the thermosuit.

My teeth are chattering; I' trying to subdue shivering my knees as I lean on the smashed frame of my door, still with the blaster in my hand. Its indicator shows it's still almost full. The next ones may come -- I'm ready for them. Damn them all!

A slight sound of footsteps again. They're cautiously coming down the stairs at the end of the corridor, into which enters the icy coolness from outside. I'm trying to catch some air in my lungs, but that's almost impossible. Now, there are two voices -- a male and a female -- and I know each of them as well as my own voice. But the owners of those voices do not appear yet. They carefully stay behind the corner.

"Please, Jim, do not shoot at us!" a familiar woman's voice pleaded. "I beg you to be reasonable. Wait at least for a while -- listen to me first!"

To listen, of course! Listen to her, the damned Covon illusion! Yet, I shout to her.

"Speak out; say what you want to. But you'll have to be very persuasive to convince me, understand?"

"Look, Jim. Walt, Hugh and me have found the Primary Base, including the Warrior, and then Hugh managed to start it up." Her voice is uncertain, trembling. "Oh, darling -- we came here to rescue you from captivity! That blast a few moments ago was when the Warrior battered through the entrance in the building."

I roar with laughing. "Bullshit!"

"Oh, my darling -- how can you not recognize me? For God's sake, Jim, I'm Lydia, your only love! What on earth have the Covons done to you, to make you shoot at poor Hugh who came only to free you?" I feel a quivering in her voice. Suddenly she stops speaking and bursts into tears.

I tremble with rage. "An obvious lie! Yet another Covon fraud." I'm roaring these words at the top of my voice. "You're just one more illusion, plucked from my brain and projected here to deceive me! Oh no, I won't let you cheat me, not anymore!"

Lydia's fake rises her hand but I don't let her talk; I'm throwing my words to her as if were stones.

"If the Covons were able to read all my thoughts, they'd have read the Primary Base co-ordinates from my brains as well, and then they've destroyed it! I've already let them cheat me with frauds and copies -- but not anymore. That's enough! Damn, be damn, damn..."

My voice breaks. My knees become unsteady and I collapse to the floor, against the wall, but still with the blaster in my pressed hand.

After a while -- a white patch waves from behind the corner. A hankie, tied to a blaster barrel. Then, Walt's voice.

"Don't shoot, brother. Wait at least until I show you something. Something important -- something crucial. The indisputable evidence that I'm really your twin brother."

I laugh scornfully. "What else could you cook up, you devils?"

Slowly, Walt's figure shows up from behind the corner. He doesn't wear a helmet so he breathes heavily. His face is emaciated, hairy, and blackened.

"Listen to me, Jim, and then think twice about what I'll tell you. I agree with you the Covons are able -- they were able -- to read your thoughts, everything that you know. But you didn't know the Primary Base real co-ordinates!"

I keep silent with astonishment. What is he talking...

"Jim, try to understand me: the data under the code I'd given you, which you've seen, was deliberately false and those were the only ones the Covons could find in your brains!" His voice is trembling. "Such vitally important information is always top secret for everybody but the commander in charge. And I am the only one who knows the true, the real Primary Base co-ordinates!"

"I don't believe you! Nothing but the same old Covon lies, empty babbling! I've enough of this foolish, unnecessary game."

Walt's illusion imperiously raises its hand. "You want . "Let me ask you just one thing: is everything's fine with your left little finger!"

I stare at him; I don't understand. But he tenaciously looks at me.

"Well?"

"It started to hurt all of sudden and from that time it's like died away. So what..."

He raises his left arm high, strips off the glove and shows me his palm with widened fingers. A thumb and three more fingers, but, instead of his little finger there is a scarcely healed up stump, still covered with coagulated blood.

"See now? My little finger had been crushed when we tried to repair the aerial, right before I've got your warning." His words are hardly coming from his torpid lips. "You didn't know about the accident, Jim, so the Covons didn't know either! That's why I can't be just a Covon illusion. I am the genuine Walt, your twin brother."

He looks at me with shivery eyes and Lydia watches me over his shoulders. She breathes with difficulty because she's taken off her helmet too. I hear a buzzing in my head; my compressed lungs are trying to get some air, but in vain. My fingers are completely numb and both the figures in front of me become hazy and nebulous. I must shoot right away or else I won't be able to pull the trigger at all.

Then I feel something breaks inside me.

The tears of debility blur my gaze. I'm exhausted -- physically, and above all, mentally. I have had enough of this foolish killing -- unlucky Hugh must remain the last senseless victim! I'll throw away this damned blaster and embrace my dears. These are, doubtlessly, Lydia and Walt. My dear girlfriend and my beloved brother. They've proved that to me -- and I also feel it. I must listen to my heart. It's not worth living if one has no confidence in anybody any more. Otherwise, I myself will turn into a Covon, too.

"Walt." Lydia's voice is trembling with excitement. "Walt!"

"Not now, Lydia. Don't you see -- "

"Walt, look at your wrist screen -- look at the Warrior!"

"My God!" Walt's sigh dies away. "They've disabled it..." He turns toward me again. "Oh, brother, we're doomed -- they've won. Give me a hug."

I gaze at him in bewilderment, undecided, but I raise the blaster, again, pointing it to his chest.

"Jim!" His shout is soul stirring. "Don't you see? The Covons lured us into a trap and now they want you shoot me! Then their triumph will be perfect."

I still hesitate; but then Walt's figure steps forward with his hands widened in a silent affection.

Instantly, I flinch when the recent memory flashes through my mind -- the memory of the false 'Lydia', how she'd hurried from the rocket module, with her widened arms, to meet and embrace me...

No! I can't stand any more illusions! My finger shrinks around the trigger -- a dazzling jet rushes from blaster's barrel and the approaching figure becomes a blaze.

A terrible pain overflows me -- my whole skin is one hellfire, every cell of mine screams in an unimaginable torment -- but the next moment it's already over. I must not lose my consciousness -- oh, God, not yet -- until I finish what has to be finished. I squeeze the trigger again -- and the other figure's gone, also.

With difficulty, dizzy, on my hands and knees, I crawl back into the secure, benevolent inwardness of my cell. With the last remains of my strength I try to lift the deformed door, but in vain. Now I notice two strong arms helping me -- oh, yes, there's my Covon, hale and hearty. We, together, lean the door against the doorjamb from the inside, and prop it up with a broken shelf.

Surprisingly, I'm not cold anymore. I just feel exhausted and empty. The well-known, pleasant twilight of my cell shrouds me and the feeling of safety slowly returns.

In a strange way, I know everything is going to be all right, now. I won't go anywhere, any more. I'll simply stay here. Here in my precious, safe shelter, I'll wait until Walt comes to fetch me.

THE END

Bio: Nearly three dozen of Mr. Rodosek's short stories have been published in SF magazines in USA and UK including Aphelion (The Space Sphinx, October, 2005). He is a Construction Engineer, Doctor of Technical Science and Senior Professor in University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, European Union, when not writing science fiction. Edward has fifteen books in print, including four novels and ten collections of short sci-fi stories in Slovenia, and a collection of science fiction short stories ('Beyond Perception') in the U.S.

E-mail: Edward Rodosek

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