Free Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss

going to risk his scabby neck by entering an unknown stretch of ponics, with all its possibilities for ambush? Just to save my breath answering these inane suggestions, you’d better all get one thing perfectly clear – you are doing what I tell you to do. That’s what being united means, and if we aren’t united we aren’t anything. Hold firm to that idea and we’ll survive. Clear enough? Roy? Ern? Wantage? Fermour?’
    The priest looked into their set faces as if he were holding an identification parade. They hooded their eyes from his gaze, like a quartet of drowsy vultures.
    ‘We’ve agreed to all that once already,’ Fermour said impatiently. ‘What more do you want us to do, kiss your boots?’
    Although all were in some measure in agreement with him, the other three growled angrily at Fermour, he being a somewhat safer target for growls than the priest.
    ‘You can kiss my boots only when you’ve earned that privilege,’ Marapper said. ‘But there is something else I want you to do. I want you to obey me implicitly, but I also require you to swear you will not turn on one another. I’m not asking you to trust each other, or anything stupid like that. I’m not asking for any breaches of the canons of the Teaching – if we’re to make the Long Journey, we’re making it Orthodox. But we cannot afford constant quarrelling and fighting; your easy times in Quarters are over.
    ‘Some of the dangers we may meet, we know about – mutants, outsiders, other tribes, and finally the terrible people of Forwards themselves. But have no doubt that there will alsobe dangers of which we know nothing. When you feel spite for one of your fellows, nurse that bright spark for the unknown: it will be needed.’
    He looked searchingly at them again.
    ‘Swear to it,’ he commanded.
    ‘That’s all very well,’ Wantage grumbled. ‘Of course I agree, but it obviously means sacrificing – well, our own characters. If we do that, it’s up to you to do the same sort of thing, Marapper, and give up all these speeches. Just tell us what you want us to do and we’ll do it without holding an oration over it.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Fermour quickly, before fresh argument could break out. ‘For hem sake let’s swear and then get some kip.’
    They agreed to forego the privilege of private quarrels, and pressed slowly into the ponic fringes, the priest leading, fishing out an enormous bundle of magnetic keys. Some yards on, they came to the first door. They halted, and the priest began to try his keys one by one on to the shallow impression of the lock.
    Complain, meanwhile, pushed on a little further and called back to them after a minute.
    ‘There’s a door here which has been broken into,’ he said. ‘Another tribe has evidently passed this way at some time. It would save us trouble if we went in here.’
    They moved up to him, pressing back the rattling canes. The door stood open only a finger’s breadth, and they eyed it with some apprehension. Every door presented a challenge, an entry to the unknown; all knew of tales of death leaping from behind these silent doors, and the fear had been ingrained in them since childhood.
    Drawing his dazer, Roffery lifted his foot and kicked out. The door swung open. Within, the briefest of scuttles was heard, and then dead silence. The room was evidently large, but dark, its sources of illumination having been broken – how long ago? Had there been light within, the ponics wouldhave forced the door in their own remorseless way, satisfying their unending thirst for light, but they had even less use than man for the corners of darkness.
    ‘Only rats in there,’ Complain said, a little breathlessly. ‘Go on in, Roffery. What are you waiting for?’
    For answer, Roffery took a torch from his pack and shone it ahead. He moved forward, the others crowding after him.
    It was a big room as rooms went, eight paces by five; it was empty. The nervous eye of Roffery’s torch flicked