by Edmund Hamilton
from WONDER STORIES, May 1933
Edmond Hamilton’s writing career is as old as science fiction magazines themselves. His first appearance with “The Monster-God of Mamurth” was in Weird Tales for August 1926 when Amazing Stories was but five issues old. Over forty years later the May 1969 Amazing Stories carried his latest piece, “The Horror From the Magellanic”. In between those two dates Hamilton has turned out a virtual library-full of short stories and novels running the entire gamut of imaginative fiction: from detective to horror, from super science fiction to mood sf.
And in each case it was nearly always Hamilton who started the trend. His first sale to Weird Tales was a novel “Across Space”, the tale of a Martian colony on Easter Island that tries to draw Mars towards Earth so that the dying civilization can transfer planets. Out of such tales grew Hamilton’s tendency to subject the Earth to imminent doom only to be saved at the eleventh hour by our hero. These tales, which were born in Weird Tales and later transferred to Amazing Stories, earned Hamilton the nickname of “World-destroyer”.
Hamilton was born in Ohio on October 21st 1904, just two months after Clifford Simak who was some 500 miles away. Hamilton was twenty-one when Farnsworth Wright bought his first fiction, and his writing career was born. Weird Tales remained a major market for several years, and he never forsook it. His last original appearance in that magazine was with “The Watcher of the Ages” in the September 1948 issue. In 1930 Hamilton burst into sf magazines in a big way, and immediately his style began to alter, and new plots appeared. “The Man Who Saw The Future” (Amazing, October 1930) was a radical change, telling of a fifteenth century apothecary who is sentenced to death for his sorcery, when for no reason of his own he is temporarily transferred to the future. When Hornig’s “New Policy” began at Wonder Stories, Hamilton experimented further and “The Island of Unreason” is proof of his popularity, whatever the style. In these pre-Hugo award days, a spasmodic Jules Verne Award was given to popular stories. The first winner was Hamilton, and the story was the one you are about to read.
The Director of City 72, North American Division 16, looked up enquiringly from his desk at his assistant.
“The next case is Allan Mann, Serial Number 2473R6,” said the First Assistant Director. “The charge is breach of reason.”
“The prisoner is ready?” asked the Director, and when his subordinate nodded he ordered, “Send him in.”
The First Assistant Director went out and re-entered in a moment, followed by two guards who had the prisoner between them. He was a young man dressed in the regulation sleeveless white shirt and white shorts, with the blue square of the Mechanical Department on his shoulder.
He looked a little uncertainly around the big office, at the keyboards of the big calculating and predicting machines, at the televisor disks through which could be seen cities half around the world, and at the broad windows that looked out across the huge cubical metal buildings of City 72.
The Director read from a sheet on his desk. “Allan Mann, Serial Number 2473R6, was apprehended two days ago on a charge of breach of reason.
“The specific charge is that Allan Mann, who had been working two years on development of a new atomic motor, refused to turn over his work to Michael Russ, Serial Number 1877R6, when ordered to do so by a superior. He could give no reasonable cause for his refusal but stated only that he had developed the new motor for two years and wanted to finish it himself. As this was a plain breach of reason, officers were called.”
The Director looked up at the prisoner. “Have you any defense, Allan Mann?”
The young man flushed. “No, sir, I have not. I wish only to say that I realize now I was wrong.”
“Why did you rebel against your superior’s order? Did he not tell you that Michael Russ was better fitted than you to finish development of your motor?”
“He did, yes,” Allan Mann answered. “But I had worked on the motor so long I wanted very much to finish it myself, even though it took longer—I realize it was unreasonable of me—”
The Director laid down the sheet and bent earnestly forward. “You are right, Allan Mann, it was unreasonable of you. It was a breach of reason and as such, it was a blow at the very foundation of our modern world-civilization!”
He raised a lean finger in emphasis. “What is it, Allan Mann, that has built up the present world-state out of a mass of warring nations? What has eliminated conflict, fear, poverty, hardship from the world? What but reason?
“Reason has raised man from the beast-like level he formerly occupied to his present status. Why, in the old days of unreason the very ground on which this city now stands was occupied by a city called New York where men struggled and strove with each other blindly and without cooperation and with infinite waste and toil.
“All that has been changed by reason. The old emotions which twisted and warped men’s minds have been overruled and we listen now only to the calm dictates of reason. Reason has brought us up from the barbarism of the twentieth century and to commit a breach of reason has become a serious crime. For it is a crime that aims directly at the demolition of our world-order.”
Beneath the Director’s calm statement, Allan Mann wilted. “I realize that that is so, sir,” he said. “It is my hope that my breach of reason will be regarded only as a temporary aberration.”
“I do so regard it,” the Director said. “I am sure that by now you realize the wrongness of unreasonable conduct.
“But,” he continued, “this explanation of your act does not excuse it. The fact remains that you have committed a breach of reason and that you must be corrected in the way specified by law.”
“What is this way of correction?” asked Allan Mann.
The Director considered him. “You are not the first one to commit a breach of reason, Allan Mann. In the past more than one person has let irrational emotions sway him. These atavastic returns to unreason are becoming rarer but they still occur.
“Long ago we devised a plan for the correction of these unreasonables, as we call them. We do not punish them, of course, for to inflict punishment on anyone for wrong-doing would be itself unreasonable. We try instead to cure them. We send them to what we call the island of unreason.
“That is a small island a few hundred miles out at sea from this coast. There are taken all the unreasonables and there they are left. There is no form of government on the island and only unreasonables live there. They are not given any of the comforts of life which human reason has devised but instead must live there as best they may in primitive fashion.”
* * * *
“If they fight or attack each other, it is nothing to us. If they steal from each other, we care not. For living like that, in a place where there is no rule of reason, they soon come to see what society would be like without reason. They see and never forget and most of them when their sentence is finished and they are brought back are only too glad for the rest of their lives to live in reasonable fashion. Though a few incorrigible unreasonables must stay on the island all their lives.
“It is to this island that all guilty of breach of reason must be sent. And so as provided by law, I must sentence you to go there.”
“To the island of unreason?” Allan Mann said, dismay plain on his face. “But for how long?”
“We never tell those sent there how long their sentence is to be,” the Director told him. “We want them to feel that they have a lifetime ahead of them on the island and this brings the lesson further home to them. When your sentence is finished, the guard-flier that takes you there will go there to bring you back.”
He stood up. “Have you any complaint to make against this sentence?”
Allan Mann was silent, then spoke in subdued voice. “No, sir, it is but reasonable that I be corrected according to custom.”
The Director smiled. “I am glad to see that you are already recovering. When your sentence has expired I hope to see you completely cured.”
* * * *
The guard-flier split the air like a slim metal torpedo as it hurtled eastward over the gray ocean. Long minutes before the coastline had faded from sight behind, and now beneath the noonday sun there extended to the horizons only the gray wastes of the empty ocean.
Allan Mann regarded it from the flier’s window with deepening dismay. Reared in the great cities like every other member of civilized humanity, he had an inborn dislike of this solitude. He sought to evade it temporarily by conversing with the two guards who, with a pilot, were the flier’s other occupants. But Allan found that they disliked to talk much to unreasonables.
“It’ll be in sight in a few minutes,” one of them said in answer to his question. “Soon enough for you, I guess.”
“Where do you land me there?” Allan asked. “There’s some kind of city there?”
“A city on the island of unreason ?” The guard shook his head. “Of course not. Those unreasonables couldn’t cooperate long enough on anything to build any kind of a city.”
“But there’s some sort of a place for us to live, isn’t there?” asked Allan Mann anxiously.
“No place but what you find for yourself,” said the guard unsympathetically. “Some of the unreasonables do have a kind of village of huts but some of them just run wild.”
“But even those must sleep and eat somewhere” insisted Allan with all the firm faith of his kind in the omnipresence of bed and food and hygienic amusements provided by a paternal government.
“They sleep in the best places they can find, I suppose,” said the guard. “They eat fruits and berries and kill small animals and eat them—”
“Eat animals?” Allan Mann, of the world’s fiftieth generation of vegetarians, was so shocked by die revolting thought that he sat silent until the pilot droned over his shoulder, “Island ahead!”
He looked anxiously down with the guards as the flier circled and came back and dropped in a spiral toward the island.
It was not a large island, just an oblong bit of land that lay on the great ocean like a sleeping sea-monster. Dense green forest covered its low hills and shallow ravines and extended down to the shelving sandy beaches.
* * * *
To Allan Mann it looked savage, wild, forbidding.
He could see smoke rising in several thin curls from the island’s western end but this evidence of man’s presence repelled rather than reassured him. Those smokes came from crude fires where men were perhaps scorching and eating the flesh of lately-living things—
The guard-flier dipped lower, shot along the beach and came to rest with its vertical air-jets spurning up sand.
“Out with you,” said the chief guard as he opened the door. “‘Can stay here but a moment.”
Allan Mann, stepping down onto the hot sand, clung to the flier’s door as a last link to civilization. “You’ll come back for me when my sentence is up?” he cried. “You’ll know where to find me?”
“We’ll find you if you’re on the island but don’t worry about that—maybe your sentence was life,” grinned the chief guard. “If it wasn’t, we’ll get you unless some unreasonable has killed you.”
“Killed me?” said Allan, aghast. “Do you mean to say that they kill each other?”
“They do, and with pleasure,” said the guard. “Better get off this beach before you’re seen. Remember, you’re not living with reasonable people now!”
With the slam of its door the guard-flier’s jets roared and it shot upward. Allan Mann watched stupefiedly as it rose, circled in the sunshine like a gleaming gull, and then headed back westward. Sickly, he watched it vanish, westward toward the land where people were reasonable and life went safely and smoothly without the dangers that threatened him here.
With a start Allan Mann realized that he was increasing his danger by remaining out on the open beach where he might easily be seen by anyone in the woods. He could not conceive why any of the unreasonables might want to kill him but he feared the worst. Allan Mann started on a run up the beach toward the woods.
His feet slipped in the hot sands and though Allan was physically perfect like all other citizens of the modern world, he found progress difficult. Each moment he expected to see a horde of yelling unreasonables appear along the beach. He quite forgot that he was a condemned unreasonable himself, and saw himself as a lone representative of civilization marooned on this savage island.
He reached the woods and plumped down behind a bush, panting for breath and looking this way and that. The forest was very hot and silent, a place of green gloom pillared by bars of golden sunlight that struck down through chinks in the leafy canopy above. Allan heard birds chittering around him.
He considered his predicament. He must live on this island for an unguessable length of time. It might be a month, a year, even many years. He saw now how true was the fact that the prisoner’s ignorance of his sentence’s length made it all the more felt. Why, he might, as the guard had said, have to spend all his life on the island!
He tried to tell himself that this was improbable and that his sentence could not be so severe. But no matter what its length, he must prepare to live here. The essentials were shelter and food, and escape from the other unreasonables. He decided that he would first find some secluded spot for a shelter, construct one, and then try to find berries or fruits such as the guard had mentioned. Meat was not to be thought of without revulsion.
Cautiously Allan Mann got to his feet and looked about. The green forest seemed still and peaceful but he peopled it with a myriad dangers. From behind every bush menacing eyes might be spying on him. Nevertheless, he must win to a more hidden spot and so he started in through the woods, determining to keep away from the island’s western end where he had seen the smokes.
Allan Mann had gone but a dozen fearful steps when he stopped short, whirled. Through the brush someone was crashing toward him.
His panic-stricken mind had not the time to think of flight before the running figure emerged from the brush beside him, then at sight of him recoiled.
It was a girl clad in a stained, ragged tunic. Her limbs showed brown below its tattered hem, her black hair was cut very short, and as she threw herself back from him in alarm a short spear in her right hand flashed up ready to dart toward him.
Had he made a move toward her the spear would have been driven at him; but he stood as quivering and startled as she. Gradually as they confronted each other, the fact that he was harmless became apparent to the girl and some of the terror left her eyes.
Yet with her gaze still upon him she backed cautiously away until just behind her were some dense bushes. With a quick escape thus assured her, she surveyed him.
“You’re new?” she said. “I saw the flier come.”
“New?” said Allan mystified.
“New to the island, I mean,” she said quickly. “They just left you, didn’t they?”
Allan nodded. He was still trembling slightly. “Yes, they just left me. It was breach of reason—”
“Of course,” she said. “That’s what we’re all here for, we unreasonables. Those old fogies of directors send someone here every few days or so.”
At this heretical description of the executives of the reasonable world, Allan Mann stared. “Why shouldn’t they send them?” he demanded. “It’s only fair they should correct unreasonables.”
Her bright black eyes widened. “You don’t talk like an unreasonable,” she accused.
“I should hope not,” he returned. “I committed a breach of reason but I realize it and I’m sorry I did it.”
“Oh,” she said, and seemed disappointed. “What’s your name? Mine’s Lita.”
“Mine is Allan Mann. My serial number—” He stopped.
* * * *
A bird had called loudly back in the woods and the sound had seemed to recall something to the girl and bring fear back into her eyes.
“We’d better get out of here,” she said quickly. “Hara will be along here after me—he was chasing me.”
“Chasing you?” Allan remembered with a cold feeling the guard’s warning. “Who is Hara?”
“Hara’s boss of the island—he’s a lifer they just brought a few weeks ago but he’s beaten all the strongest men here.”
“You mean that they fight here to see who is to be the leader?” Allan asked incredulously. Lita nodded.
“Of course they do. This isn’t back in civilization where the best mind ranks highest, you know. And Hara’s after me.”
“He wants to kill you?”
“Of course not! He wants me for his woman and I won’t consent. I never will, either.” The black eyes flashed.
Allan Mann felt that he had strayed into some mystifying new world. “His woman?” he said with knitted brows.
Lita nodded impatiently. “When people here mate there’s no Eugenic Board to assign them to each other so they simply fight for mates.
“Hara has been after me and I won’t have him. He got angry today and said he’d make me but I fled the village and when he and some of the others started after me I was—listen!”
Lita stopped with the tense command and Allan, listening with her, heard from somewhere in the woods distant trampling and crashing, a hoarse voice calling and others answering.
“They’re coming!” Lita cried. “Come on, quick!”
“But they can’t—” Allan started vainly to say, and then was cut off as he found himself running with the girl through the woods.
Branches tore at his shorts and briars pricked his legs savagely as they forced through the brush. Lita led inward toward the island’s center and Allan struggled to keep beside her.
His muscles were in the pink of condition but he now found that running from danger through a forest was oddly different from running beneath the sunlamps of one of the great city gymnasiums. There was a tightness across his chest, a cold at his spine, as he heard the hoarse voices behind.
Lita looked back, her face white through its brown, as she and Allan ran. Allan Mann told himself that there was no reason why he should follow this girl into trouble. Before he could formulate the thought further they emerged into a small clearing just as from one side of it there crashed another man.
A bull-like roar of triumph went up and Allan Mann saw that the man was a barrel-bodied, stocky individual with flaming red hair on his head and chest, his hard face alight. He grasped Lita’s arm as the girl swiftly shrank back beside Allan.
“Hara!” she panted, trying in vain to break free.
“Ran away, eh?” he said savagely, and then his eyes took in Allan Mann. “And with this white-faced sheep!”
“Well, we’ll see whether he’s good enough to take a girl away from Hara!” he added. “You’ve no spear or club so we’ll make it fists!”
He tossed his own club and spear to the ground and advanced with balled firsts on Allan. “What do you mean?” asked Allan dazedly.
“Fight, of course!” bellowed Hara. “You wanted this girl and you can fight me for her!”
Allan Mann thought swiftly. Against this brutal fighter he would have small chance—now, if ever, he must use the reason that is man’s advantage over the brute. “But I don’t want her!” he said. “I don’t want to fight for her!”
Hara stopped in sheer surprise and Allan saw Lita’s dark eyes stare at him. “Don’t want to fight?” cried the other. “Then run, rat!” And as he snarled it in contempt he turned to grasp the girl.
As he turned Allan stooped swiftly, scooped up his heavy club and slammed it against the back of Hara’s neck. The red-head went down like a sack of meal.
“Come on!” cried Allan tensely to Lita. “Before he comes to we can get away—quick!”
They rushed in to the brush. Soon they heard the calling voices become suddenly noisy, then die away. They stopped, panting.
“That was brain-work,” said Allan Mann exultantly. “He won’t come to for an hour.”
Lita looked scornfully at him. “That wasn’t fair fighting,” she accused.
Allan Mann was aghast. “Fair fighting?” he repeated. “But surely when you wanted to get away from him—you didn’t expect me to fight him with my fists—”
“It wasn’t fair,” she repeated. “You hit him when he wasn’t looking and that’s cowardly.”
If Allan Mann had not been super-civilized he would have sworn.
“But what’s wrong about it?” he asked bewilderedly. “Surely it’s only reasonable for me to use cunning against his strength?”
“We don’t care much on this island about being reasonable— you ought to know that,” she told him. “But we do believe in fighting fair.”
“In that case you can get away from him the next time yourself,” he said furiously. “You unreasonables—”
A thought struck him. “How did you come to be sent to this island anyway?”
* * * *
Lita smiled. “I’m a lifer. So are Hara and most of the others at the village.”
“A lifer? What did you do to get a life-sentence in this horrible place?”
“Well, six months ago the Eugenic Board in my city assigned me a mate. I refused to have him. The Board had me charged with breach of reason and when I persisted in my refusal I was sentenced here for life.”
“No wonder,” breathed Allan Mann. ‘To refuse the mate the Board assigned—I never heard of such a thing! Why did you do it?”
“I didn’t like the way he looked at me,” said Lita, as though that explained everything.
Allan Mann shook his head helplessly. He could not understand the thought-processes of these unreasonables.
“We’d better get on into the island,” Lita was saying. “Hara will come to in a little while and he will be very angry with you and will want to catch you.”
At that thought Allan’s blood ran cold. He could picture the big Hara in bull-like rage and the thought of himself in the grip of those hairy hands was terrifying. He stood up with Lita and looked apprehensively around.
“Which way?” he asked in a whisper.
She nodded toward the island’s center. “The woods in there will be best. We’ll have to avoid the village.”
They started through tine woods. Lita went first, her spear ready at all times. Allan followed, and after a few minutes he picked up a heavy section of hard wood that would make an effective club at need. He held the weapon awkwardly as they went on.
They were penetrating into deeper woods, and it was all a strange world to Allan. He knew forests only as seen from a flier, green masses that lay between the great cities. Now he was down in one, part of it. The birds and insects, the small animals in the brush, all of these were new to him. More than once Lita had to caution him as he made a noise in stepping on dry sticks. The girl went as quietly through the woods as a cat.
They climbed a slope and went over its ridge. On the ridge Lita halted to point out to him the clearing at the island’s west end that held the village, a score or more of solid log cabins. Smoke curled from their chimneys and Allan Mann saw men standing about and children playing in the sunlit clearing. He was deeply interested by this village. But Lita led onward.
The woods about them were now so dense that Allan felt more safe. He had acquired a certain confidence of step. Then he was suddenly startled out of it. As a rabbit dashed by under their feet, bolting for cover, Lita’s short spear flashed like a streak of light. The rabbit rolled over and over and then lay still.
The girl ran and picked it up, turned and held up the furry thing with her face exultant. It would be their supper, she told him. Allan stared at her incredulously. He felt as revolted by her act as his ancestors of generations before would have been by a murder. He tried not to show Lita how he regarded her.
When they reached a tiny gully deep in the woods, Lita stopped. The sun was sinking and already darkness was invading the forest. They would spend the night there, Lita told him, and she began construction of two tiny branch-shelters.
Under her orders Allan tore branches from the trees and stacked them. More than once she had to correct him and he felt ridiculously incompetent. When they had finished, before them stood two fairly tight little huts. Allan, looking at these shelters that had been brought out of nothing, for the first time felt a certain respect for the girl.
He watched her, as slowly with stone and steel she took from a pouch at her belt, she constructed a fire. He found the business of eliciting and nursing the sparks intensely engrossing. Soon she had a tiny little blaze, too small to show smoke above the darkening woods or to be seen for far.
She calmly cleaned the rabbit then. Allan watched her in entranced horror. When she had finished she began to roast it.
She offered him a red bit on a stick, to roast for himself. “I can’t eat that!” he said sickly.
Lita looked at him, then smiled. “I was the same way when I came to the island,” she said. “All of us are but we get to like it.”
“Like eating the flesh of another living creature?” Allan said. “I’ll never like that.”
“You will when you’re hungry enough,” she said calmly, and went on roasting the rest of the rabbit.
Allan, watching her eat the browned meat, became aware that he was already very hungry. He had not eaten since that morning.
He contrasted that morning meal in the Nutrition Dispensary, with its automatic service and mushy predigested foods, with this place.
It was too dark for him to look for berries. He sat watching the girl eat. The smell of the scorched flesh, which at first he had found revolting, did not now seem so bad.
“Go ahead, eat it,” Lita told him, handing him one of the roasted bits. “No matter how bad it is, it’s only reasonable to eat anything that will keep you living, isn’t it?”
* * * *
Allan’s face cleared and he nodded troubledly. It certainly was only reasonable to eat what was at hand in necessity. “I don’t think I can do it, though,” he said, eyeing the browned bit.
He bit gingerly into it. At the thought that he had in his mouth the flesh of another once-living creature, his stomach almost revolted. But with an effort he swallowed the bit.
It was hot and did not seem unpleasant. There were certain juices—quite unlike the foods of the Nutrition Dispensary, he thought. He reached doubtfully for another piece.
From behind her lashes with a secret smile Lita watched him eat another piece and then another of the rabbit. His jaws ached with the unaccustomed labor of chewing but his stomach sent up messages of gladness. He did not stop until all of the rabbit was gone and then he went back to some of the bones he had already discarded and polished them off more thoroughly.
He looked up at last, greasy of hands, to meet Lita’s enigmatic expression. Allan flushed.
“It was only reasonable to eat all of it, since it had to be eaten,” he defended.
“Did you like it?” she said.
“What has liking got to do with the nutritive qualities of food?” he countered. Lita laughed.
They put out the fire and retired to the two huts. Lita kept her spear but he retained his club. She showed him how to close up his hut once he was inside.
For a time Allan Mann lay awake in the darkness on the branch-bed she had built It was very uncomfortable, he found.
He could not but contrast it with his neat bed back in the dormitory that was his home in City 72. Now long would it be before he was again in it, he wondered. How long—
Allan sat up, rubbing his eyes, to find bright sunlight filtering through the interstices of his leafy shelter. He had slept on the branches after all, and soundly. Yet he felt stiff and sore as he got to his feet and went out.
It was still early morning though the sunlight was bright. The other hut was empty and Lita was not anywhere in sight.
Allan felt a sudden sense of alarm. Had anything happened to his companion?
He was about to risk calling aloud when bushes rustled behind him and as he spun about she emerged from them. Her hands were full of bright red little berries.
“Breakfast,” she smiled at him. “It’s all there is.”
They ate them. “What are we going to do now?” asked Allan.
Lita’s brows knit. “I don’t dare to go back to the village yet for Hara might be there. Neither can you go now after what you did.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Allan protested quickly. He had no desire to face any more unreasonables like the one he had met.
“We’d better keep moving on into the island,” she said. “We can live for a while in the woods, anyway.”
They started on, the girl with her spear and Allan bringing his rude club.
The soreness and stiffness quickly left Allan’s muscles as they moved on. He found a certain pleasure in this tramp through the sun-dappled woods.
They heard no sign of pursuit and relaxed their cautiousness of progress a little. It was a mistake, as Allan Mann found when something struck him a numbing blow on the left arm and he spun to find two ragged men charging fiercely from a clump of brush.
One of them had flung his club to stun Allan. The other now rushed forward with bludgeon upraised to do what his companion had failed to do. There was no possible chance to flee or to use strategy and with the blind desperate terror of a cornered animal Allan Mann struck wildly out with his own club at the onrushing attacker.
He knocked the club spinning from the other’s hand by his first wild blow. He heard Lita cry out but he was now gone amuck with terror, was showering crazy blows upon his opponent Then Allan became suddenly aware that the other was no longer standing before him but lay stunned at his feet. The second man was running to pick up his club.
Lita’s spear flashed at the running man and missed. But as the man bent for his weapon Allan swung his club in a mighty blow.
It missed the stooping man by a foot but the terrific swing seemed to unnerve him for he abandoned his weapon and took to his heels, running back into the woods.
“Hara!” he yelled hoarsely as he ran. “Hara, here they are!”
Lita ran to the side of the panting Allan. “You’re not hurt?” she cried. “You beat them both—it was wonderful!”
But Allan Mann’s sudden insanity had left him and he felt only terror. “He’ll bring Hara and the rest here! he cried. “We’ve got to flee—”
The girl picked up her spear and they hastened on into the forest. They heard other calling voices behind them now.
“You needn’t be so afraid when you can fight like that!” Lita exclaimed as they hurried on, but Allan shook his head.
“I didn’t know what I was doing! This terrible place with its fighting and turmoil and craziness—It’s even got me acting as unreasonably as the others! If I ever get away from here—”
The calling voices were louder and closer behind them as the two ran on. There seemed a dozen or more of them.
Allan thought he could distinguish the bull-like voice of Hara. At thought of that red-haired giant his body went taut.
* * * *
He and the girl stumbled down still another wooded slope and emerged suddenly onto an open beach, the blue sea beyond it.
“They’ve driven us clear to the eastern end of the island!” Allan cried. “We can’t go any further and we can’t hope to slip back through them!”
Lita halted, seemed to make sudden decision. “Yes, you can get back through them!” she told him. “I’ll stay out here on the beach and they’ll rush out toward me when they see me. It’ll give you a chance to get back through the woods!”
“But I can’t go like that and leave you here for Hara to capture!” said Allan in dismay.
“Why not? It wouldn’t be reasonable for you to stay here and meet Hara, would it? You know what he would do to you!”
Allan shook his head troubled. “No, that wouldn’t be reasonable for it wouldn’t do you any good. But even though it’s unreasonable I don’t like to go—”
“Go and go quickly!” Lita urged, pushing him back toward the dense woods. “They’ll be here in a moment!”
Allan Mann stepped reluctantly toward the woods, entered the concealing brush. He stopped, looked back to where Lita stood on the beach. He could now hear a tramping of brush as the pursuers approached.
He felt somehow that there was a defect in his reasoning, something wrong. Yet search as he might he could find nothing unreasonable in his conduct He had never seen this girl before the preceding day, she was a life-term unreasonable, and altogether it would be completely irrational for him to imperil himself further with the atavistic Hara for her sake. This was indisputable yet—
A big form crashed through the brush close beside the hiding Allan and a triumphant bellow went up from Hara as he merged onto the beach and saw Lita. Before she could turn on him Hara had grasped her arm, tossed her spear aside. The next instant all of Allan’s faculty of reason was forgotten as with a crazy red tide of fury running through his veins he leapt out onto the beach.
“Let her go!” he yelled and charged on Hara with uplifted club.
The red-haired giant spun about, released the girl and as Allan swung in a mad blow struck out with his own club, shattering Allan’s weapon with stunning force and knocking him back onto the sand.
“So it’s you!” gritted Hara. He dropped his own club, clenched his huge fists. “All right, get up and take what’s coming to you this time!”
Allan felt as though some resistless outside force was bringing him to his feet and hurling him toward Hara.
He saw the hard, scowling face through a red mist and then it shifted and as his clenched hand suddenly hurt him he was aware that he had struck Hara a stinging blow in the face.
Hara roared, swung furiously. Allan felt a dazing impact and then was aware that he was scrambling up again from the sand and that something warm was running over his cheek.
He flung in upon Hara and this time raised both clenched hands and hammered with them at the red-head’s face.
Something hard hit his chest with stunning force, and the world, the beach, the blue sea and sky rocked wildly,
His vision cleared momentarily and he saw Hara’s raging face and flailing fists, glimpsed beyond him other ragged men who were yelling as they watched, and then again the feel of hot sand on his back made him aware that he was on the ground and made him struggle up and forward.
He jabbed blindly with his fists into the red haze in which Hara’s face seemed dancing. There was something running in his eyes that kept him from seeing well but it seemed to him that Hara’s face was bloody.
Something colliding with his head forced him to his knees but he swayed up and struck again with both fists. Now Hara’s eyes held astonishment as much as anger. He was backing away as Allan swung crazily.
Allan felt his strength fast running away, hunched himself and then drove forward both fists waist-high with all the weight of his body behind them. He felt smashing blows on mouth and ear as he struck, but in the next instant heard a gasp and glimpsed Hara with face gray toppling over on his side.
Then Allan was conscious of the bright sand of the beach running up to meet his face. There were men yelling and Lita’s voice crying something.
He was aware of Lita’s arms supporting him, her hands wiping something from his face—her hands—
Her hands became suddenly big and rough. He opened his eyes and it was not Lita at all but a white-clad guard who stood over him.
Allan stared beyond him and saw not beach and sea but the metal-walled interior of a small flier. He could see the back of a pilot sitting in the nose of the craft and could hear the roar of air outside.
“Conscious at last, eh?” said the guard. “You’ve been out for half an hour.”
“But where—how—” Allan struggled to say.
“You don’t remember?” the guard said. “I’m not surprised— you were just passing out when we got there. You see, your sentence on the island was only one day. We came to get you and found you’d apparently been having trouble with one of the other unreasonables, but we picked you up and started back. We’re almost back to City 72 now.”
Allan Mann sat up, utterly dismayed. “But Lita! Where’s Lita?” The guard stared. “You mean the girl unreasonable who was there? Why, she’s still there, of course. She’s a lifer. She made quite a fuss when we dropped down and got you.”
“But I don’t want to leave Lita there!” cried Allan. “I tell you, I don’t want to leave her!”
“Don’t want to leave her?” repeated the astonished guard. “Listen, you’re being unreasonable again. If you keep it up you’ll get another sentence to the island and it’ll be more than a day!”
Allan looked keenly at him. “You mean that if I’m unreasonable enough they’d send me back to the island—for life?”
“They sure would!” the guard declared. “You’re mighty lucky to get off with one day there this time.”
Allan Mann did not answer nor did he speak again until their destination was reached and he faced the Director once more.
The Director looked at his bruised face and smiled. “Well, it seems that even one day on the island has taught you what it is to live without reason,” he said.
“Yes, it’s taught me that,” Allan answered.
“I am glad of that,” the Director told him. “You realize now that my only motive in sending you there was to cure you of unreasonable tendencies.”
Allan nodded quietly. “It would be about the most unreasonable thing possible for me to resent your efforts to cure and help me, wouldn’t it?”
The Director smiled complacently. “Yes, my boy, that would certainly be the height of unreason.”
“I thought it would,” said Allan Mann in the same quiet voice.
His fist came back—
The guard were wholly unsympathetic as their flier sped with Allan Mann for a second time toward the island.
“It’s your own fault you got a life-sentence on the island,” the chief guard said. “Whoever heard of anyone doing such a crazy thing as knocking down a Director?”
But Allan, unlistening, was gazing eagerly ahead. “There it is!” he bawled joyfully. “There’s the island!”
“And you’re glad to get back?” The chief guard gave up in disgust. “Of all the unreasonables we ever carried, you’re the worst.”
The flier sank down through the warm afternoon sunlight and poised again above the sandy beach.
Allan leapt out and started up the beach. He did not hear what the guard shouted as the flier rose and departed.
Nor did he look after it as it vanished this time. He pressed along the beach and then through the woods toward the island’s western end.
He came into the clearing where was the village of cabins. There were people in the clearing and one of them saw Allan Mann, ran toward him with a glad cry. It was a girl—it was Lita!
They met and somehow Allan found it natural to be holding her in the curve of his arm as she clung to him.
“They took you away this morning!” she was crying. “I thought you’d never come back—”
“I’ve come back to stay,” Allan told her. “I’m a lifer now, too.” He said it almost proudly.
“You a lifer?” Rapidly he told her what he had done.
“I didn’t want to stay back there. I like it better here!” he finished.
“So you’re back, are you?” It was Hara’s bull-voice that sounded close beside them and Allan spun with a snarl on his lips.
But Hara was grinning across all his battered face as he came forward and extended his hand to Allan. “I’m glad that you’re back! You’re the first man ever to knock me out and I like you!”
Allan stared dazedly. “But you surely don’t like me because I did that? It’s not reasonable—”
A chorus of laughs from the men and women gathered around cut him short. “Remember that you’re living on the island of unreason, lad!” cried Hara.
“But Lita?” exclaimed Allan. “You can’t have her—you—”
“Calm yourself,” advised Hara with a grin. He beckoned and a pert blond girl came out of the others to him. “Look what was left by a flier while you were gone, and with a life-sentence too. I forgot all about Lita when I saw her, didn’t I, darling?”
“You’d better,” she advised him, and then smiled at Allan. “We’re getting married this evening.”
“Married ?” he repeated, and Hara nodded.
“Sure, by the old ceremonies like we use here. We’ve a religious preacher here that was sent here because religion’s unreasonable too, and he performs them.”
Allan Mann turned to the girl in his arm, a great new idea dawning across his brain. “Then Lita, you and I—”
That evening after the double marriage had been performed and those in the village were engaged in noisy and completely irrational merrymaking, Allan and Lita sat with Hara and his bride on a bluff at the island’s western end, looking toward the last glow of sunset’s red embers in the darkening sky.
“Some day,” said Hara, “when there’s a lot more of us unreasonables we’ll go back there and take the world and make it all unreasonable and inefficient and human again.”
“Some day—” Allan murmured.