er to the enemy. Over."

So that was it, he thought. They were worried about the sub falling into
Soviet paws. Some of its equipment was still classified "secret",
although the Reds probably already had it.

No, he wasn't deserting to the enemy. Neither side was right in the
struggle, although he preferred the West's brand of wrongness to the
bloodier wrongness of the Reds. But a man in choosing the lesser of two
evils must first decide whether the choice really _has to be made_, and
if there is not a third and more desirable way. Before picking a weapon
for self-destruction, it might help to reason whether or not suicide is
really necessary.

He smiled sardonically into the gray gloom, knowing that his thinking
was running backwards, that he had acted before reasoning why, that he
was rationalizing in an attempt to soothe himself and absolve himself.
But a lot of human thinking occurred beneath the level of consciousness,
down in the darker regions of the mind where it was not allowed to
become conscious lest it bring shame to the thinker. And perhaps he had
reasoned it all out in that mental half-world where thoughts are inner
ghosts, haunting the possessed man with vague stirrings of uneasiness,
leading him into inexplicable behaviour.

I am free now, he told himself. I have given them my declaration of
independence, and I am an animal struggling to survive. Living in
society, a man must submit to its will, but now I am divorced from it,
and I shall live apart from it if I live at all, and I shall owe it
nothing. The "governed" no longer gives his consent. How many times have
men said, "If you don't like the system here, why don't you get out?"
Well, he was getting out, and as a freeborn human animal, born as a
savage into the world, he had that right, if he had any rights at all.

He grunted moodily and lowered himself down into the belly of the sub.
They would be starting the search soon. He sealed the hatches and opened
the water intakes after slowing to a crawl. The sub shivered and
settled. The indicator crept to ten feet, twenty, thirty. At fifty feet,
he jabbed a button on the computer, and the engines growled a harder
thrust. He kept the northeasterly heading at maximum underwater speed.

* * * * *

An hour crept by. He listened for code on the sonar equipment, but heard
only the weird and nameless sea-sounds. He allowed himself a reading
light in the cramped compartment,