by Jerry
I’ve made six trips across the Galaxy in as many cycles. I’m practically an old hand, and can even wash my face in freefall without drowning. The trick is to use a sponge and suction. But, by and large, I understand perfectly why spacemen, between planets, usually look a bit unkempt.
I stretched out on the padding of the main cabin, and waited with growing uneasiness for the nonhuman to show. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the diaphragm on the outer sphincter lock expanded, and a curious, peaked face peered through.
“Vargas Miss Hel-len?” said the Theradin in a sibilant whisper.
“That’s my name,” I replied instantly. I pulled upward, and added, quite unnecessarily, “You are Haalvordhen, of course.”
“Such is my identification,” confirmed the alien, and the long, lean, oddly-muscled body squirmed through after the peaked head. “It is kind, Vargas Miss, to share accommodation under this necessity.”
“It’s kind of you,” I said vigorously. “We’ve all got to get home before this war breaks out!”
“That war may be prevented, I have all hope,” the nonhuman said. He spoke comprehensibly in Galactic Standard, but expressionlessly, for the vocal chords of the Theradins are located in an auxiliary pair of inner lips, and their voices seem reedy and lacking in resonance to human ears.
“Yet know you, Vargas Miss, they would have hurled me from this ship to make room for an Empire citizen, had you not been heart-kind to share.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, shocked, “I didn’t know that!”
I stared at him, disbelieving. The captain couldn’t have legally done such a thing—or even seriously have entertained the thought. Had he been trying to intimidate the Theradin into giving up his reserved place?
“I—I was meaning to thank you,” I said, to cover my confusion.
“Let us thank we-other, then, and be in accord,” the reedy voice mouthed.
I looked the nonhuman over, unable to hide completely my curiosity. In form the Theradin was vaguely humanoid—but only vaguely—for the squat arms terminated in mittened “hands” and the long sharp face was elfin, and perpetually grimacing.
The Theradin have no facial muscles to speak of, and no change of expression or of vocal inflection is possible to them. Of course, being telepathic, such subtleties of visible or auditory expression would be superfluous on the face of it.
I felt—as yet—none of the revulsion which the mere presence of the Theradin was supposed to inspire. It was not much different from being in the presence of a large humanoid animal. There was nothing inherently fearful about the alien. Yet he was a telepath—and of a nonhuman breed my species had feared for a thousand years.
Could he read my mind?
“Yes,” said the Theradin from across the cabin. “You must forgive me. I try to put up barrier, but it is hard. You broadcast your thought so strong it is impossible to shut it out.” The alien paused. “Try not to be embar-rass. It bother me too.”
Before I could think of anything to say to that a crew member in black leather thrust his head, unannounced, through the sphincter, and said with an air of authority, “In skyhooks, please.” He moved confidently into the cabin. “Miss Vargas, can I help you strap down?” he asked.
“Thanks, but I can manage,” I told him.
Hastily I clambered into the skyhook, buckling the inner straps, and fastening the suction tubes of the complicated Garensen apparatus across my chest and stomach. The nonhuman was awkwardly drawing his hands from their protective mittens and struggling with the Garensens.
Unhappily the Theradin have a double thumb, and handling the small-size Terran equipment is an almost impossibly delicate task. It is made more difficult by the fact that the flesh of their “hands” is mostly thin mucous membrane which tears easily on contact with leather and raw metal.
“Give Haalvordhen a hand,” I urged the crewman. “I’ve done this dozens of times!”
I might as well have saved my breath. The crewman came and assured himself that my straps and tubes and cushions were meticulously tightened. He took what seemed to me a long time, and used his hands somewhat excessively. I lay under the heavy Garensen equipment, too inwardly furious to even give him the satisfaction of protest.
It was far too long before he finally straightened and moved toward Haalvordhen’s skyhook. He gave the alien’s outer straps only a perfunctory tug or two, and then turned his head to grin at me with a totally uncalled-for-familiarity.
“Blastoff in ninety seconds,” he said, and wriggled himself rapidly out through the hook.
Haalvordhen exploded in a flood of Samarran which I could not follow. The vehemence of his voice, however, was better than a dictionary. For some strange reason I found myself sharing his fury. The unfairness of the whole procedure was shameful. The Theradin had paid passage money, and deserved in any case the prescribed minimum of decent attention.
I said forthrightly, “Never mind the fool, Haalvordhen. Are you strapped down all right?”
“I don’t know,” he replied despairingly. “The equipment is unfamiliar—”
“Look—” I hesitated, but in common decency I had to make the gesture. “If I examine carefully my own Garensens, can you read my mind and see how they should be adjusted?”
He mouthed, “I’ll try,” and immediately I fixed my gaze steadily on the apparatus.
After a moment, I felt a curious sensation. It was something like the faint, sickening feeling of being touched and pushed about, against my will, by a distasteful stranger.
I tried to control the surge of almost physical revulsion. No wonder that humans kept as far as possible from the telepathic races . . .
And then I saw—did I see, I wondered, or was it a direct telepathic interference with my perceptions?—a second image superimpose itself on the Garensens into which I was strapped. And the realization was so disturbing that I forgot the discomfort of the mental rapport completely.
“You aren’t nearly fastened in,” I warned. “You haven’t begun to fasten the suction tubes—oh, damn the man. He must have seen in common humanity—” I broke off abruptly, and fumbled in grim desperation with my own straps. “I think there’s just time—”
But there wasn’t. With appalling suddenness a violent clamor—the final warning—hit my ears. I clenched my teeth and urged frantically: “Hang on! Here we go!”
And then the blast hit us! Under the sudden sickening pressure I felt my lungs collapse, and struggled to remain upright, choking for breath. I heard a queer, gagging grunt from the alien, and it was far more disturbing than a human scream would have been.
Then the second shockwave struck with such violence that I screamed aloud in completely human terror. Screamed—and blacked out.
I wasn’t unconscious very long. I’d never collapsed during takeoff before, and my first fuzzy emotion when I felt the touch of familiar things around me again was one of embarrassment. What had happened? Then, almost simultaneously, I became reassuringly aware that we were in free fall and that the crewman who had warned us to alert ourselves was stretched out on the empty air near my skyhook. He looked worried.
“Are you all right, Miss Vargas?” he asked, solicitously. “The blastoff wasn’t any rougher than usual—”
“I’m all right,” I assured him woozily. My shoulders jerked and the Garensens shrieked as I pressed upward, undoing the apparatus with tremulous fingers. “What about the Theradin?” I asked urgently. “His Garensens weren’t fastened. You barely glanced at them.”
The crewman spoke slowly and steadily, with a deliberation I could not mistake. “Just a minute. Miss Vargas,” he said. “Have you forgotten? I spent every moment of the time I was in here fastening the Theradin’s belts and pressure equipment.”
He gave me a hand to assist me up, but I shook it off so fiercely that I flung myself against the padding on the opposite side of the cabin. I caught apprehensively at a handhold, and looked down at the Theradin.
Haalvo
rdhen lay flattened beneath the complex apparatus. His peaked pixie face was shrunken and ghastly, and his mouth looked badly bruised. I bent closer, then jerked upright with a violence that sent me cascading back across the cabin, almost into the arms of the crewman.
“You must have fixed those belts just now,” I said accusingly. “They were not fastened before blastoff! It’s malicious criminal negligence, and if Haalvordhen dies—”
The crewman gave me a stow, contemptuous smile. “It’s my word against yours, sister,” he reminded me.
“In common decency, in common humanity—” I found that my voice was hoarse and shaking, and could not go on.
The crewman said humorlessly, “I should think you’d be glad if the geek died in blastoff. You’re awfully concerned about the geek—and you know how that sounds?”
I caught the frame of the skyhook and anchored myself against it. I was almost too faint to speak. “What were you trying to do?” I brought out at last. “Murder the Theradin?”
The crewman’s baleful gaze did not shift from my face “Suppose you close your mouth,” he said, without malice, but with an even inflection that was far more frightening. “If you don’t, we may have to close it for you. I don’t think much of humans who fraternize with geeks.”
I opened and shut my mouth several times before I could force myself to reply. All I finally said was, “You know, of course, that I intend to speak to the captain?”
“Suit yourself.” He turned and strode contemptuously toward the door. “We’d have been doing you a favor if the geek had died in blastoff. But, as I say, suit yourself. I think your geek’s alive, anyhow. They re hard to kill.”
I clutched the skyhook, unable to move, while he dragged his body through the sphincter lock and it contracted behind him.
Well, I thought bleakly, I had known what I would be letting myself in for when I’d made the arrangement. And since I was already committed, I might as well see if Haalvordhen were alive or dead. Resolutely I bent over his skyhook, angling sharply to brace myself in free-fall.
He wasn’t dead. While I looked I saw the bruised and bleeding “hands” flutter spasmodically. Then, abruptly, the alien made a queer, rasping noise. I felt helpless and for some reason I was stirred to compassion.
I bent and laid a hesitant hand on the Garensen apparatus which was now neatly and expertly fastened. I was bitter about the fact that for the first time in my life I had lost consciousness! Had I not done so the crewman could not have so adroitly covered his negligence. But it was important to remember that the circumstance would not have helped Haalvordhen much either.
“Your feelings do you nothing but credit!” The reedy flat voice was almost a whisper. “If I may trespass once more on your kindness—can you unfasten these instruments again?”
I bent to comply, asking helplessly as I did so, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Very far from all right,” the alien mouthed, slowly and without expression.
I had the feeling that he resented being compelled to speak aloud, but I didn’t think I could stand that telepath touch again. The alien’s flat, slitted eyes watched me while I carefully unfastened the suction tubes and cushioning devices.
At this distance I could see that the eyes had lost their color, and that the raw “hands” were flaccid and limp. There were also heavily discolored patches about the alien’s throat and head. He pronounced, with a terribly thick effort:
“I should have—been drugged. Now it’s too late. Argha maci—” the words trailed off into blurred Samarran, but the discolored patch in his neck still throbbed sharply, and the hands twitched in an agony which, being dumb, seemed the more fearful.
I clung to the skyhook, dismayed at the intensity of my own emotion. I thought that Haalvordhen had spoken again when the sharp jolt of command sounded, clear and imperative, in my brain.
“Procalamine!” For an instant the shock was all I could feel—the shock, and the overwhelming revulsion at the telepathic touch. There was no hesitation or apology in it now, for the Theradin was fighting for his life. Again the sharp, furious command came: “Give me procalamine!”
And with a start of dismay I realized that most nonhumans needed the drug, which was kept on all spaceships to enable them to live in free-fall.
Few nonhuman races have the stubbornly persistent heart of the Terrans, which beats by muscular contraction alone. The circulation of the Theradin, and similar races, is dependent on gravity to keep the vital fluid pulsing. Procalamine gives their main blood organ just enough artificial muscular spasm to keep the blood moving and working.
Hastily I propelled myself into the “bathroom”—wiggled hastily through the diaphragm, and unscrewed the top of the bin marked FIRST AID. Neatly pigeonholed beneath transparent plastic were sterile bandages, antiseptics clearly marked HUMAN and—separately, for the three main types of nonhuman races, in one deep bin—the small plastic globules of vital stimulants.
I sorted out two purple fluorescent ones—little globes marked procalamine—and looked at the warning, in raised characters on the globule. It read: FOR ADMINISTRATION BY QUALIFIED SPACE PERSONNEL ONLY. A touch of panic made my diaphragm catch. Should I call the Vesta’s captain, or one of the crew?
Then a cold certainty grew in me. If I did, Haalvordhen wouldn’t get the stimulant he needed. I sorted out a fluorescent needle for nonhuman integument, packed the globule and sucked the dose into the needle. Then, with its tip still enclosed in the plastic globe, I wriggled myself back to where the alien still lay loosely confined by one of the inner straps.
Panic touched me again, with the almost humorous knowledge that I didn’t know where to inject the stimulant, and that a hypodermic injection in space presents problems which only space-trained men are able to cope with. But I reached out notwithstanding and gingerly picked up one of the unmittened “hands.” I didn’t stop to think how I knew that this was the proper site for the injection. I was too overcome with strong physical loathing.
Instinct from man’s remote past on Earth told me to drop the nonhuman flesh and cower, gibbering and howling as my simian antecedents would have done. The raw membrane was feverishly hot and unpleasantly slimy to touch. I fought rising queasiness as I tried to think how to steady him for the injection.
In free-fall there is no steadiness, no direction. The hypodermic needle, of course, worked by suction, but piercing the skin would be the big problem. Also, I was myself succumbing to the dizziness of no-gravity flight, and realized coldly that if I couldn’t make the injection in the next few minutes I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it at all.
For a minute I didn’t care, a primitive part of myself reminding me that if the alien died I’d be rid of a detestable cabinmate, and have a decent trip between planets.
Then, stubbornly, I threw off the temptation. I steadied the needle in my hand, trying to conquer the disorientation which convinced me that I was looking both up and down at the Theradin.
My own center of gravity seemed to be located in the pit of my stomach, and I fought the familiar space voyaging instinct to curl up in the fetal position and float. I moved slightly closer to the Theradin. I knew that if I could get close enough, our two masses would establish a common center of gravity, and I would have at least a temporary orientation while I made the injection.
The maneuver was unpleasant, for the alien seemed unconscious, flaccid and still, and mere physical closeness to the creature was repellent. The feel of the thick wettish “hand” pulsing feebly in my own was almost sickeningly intimate. But at last I managed to maneuver myself close enough to establish a common center of gravity between us—an axis on which I seemed to hover briefly suspended.
I pulled Haalvordhen’s “hand” into this weight-center in the bare inches of space between us, braced the needle, and resolutely stabbed with it.
The movement disturbed the brief artificial gravity, and Haalvordhen floated and bounced a little weightlessly in his skyhook. The �
��hand” went sailing back, the needle recoiling harmlessly. I swore out loud, now quite foolishly angry, and my own jerky movement of annoyance flung me partially across the cabin.
Inching slowly back, I tried to grit my teeth, but only succeeded with a snap that jarred my skull. In tense anger, I seized Haalvordhen’s “hand,” which had almost stopped its feverish pulsing, and with a painfully slow effort—any quick or sudden movement would have thrown me, in recoil, across the cabin again—I wedged Haalvordhen’s “hand” under the strap and anchored it there.
It twitched faintly—the Theradin was apparently still sensible to pain—and my stomach rose at that sick pulsing. But I hooked my feet under the skyhook’s frame, and flung my free arm down and across the alien, holding tight to the straps that confined him.
Still holding him thus wedged down securely, I jabbed again with the needle. It touched, pricked—and then, in despair, I realized it could not penetrate the Theradin integument without weight and pressure behind it.
I was too absorbed now in what had to be done to care just how I did it. So I wrenched forward with a convulsive movement that threw me, full-length, across the alien’s body. Although I still had no weight, the momentum of the movement drove the hypodermic needle deeply into the flesh of the “hand.”
I pressed the catch, then picked myself up slowly, and looked around to see the crewman who had jeered at me with his head thrust through the lock again, regarding me with the distaste he had displayed toward the Theradin, from the first. To him I was lower than the Theradin, having degraded myself by close contact with a nonhuman.
Under that frigid, contemptuous stare, I was unable to speak. I could only silently withdraw the needle and hold it up. The rigid look of condemnation altered just a little, but not much. He remained silent, looking at me with something halfway between horror and accusation.
It seemed years, centuries, eternities that he clung there, just looking at me, his face an elongated ellipse above the tight collar of his black leathers. Then, without even speaking, he slowly withdrew his head and the lock contracted behind him, leaving me alone with my sickening feeling of contamination and an almost hysterical guilt.