by E. C. Tubb
Miriam, in the meantime, had had a lot of quiet time to think about herself. Sedation had been discontinued after the first day, but she was confined by a locked door to the little isolation ward behind the surgery. A small, low voltage light was allowed her and an extra blanket for her bed, and there she was left alone except for a brief visit from Nurse Julie with cold meals and her ration of cold water.
McPrince visited her after the first day and explained concisely the reason why the planned ‘accidents’ were arranged and why their efficiency would be nullified if Miriam divulged the secret to others.
“When it is all finished you will be let out. I’m truly sorry, Miriam, to do this to you, but you do understand the importance of it, don’t you?”
Miriam stared at her in the dim light. There was no mother-love in her regard, only coolness born of introspection.
“And what about me? Is it important for me? You don’t care about me, do you? Your tricks won’t do anything for me, will they? But you don’t care about that so long as the rest get off on Mars properly conditioned. They’ll be used to the cold and no water, they’ll be brave, and used to dim light and I expect other things. But me, I’ll never accept these things because I know you tricked us and I hate you for it. If I get out of here I’ll tell everyone.”
McPrince stared at her in some uncertainty. It was not that she was afraid of the effect any revelations Miriam might make to the rest of the brides once the accidents were over. The strengthening of their moral fiber would already have been achieved and their body adaptation to Martian physical conditions well underway and not to be altered by words. What concerned her was Miriam’s future. To be a settler on Mars was unlike being a settler on Earth; there was no way back; no mules crossed space, no buses, no ships; all that got back to Earth was Martian moss packed in the rooms now occupied by the women.
It was useless to dream of returning to Earth. Anyone who yearned for home was doomed to a life of misery more hopeless than any prisoner in any isolated prison on Earth. If Miriam was put down on Mars believing she had been callously used as a pawn in some incomprehensible game she would pine away within the year for Earth and her mother.
Somehow her fiber had to be stiffened, her courage and confidence increased, her spirit made to look forward rather than backward. Physically she was being hardened whether she liked it or not, and after the next ‘accident’ she would be well on the way to being perfectly adapted to current Martian conditions, but no girl likes being molded in a laboratory experiment like a caged rat, changed permanently just for the privilege of grubbing a living with some sweaty male on Mars.
It had been realized that no ordinary girl would volunteer to go through the physical hardships involved for such a small reward, and after some trial and error the scheme of introducing the conditions by ‘accident’ was conceived. It both hardened the girls to the harsh physical conditions and also made them able to face up to crisis. Both were important, but on a world still only barely able to support terrestrials, crises were part of the daily diet and courage and steadiness as important as health. Miriam Chokewater had to have this stiffness of backbone. Medical officer McPrince went out and had a long discussion with Nurse Julie Smith.
* * * *
A weak power supply was restored after two weeks of cold and blackness. A few dim lights were allowed in the corridors and common rooms, none in the cabins, and meals and rationed drinks began to be warmed. It was announced that the long period without power had led to a small deviation in their flight plan and for some days they must hold themselves ready to respond as directed to alarm signals as there was a possibility of collision with the Perseides passing through this area.
At midnight on this same day Captain Able spoke over the intercom to his Chief Engineer, Li. “Hallo Li. You can begin vacation. Take it down slowly. I’ll be ready at 0700 hours Ship Time to hit my first Perseid. You know what to do then.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Li in mock Scottish.
Able was referring to the forthcoming ‘accident’ whereby the ship would suffer holing by a meteor and lose much of its air, Chief Engineer Li was preparing the ground for a fast reduction in air pressure by subtracting some air while the passengers slept thus making the final job easier for his compressors. By slow leakage thereafter atmospheric pressure would be reduced to 8 p.s.i, the current Martian pressure. All this compressed air would be fed back into the ship on the return journey,
At about 0500 hours following Captain Able’s directive to Li. Tony Bellini sidled along the dim corridors panting a little with the combined effects of fear and Li’s evacuation of air. He passed the surgery door, freezing momentarily as he heard a movement within, then he silently pressed onward to the next door and went like a shadow into the blackness behind the door.
It was a small room used to store soap, of which a great amount was used in the six months of the trip. Locking the door behind him he switched on a small lamp and examined the shelves on the right hand side. Quickly he began lifting the cartons of soap tablets and stacking them in front of the opposing plastic racks. When he had cleared an area about the size of a door he examined the fixing of the slats.
They were lightly spot fused to the cross supports, and a few sharp upward blows with his fist were enough to break the welds and free the shelves. With the wall now accessible Tony Bellini pressed his ear to it and listened with all the intentness his love engendered. Beyond the wall lay Miriam Chokewater in her sick bay bed, and beyond her the surgery itself with Mary McPrince on watch.
He heard nothing except the roaring of blood through his cold ear. A look at his wristwatch, and then carefully he unwrapped a small package of what looked like thin sticky string and began pressing it against the wall in the shape of a tall oblong. To the bottom corner of this oblong he connected a minute detonator and two wires, one of which he attached to his hand torch. He then built himself a shelter from full cartons and sat down to wait for 0700 hours when the first Perseid was due to hit the SS Mayburg.
Bellini’s simple (lovelorn) plan was to blow a hole in the dividing wall at the moment when Engineer Li’s contrived explosions were going off around the ship, and then to bound through the hole, snatch Miriam from her prison and rush her back to his cabin while all the confusion prevailed, He would look after her until the excitement had died down and no harm could be caused by Miriam disclosing what she knew about the ‘Perseids’. Then he would take her to Captain Able and ask him to marry them. Beyond that he could not see; a rosy mist blotted out everything.
His watch read 0700 hours. He switched off his torch and carefully connected the second wire to the other side of the thumb switch. When the first “BOOM” echoed through the ship he pressed the torch switch. A tremendous “CRACK” hit his ears and a hard fist slammed soap into his body. Everything seemed to fall on him.
When his senses recovered it was to see a faint light shining through the hole in the wall and to hear a loud screaming noise. He scrambled up and battled his way across piles of burst cartons to the hold. Further “BOOMS” showed Engineer Li to be in full swing. The screaming came from Miriam thrashing in the bed, and the light came from the surgery beyond, the connecting door of which hung drunkenly from one hinge. A jagged section of wall lay half way across the room. Almost at Bellini’s feet on the other side of the hole lay Chief Medical Officer Mary McPrince unconscious and obviously broken in one or two places.
“Dio!” breathed Bellini in real horror. He stepped over McPrince and then stood hesitating between the opposing calls of love and duty. Miriam saw him while drawing breath for fresh hysterics and scrambled along the bed and into his arms.
“Tony!” she screamed into his ear. “Save me.”
Love won.
“Through here,” he shouted, pivoted, and dragged her to the jagged hole. They tottered over the chaos of broken cartons and fell against the door. Holding Miriam’s lightly clad body on one hand he unlocked the door and pulled. It did not
open. He released Miriam and used two hands. It did not move,
“Oh, Christi!” sobbed Bellini. “It is jammed. Quick—the surgery door.”
They scrambled back, stepped over McPrince’s body, and rushed hand in hand into the surgery, around the examination table, and over to the door. This, too, was immovable.
Tony Bellini hammered on the door in rage and then fell silent as he realized that by making too much noise he would draw attention to himself and so to his crime. He swung and looked at Miriam in perplexity.
“We’ve got to get out,” he told her forcibly, his tone suggesting Mirian had got him into this contretemps. She was looking at him wildly, her pretty face white and wet with her recent hysterical outburst.
“What about mother?” she whispered and looked back at the door of the sick bay. Then seeing his puzzlement she added: “Doctor McPrince.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. Then shrilly: “Christos! What was she doing there by the wall? Why wasn’t she asleep?”
“She had just woke me up. She had something to tell me.”
He was speechless with frustration. For a few moments he turned away and rattled at the door, but all doors on a spaceship are strong and airtight and if the wall they are mounted in becomes distorted they jam. Also there was quite a difference in air pressure inside the surgery to the lower pressure outside in the corridor and this helped to hold the door shut. They returned to the sickbay end looked down at the unconscious woman.
McPrince had a lacerated shoulder and back, and a broken arm where the section of wall had struck her as it flew past. She was concussed by the explosion and her right ear would be forever deaf. There was a big pool of blood expanding on the smooth floor. Bellini stood frozen by revulsion above the body but Miriam dropped to her knees and timidly tried to raise McPrince’s head and shoulders.
“Help me,” she gasped, and was nearly sick as she felt warm blood trickle over her fingers underneath the shoulder. Bellini grunted and stepped over and took hold of the good side.
“On the bed,” said Miriam, and with a gigantic effort they raised McPrince inert body from the floor and got her to the bed. They turned her over. Her whole back seemed a mass of scored flesh.
“Dio!” groaned Bellini and turned away. He made sick noises as he stood swaying at the foot of the bed. Tears dripped from Miriam’s eyes as she tenderly stripped away the blood soaked clothing, but she nevertheless managed to inject steel into her voice as she called him to assist her.
“Stop being a baby, Tony! Come and help me to get her clothes off.”
Reluctantly, loathing it, he came and they peeled the shredded cloth from the bloody flesh.
“Now go and find some bandages. I’ll wash her.”
He was more than willing to go into the other room to escape the horror of the blood and he rummaged vigorously through cupboards. She fetched a bowl of water from the basin in the sick bay and began mopping up McPrince’s back.
“Oh, you poor dear,” she murmured as McPrince groaned in her coma. Fresh tears dripped into the welling cuts. “And that poor broken arm! What shall we do with that?”
Bellini came back with an armful of assorted bandages, cotton squares, and an antiseptic spray. He dumped them alongside McPrince’s nude body and then retreated a step. His face looked sullen with revulsion and he averted his eyes as Miriam began spraying the back and fresh blood welled out of the cuts.
“Get some ointment,” said Miriam looking up suddenly.
“Don’t just stand there, Tony! She’ll die if we don’t help her. Get some ointment to put on her back to stop the bandages sticking.”
His face set into dark rebellion and momentarily he hesitated.
“Oh, let me!” snapped Miriam, and before he could retract his rebellion she had run into the surgery and began throwing open cabinet doors and rummaging through their contents. He turned his head and looked down coldly at the body on the bed.
What the hell could they do about that broken arm? The only thing to do was to hammer on the door until somebody outside heard and broke the door in and fetched Nurse Julie. She could mend the arm. He looked round for something weighty to use on the door.
What Bellini could not know, and this was most unfortunate, was that McPrince had planned with Nurse Julie and Captain Able to get Miriam in a situation of stress whereby McPrince would fake an accident to herself inside the surgery at the time of the Perseid explosions and Miriam would find herself in a locked surgery with an unconscious body. Nobody was to answer any calls for help and Miriam would have to fend for herself and a strangely ill McPrince over a period of two or three days without food or heat and with the surgery air pressure reduced over that time to simulate leakage into space. It was hoped Miriam would emerge sturdier in character from this ordeal, Accordingly, a second surgery had been set up elsewhere in the ship with Nurse Julie in charge, and all noise from the old surgery ignored.
Miriam hurried back with a jar of some white cream she had found just as Bellini had concluded his abortive search of the ward for a hammer and was about to move into the surgery itself.
“Where are you going?” she demanded frantically. “Don’t go now.” Her hair was wild, her face ugly with tears and fear.
“Got to make someone hear,” he blurted and pushed past her. “Must find something heavy.”
“But what about her?”
“You do it,” he called. He was already inspecting the mobile lamp standard to see whether part of it unscrewed.
“Oh…, muttered Miriam, then began clumsily spreading cream on one of the squares of cloth Bellini had brought. She laid it gingerly on the bare back feeling the pain that McPrince could not. Then she took one of the big rolls of bandage and after one helpless look in the direction of Bellini began passing the strip under and over McPrince’s body. From the surgery began a tremendous banging as Bellini attacked the door with a peculiar steel bar he had found in a cupboard.
After ten minutes Miriam had finished concealing those terrible cuts and rolled McPrince over, and outside the banging had diminished in frequency and amplitude.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” bawled Bellini, “Are you all deaf?” He hammered a few more strokes and then threw his ‘hammer’ down. He glared at the door, thinking: nobody passing along the corridor could have failed to hear the banging; even if it wasn’t on the usual passenger route it was certainly within the crews’ orbit and in these ‘accident’ exercises there was a lot of traffic along the corridor to build up the atmosphere of anxious activity and also conveying hysterical and bruised women to the surgery.
So why had no one come to the surgery? Surely, someone had fainted as the air pressure was pulled down. Could it be…? No. It would be too much of a coincidence if the ship had actually suffered holing by a meteor just at the time of the exercise and everybody was dead.
Bellini pressed his ear to the door. All he could hear was the sound of Miriam sniveling over her precious ‘mother’ in the other room.
“Shut up” he shouted. “I can’t hear anything.”
Miriam gave one last sniff and was silent. She quietly found her clothes and dressed then came to the ward door and watched him. He listened with maximum intensity, mouth open, eyes shut, but he could hear nothing outside.
“The engines are still going,” he announced. “But the funny thing is, there doesn’t seem to be anyone about.” They stared at each other.
“What does it mean?” asked Miriam “What does it mean?” asked Miriam.
“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Could be there’s been an accident.”
She gave a hysterical, over-sarcastic laugh. “I know all about accidents! Now they’ve got a real one, have they?” She began to titter and would have gone on to scream only that a gasp and moan came from behind her. She ran back to the bed. McPrince stared up at her with a face transfixed in pain, afraid to move, almost white as the sheets she lay on.
“Don’t move!” cried Miriam, “Y
ou’re hurt.”
“I know,” breathed McPrince. Her eyes turned towards her broken arm but she did not move her head. “My arm. What happened?” Her voice was little more than a sigh as if she hardly dared fill her lungs. “Oh…my back!”
“There was an explosion,” said Miriam, her voice was very high-pitched, squeaky. Her hands came up to her throat and clenched there as she stared down at McPrince. “What can we do for you? Oh, mother, your arm is broken!” She broke into more tears.
McPrince closed her eyes and then said: “You can stop calling me mother, for a start.” She rested and then whispered: “I can’t hear very well.” Another pause. “You said ‘we’…is there…?”
“The steward—Tony Bellini—was here when it happened,” said Miriam.
McPrince opened her eyes and looked blankly at Miriam. “I’m cold. Cover me. Shock.” She closed her eyes again. “Thirsty.”
Miriam whirled away into the surgery, Bellini looked up from where he was sitting with his back to the corridor door,
“Find some blankets quickly; she’s cold. It’s shock.” She, herself, ran to the white sink and filled a beaker with water. He rose slowly and she screamed at him: “Move, Tony, move! She may be dying!”
Grumbling under his breath he rose and began searching in the cupboards lining the room. Bloody woman: Why did she have to be standing there at that moment? Why didn’t she stay on watch in the surgery as she was supposed to do? Viciously he slid doors open and shut.
“No damned blankets here. Ask her where they are,” he shouted.
Miriam appeared at the door as if there had been a fresh explosion. “Quiet!” she commanded in a voice as thin and keen as a scalpel. “Find them! And hurry!’ She turned to go.
“Find them yourself,” snarled Bellini.
She refaced him with teeth bared. Before he could move she lashed him across the face with her slightly clawed hand. The nails left four parallel scratches from ear to mouth. She raised her hand the second time and he flinched.