by neetha Napew
“That’s reassuring,” Lunzie said. “It seems so unlike an official EEC position.”
“It’s a lot of space dust,” Grabone went on. “You got that from the heavyworlders, didn’t you? Their favourite paranoia. They think we’ll strand them the first chance we get. Well, it isn’t true.”
“No, actually, it wasn’t the heavyworlders,” Lunzie said slowly; she’d kept well away from any of that group. “It was one of the visiting scientists who wants only to finish his duty and go home on time. I gather he’s expecting a grandchild.”
“For one thing,” Grabone went on to prove the rumour fallacious, “ARCT--1O can’t plant anyone. Colonies take years of planning. It’s hard enough to find the right mix of people who want to settle on a certain world, and live together in peace, not to say cooperation. You wouldn’t believe the filework that has to go out to EEC before a colony is approved.”
“Well, planting would be a quicker, if illicit, way to get more colonies started,” Varian suggested. “There are some found that don’t meet minimum requirements but if people were planted, they’d learn to cope.”
“Doesn’t anyone planetside practice birth control?” Lunzie asked, with a vivid memory of the crowds on Alpha Centauri. “Having dozens of offspring without a thought for environment or a reasonable standard of living for future citizens.”
“Even a mathematical expansion of the population, one child per adult,” Varian pointed out, “would soon deplete currently available resources, let alone a geometric increase. Judicious planting could reduce some of the pressure. Not that I advocate it, mind you.”
One of the lights of the duty panel flickered. Involuntarily everyone in the room glanced at the blue medical light. Lunzie clambered to her feet. “I can respond.”
She flipped on the switch at the panel. “Lunzie.”
“Accident at interface A-10. One crew member down, several others injured.”
Lunzie mentally plotted the fastest path to the scene of the accident and hit the comswitch again.
“Acknowledged,” she said. “I’m on my way.” She waved farewell to Grabone and Varian.
The interfaces were one of the most sensitive and carefully watched parts of the multi-environmental system aboard the ARCT-10. Whereas normal bulk-heads were accustomed to the pressure of a single atmosphere, the interfaces had to stand between two different atmospheric zones, sometimes of vastly different pressure levels which might also vary according to program. A-10 stood between the normal-weight human environment and the heavyworlders’ gravity zone. Had this happened in her first few weeks aboard, she’d have become hopelessly lost. Now she knew the scheme which named decks and section by location and personnel, she knew she wasn’t far from A-10 and found her way there without trouble.
Dozens of other crew members were on the move through the corridors in the A Section. At the point at which A-10 had been breached, frigid wind of the same temperature as the ambient on Diplo was pouring through into the warmer lightweight zone. Clutching her medical bag to her chest, Lunzie passed through a hastily erected baffle chamber that cut off the icy winds from the rest of the deck and would act as a temporary barrier while the heavy gravity was restored. Beyond the broken wall, heavyworlders who had been in their exercise room were picking up weights and bodybuilding equipment made suddenly light by the drop in gravity. Workers of every configuration hurried in and out of the chambers, clearing away debris, tying down torn circuits and redirecting pipes whose broken ends pumped sewage and water across the floor. Lunzie made a wide circle around two workers who were cutting out the ragged remains of the damaged panel with an arc torch.
“Doctor, quickly!” An officer in the black uniform of environmental sciences motioned urgently where she knelt by the far wall. “Orlig’s twitching even if he is unconscious. He was checking the wall when it blew.”
Lunzie hurried over, ignoring the stench of sewage and the odour of burned flesh. Stretched out on the deck at the woman’s side was a gigantic heavyworlder wearing a jumpsuit and protective goggles. He had been severely gashed by flying metal and a tremendous haematoma coloured the side of his face. Though his eyes were closed, he was thrashing wildly and muttering. Lunzie’s hands flew to her belt pouch for her bod bird.
“I don’t dare give him a sedative until I know if there’s neural damage, Truna,” Lunzie explained.
“You do what you have to do. Other heavyworlders incurred only heavy bruises when the wall popped and they were blown against the bulkhead toward light gravity. They walked away. No one else was on this side of the wall. Orlig took the full blast. Poor beast.” The environment tech got up and began shouting orders at the mob of workers, leaving Lunzie alone with her patient.
Orlig was one of the largest specimens of his sub-group that Lunzie had ever seen. Her outstretched hand covered only his palm and third phalange of his fingers. She had no idea what she would do if he went out of control.
“Fardling lightweights,” he snarled, thrashing. Lunzie jumped back out of range as his swinging arm just missed her and smashed onto the deck. “Set me up to die! I’ll kill them!” The arm swept up, fingers curved like claws, ripping at the air, and smashed down again, shaking the deck. “All of them!”
Nervous but equally determined not to let her fear of heavyworlders keep her from treating one in desperate need of her skills, Lunzie approached to take a bod bird reading. According to that, Orlig was bleeding internally. He had to be sedated and treated before he haemorrhaged to death.
She couldn’t fix his arm while he was banging it around like that. The bod bird was inconclusive on the point of neural trauma. She would have to take her chances. She programmed a hefty dose of sedative and applied the hypogun to the nearest fleshy part of the thrashing man. Orlig levered himself up when he felt the injection hiss against his upper arm and snarled bare-toothed at Lunzie. The drug took speedy effect and his arms collapsed under him. He fell to the deck with a bang.
Still shaking, Lunzie began debriding his wounds and slapping patches of synthskin on them. Shards of metal had been driven into his flesh through the heavy fabric of the jumpsuit. The goggles had spared his eyes though the plasglas lens were cracked. What with flying debris and the force of the explosion, the man was lucky to be alive. She tried to think which ship’s system could have blown like that.
Unbelievably, Orlig started moving again. How could he move? She’d given him enough sedative to sleep six shifts. Lunzie worked faster. She must unseal the upper half of his jumpsuit to repair his wounds. The fabric was so heavy she got mired in the folds of it. Then in a restless gesture, he jerked his arm and sent Lunzie stumbling across the room.
Lunzie crawled back to him and gathered her equipment together in her lap. She programmed the hypo for another massive dose of sedative and held it to the heavyworlder’s arm. Just as she was about to push the button, Orlig’s small eyes opened and focused on hers. His gigantic hand closed around her hand and wrist, immobilizing her but not hurting her.
He’ll kill me! Lunzie thought nervously. She drew in a breath to yell for help from the struggling engineers at the broken wall.
“Who are you?” he demanded, bringing the other fist up under her face.
Lunzie kept her voice low out of fear. “My name is Lunzie. I’m a doctor.”
Orlig’s eyes narrowed, but the fist dropped. “Lunzie? Do you know a Thek?”
He’s raving, Lunzie thought. “Orlig, please lie back. You were badly injured. I can’t treat you if you keep thrashing about. Let go of my hand.” Sometimes a firm no-nonsense voice reassured a nervous patient.
His fist grabbed her up by the neck of her tunic. “Do you know a Thek?”
“Yes. Tor.”
Subtly the heavyworlder’s attitude altered. He swivelled his head around to glare at the bustling crowd of workers and technicians, and wrinkled his nose at the sewage, now being mopped up.
“Then get me out of here. Someplace no one would expect to find me.
” With that he let her go and sagged to the floor.
Lunzie shouted for a gurney and waited by Orlig until it came. She sent an emergency crewman back for a grav lift so that she could manage the gurney herself in spite of Orlig’s mass. He snarled when the crewman came a centimeter closer to him than necessary. He had to be in considerable pain with those wounds. She wondered just why he was braving it out. Without any help he somehow rolled his mangled body onto the gurney.
“Get me out of here,” he muttered, eyes glittering with pain and an underlying fear that he permitted her to glimpse.
Operating the anti-grav lift, she guided the gurney out of the interface area, through one hatch, running along beside her patient and up a freight turbovator.
“Anybody following?” he demanded urgently, gripping her hand in his huge fingers.
“No, no one. Not even a rat.”
He grunted. “Hurry it up.”
“This was all your idea.” But then she saw what she was looking for, one of the small first-aid stations that were located on every deck and section, usually for routine medichecks, contagion isolation quarters, or treatments that didn’t require stays in the main infirmary.
Once the door slid shut behind them, Orlig grinned up at her.
“Krims, but you lightweights are easy to scare.” He surveyed the room with a searching glance as Lunzie positioned the gurney by the soft-topped examination table which doubled as a hospital bed when the sides were raised. He raised a hand as Lunzie started toward him with the hypo. “No, no more sedatives. I’m practically unconscious now.”
Lunzie stared at him. “I thought you must be immune to it.”
Orlig grimaced. “I had to use pain to stay awake. Someone rigged that wall to fall on me. They want me dead.”
With a sigh, Lunzie recognized the classic symptoms of agoraphobic paranoia. She put away the hypospray and held up the flesh-knitter.
“Well, I’m a doctor and as I’ve never seen you before, I have no urge to kill you.” Yet, she thought. “And since you heavyworlders are such big machismo types, I’ll sew you into one piece again in front of your eyes. Does that relieve your mind?”
“Coromell didn’t say you’d be so dumb. Doctor.”
Lunzie nearly dropped the piece of equipment in her hands. “Coromell?” she repeated. “First you want to know my Thek acquaintances, now you’re throwing the Admiralty at me. Just who are you?”
“I work for him, too. And I’ve got some information that he’s got to have. This isn’t the first attempt on my life. I’ve been trying to figure out a legitimate reason to contact you. But I had to be careful. Couldn’t have suspicion fall on you ...”
“Like a wall fell on you?” Lunzie put in.
“Yeah, but it’s working out just right, isn’t it? I can’t risk this information getting lost.” He groaned. “I tried to get in touch with Tor. I think that’s where I blew it. Us heavyworlders don’t generally seek out Theks.” He winced. “All right, I think I’ll accept a local anaesthetic now you’re playing tinkertoy with my ribs. It feels like meteors were shot through it. What’s it look like?”
Lunzie peered at his chest and ran the bod bird over it. “Like you got meteors shot through it. I might be able to reach Tor without anyone suspecting me. I don’t know why, but it likes me.”
“Few are as lucky. But you’ve got to find the right Thek without asking for it by name. That’s the hard part. They all look alike at the size they fit on the ARCT. Look ...” Orlig’s voice was weaker now as shock began to seep through his formidable physical stamina. He fumbled in his left ear, tilting his head. “Fardles. You got something like tweezers? That wall must’ve knocked it down inside.”
“What am I looking for?”
“A message brick.” He turned his head so she had the best angle for the search.
“You might have irreparably damaged your hearing,” she said, disapprovingly as she finally retrieved the cube.
“It fit. It was safe,” Orlig replied, unpenitent. “If you can’t get to Tor, wait until Zebara gets back. You can tell him to check out AidkisagI VIII, the Seti of Fomalhaut. The cube gives him the rest of the pertinent details.”
“The Seti of ... their head of government?” Lunzie’s voice rose in pitch to a surprised squeak.
“Shh! Keep it down!” Orlig hissed. “Whoever rigged that wall to blow may be looking for me now he knows he failed to kill me.”
“Who?”
Orlig rolled his eyes at her naivete.
“Sorry.”
“Wise up, gal, or you can end up like me. And you couldn’t stand a wall felling on you.” His voice was now a thin trickle of sound.
She tucked the cube into her soft ship boot. “Tor or Zebara. Count on me. Now, I stop being courier and start being medic.”
Just as she finished and had him plas-skinned, his eyes sagged shut. The sedative and shock were finally overwhelming him.
“You’re safe now,” Lunzie murmured. “I’ll pull the food synthesiser within your reach so you don’t have to get up if you’re hungry or thirsty. I’ll lock the room so that no one can get in. And I’ll knock if I want to come in.”
,. Orlig nodded sleepily. “Use a password. Say ‘ambrosia.’ That way I’ll know if it’s you or someone you sent.”
“That particular word keeps getting me in trouble. I’ll use ‘whisky’ instead.” As soon as she sealed the infirmary door, Lunzie immediately went back to her compartment to change out of her bloodstained clothes. She kept the cube in her boot but decided to attach her Fleet ID disk against her skin under her clothes. It was safer to keep it on her person than to risk someone finding it among her possessions. Orlig’s “accident” brought a resurgence of her paranoia. Too many odd things happened to couriers of messages to Coromell.
“How’s the patient?” Truna called to her as Lunzie returned to the common room. The technician and her assistants were sitting slumped over a table with steaming mugs in their hands.
“As well as can be expected for a man who’s been knocked about by a bulkhead blowing out on him,” Lunzie answered, programming a cup of coffee for herself. “How’d repairs go?”
“We got the wall temporarily put together again. It’s going to take at least a few days to recreate the components needed to replace the damaged systems. Those circuits got truly fried!” Truna said, taking a deep drink from her mug. The woman’s eyes were puffy and rimmed with red.
“What caused the explosion?” Lunzie asked, settling down at the table with the others. As soon as she sat, she realised how sore her muscles were from dealing with Orlig and his injuries.
“I was about to ask you. Could Orlig tell what happened?”
“Not really,” Lunzie nodded. “He was too shocked to be lucid. Though come to think of it, he rabbited on about the chem lab. Could something have been flushed away that shouldn’t be and detonated in the pipe?”
“Well, the waste pipes sure were blown into a black hole,” Truna agreed. “I’ll check with the biochemistry section on the ninth level. They use that disposal system. Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Will Orlig recover?” a crewman asked.
“Oh, I expect so,” Lunzie replied offhandedly. “Even heavyworlder physiques get bent out of shape from time to time. He’ll be sore a while.”
Lunzie sat with Truna and her crew for a short time, chatting and encouraging them to share their experiences with her. All the time she was apparently listening, she was wondering how she could get to Tor or how long it would be before “someone” discovered that Orlig wasn’t in the infirmary. Then her thoughts would revolve back to the astonishing information that a Seti of Fomalhaut was involved in planetary piracy. That news would rock a few foundations. That was what Orlig had implied. Well, Seti were known to take gambles. The stakes would be very high, if the Phoenix affair had been any guide.
In the back of her mind, she ran scenarios on how to track down Tor. First she’d have to find out where the Th
eks were quartered. She couldn’t just list it all on the ARCT e-mail channel.
“I must check up on my patient,” she told the environment engineers she’d dined with. “I left him alone to sleep, but he’s probably stirring again.”
“Good idea,” Truna said. “Tell him I hope he heals soon.”
She took a circuitous route to Orlig but saw no one obviously following her.
“It’s Lunzie,” she announced in a low voice, tapping on the infirmary door with her knuckles. “Um, oh, whisky.”
The door slid back noiselessly on its track. Orlig was behind it, clutching his injured ribs tenderly in one arm. “I wondered how long it was gonna be before you came back. I haven’t been able to relax. Even with that sleep-stuff you shot into me I tossed and turned.”
Lunzie pushed him into a chair so she could check the pupils of his eyes. “Sorry. That happens sometimes in shock cases. The sedative acts as an upper instead of a downer. Let me try you on calcium and L-tryptophane. It’s an amino acid which the body does not produce for itself. Those should help you sleep. You don’t have any sensitivities to mineral supplements, do you?”
“You sure don’t know much about heavyworlders, do you? I have to pop mineral supplements all the time to keep my bones from crumbling in your puny gravity.” Orlig produced a handful of uncoated vitamin tablets from a singed belt pouch and poured them into her palm.
Lunzie analysed one with the tracer. “Iron, copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, boron. Good. And I’ll see to it that the amino acid is added to your food for the next few days. It will help you to relax and sleep naturally.”
“Look, while you were gone, I thought of something to get the bugger that’s after me. You can noise it about that I was critically injured and may not live,” Orlig suggested grimly. “Maybe I can trick my assassins into the open. Let them think they have another chance at me while I’m weak.”
“That’s not only dangerous but plain stupid,” Lunzie replied but he gave her such a formidable look, she shrugged in resignation. “You’re healing but your injuries were severe. You may think you’re smart but right now you’ve little stamina to get into a fight. Give yourself a chance to regain your strength. Then you can be moved to the infirmary - and at least have assistance near at hand when you try a damfool scheme like that.”