by MadMaxAU
“One of the bulbs just blew, but I don’t think it matters any more. They’re all dead or fled. Hang on, Saul. I’ll bring you a set of goggles.”
In a moment Saul felt a hand on his shoulder, and a shadow blotted out the remaining sunlike brilliance. Gratefully, eyes still closed, he lifted his head and helped Vidor fit the covering over his upper face.
“Congratulations, Saul. Damn fine weapon.”
He blinked through tears and blue entopic spots to see the young spacer offer his hand. He reached up and accepted help getting to his feet.
“Uh, thanks.” But he was remembering how few bulbs there were in inventory. Three were gone already. We’re going to have to come up with better tricks than this. We can’t work in goggles all the time, for one thing ....
The two men picked their way in low hops past shriveled purple husks over to a charred hole in the yellow floor covering, where the remains of Spacer Garner had tumbled—along with the ill-chosen electric blanket—into a narrow crevice. It was a flaw in the cavern that no one had thought anything of when the chamber was selected and covered over.
“They don’t dig through solid ice!” Vidor sighed. “We thought they might—that they could strike from anywhere at all. What a relief.”
Saul had only been staring, appalled, at the jumble of human remains scattered down a steep crack in the ice. Young Vidor was made of tough stuff.
“They move through low-density veins, then?”
Vidor nodded. “We’ll have to look for more of those and melt ‘em shut. I know just how to do it.”
Virginia’s shown me pix of some of his sculptures, Saul remembered. Jim Vidor was a whiz with ice. If anyone could figure out how to seal the chambers, he would.
There came the sound of voices from the Tunnel J entrance. The spacer turned. “I’d better go take the guys some goggles, or shut that lamp off.”
Saul followed. Nothing more could be done for poor Garner, anyway. “Don’t forget the salve,” he called. “You and I are going to get fierce sunburns, as it is.”
In spite of the pain in his ankle and the tremor of a fading adrenaline rush he felt good. An atavistic part of him seemed thrilled at having passed through the last few minutes and survived. Action had it’s points. There were some things one could not get in a lab.
With his goggles on, Joao Quiverian looked like some great nocturnal creature. “You had better look at Ustinov,” he told Saul. “He’s in pretty bad shape.”
Saul nodded. “I’ll go get my bag.”
“If he’s got the same toxins in him that got Conti . . .”
“There are things I can try. But I’ve got to act fast. Help me, Joao.”
Even if I can’t save him, maybe this time we’ll be able to slow the chemical reaction down enough to slot him. Perhaps someday we’ll have an antidote.
The sole remaining lamp burned on, accompanied by the incessant ratchet of the alarm.
Under the glare, Saul picked up his black bag and took up again, after so many years, the practice of medicine.
VIRGINIA
She scrolled up the lines written yesterday and tried to view them dispassionately. This was her break, and writing poetry seemed a better way to spend it, a quicker mental exit from the grinding relentless mech labor, than slurping up coffee in the lounge. Particularly since there’d probably be nobody else there; anyone not working was surely floating in exhausted sleep.
Crew were supposed to log most of their sack time in the wheel, where centrifugal pseudogravity could mimic the subtle flows that avoided zero-G imbalances. But you got more real rest in Halley’s weak field. The survivors found isolated cubbyholes free of the green gunk and caught what sleep they could on the spot.
The struggle was less panic-driven now, but still critical. They had managed to drive the infestations away from the slots and power stations. By fusing the ice behind the most critical spots, they had denied the things an easy route back.
She should rest, sleep . . . but sleep wouldn’t come.
The hell with the outside, with grim reality. She plunged into her poetry.
Nipples, navel
your pubic thrust
makes a kind of face
I trust—
and trust and thrust
and thrust again.
Have all
my thick-thighed welcome, friend.
“Um,” she reflected to herself. “Artistic, no. Therapy, maybe.”
CERTAINLY IT REVEALS THE GENERAL TENOR OF YOUR THOUGHTS.
Blue-green letters floated in the holo zone above her.
“JonVon, this is private! I should’ve disconnected.”
SORRY. I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO TELL THIS.
“Common sense should—right, that’s not a characteristic I’ve worked on, have I?”
SOME OF MY SIMULATED PERSONALITIES KNOW RULES, BUT I HAVE NO BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF "COMMON SENSE". PERHAPS IT IS NOT USEFUL IN DAILY WORK?
“No, there just hasn’t been time . . . never mind.”
MATTERS SEXUAL REQUIRE COMMON SENSE?
“When you’re dealing with humans, yes. Actually, it would be better if you remained silent. Nobody thinks machines have anything to say about sex.”
THERE ARE PSYCHOANALYSIS PROGRAMS I CAN CALL UP, EXPERT SYSTEMS WHICH HAVE A DISTINGUISHED HISTORY OF DIAGNOSING—
“No, JonVon! Just let me get on with my poetry.”
MAY I WATCH?
“I can hardly keep you from reading my doggerel, can I? It’s in General Manuscripts.”
I CAN CONCEAL RESULTS IN MY OWN BANKS.
“Good idea, actually. I don’t want anybody blundering into this file.”
She stared at the screen. JonVon’s intrusion had made her self-conscious. She had never been so overtly sexual in her writings before, and she felt her passion was an intensely private thing, for Saul only. In Hawaii, men had regarded her as somewhat prudish.
So you’ve always been a little shy about it . . . so what? You have to overcome that!
She frowned at the poem. Age-old custom dictated that love poems should be written in flowing ink on thick, luxuriant, creamy paper . . . not glowing letters in open space. Well, the hell with that. Let’s see . . . my thighs aren’t thick, actually . . . is that part worth saving for the alliteration? . . . skip that and try something else ....
bodies red and rangy
your face all engraved anxiety
above me: fevered, aye! —life-enhancing
mad protracted
two-backed dancing.
Quick!
cut my breasts with your
iron beard
make your point
I’ve never feared
I’ll bend back
no disgrace
to take it from you face to face
sweaty, unhygienic
slick wet thrust
quarantined
if you must
I’m of that race
wallowing swallowing
in the dust
piston-engine snowballed love
oh professor
possessor.
Teach me to live in the present tense
with no past perfect
Orbits aren’t the only things
to make a tangential rendezvous
with brave design
Gasping, knowing that
He’s mine!
leathery skin welcome fact
my ice is melting
each livid drop
Don’t stop!
sticky reign of fire and honey
grind me grin me find me sin me
She stopped, her heart thumping.
SYNTACTICAL STRUCTURE—
“Shut up!”
Virginia unbuckled from her couch, threw aside the link coupling, and launched herself for the doorway.
STORE COMMAND?
“Shove it, for all I care!”
She moved quickly through the corridors, the long glides between kicks se
eming to last forever. It would take only a few minutes to reach Saul’s lab—impossibly short, considering how unreachable he had seemed to be, how much she had missed him.
Just before the turn down Shaft 1, which would take her to him, she ran right into Carl Osborn and Jim Vidor, coming down the hall without their helmets on. Both their suits were scratched and blotted with chemical stains. Vidor’s face was puffy, unshaven, and his eyes seemed to drift far away. They were towing a body in a shroud.
“Who . . .
“Quiverian,” Carl said. “He’s gotten too sick. We can’t wait any longer, or he’ll die.”
“Hi ho, hi ho,” Vidor said with thin humor, “it’s to the slots we go.”
Virginia clung to a handhold. “We . . . we’ll have to unslot someone.”
“Right,” Carl said worriedly. “We’ve got six almost thawed. Want to decide who’s next?”
“No, I . . .” She knew she should help, but . . . “I’m going to see Saul.”
“He’s still off limits except for real necessity,” Carl said stiffly. He stopped his slow kick-glide rhythm and let the body come to a halt. Vidor compensated awkwardly on his own side, looking tired.
“You guys see him. He works beside you all!”
“Sure, but we aren’t intimate with him. You an I both know what you’ll do—“
“Mind your own damn business, Carl!” She felt her face flush.
Carl turned away, obviously trying to keep in control. “Malenkov said Saul’s to be on at least semiquarantine—”
“I don’t think that means anything anymore, now that Malenkov’s dying. Saul is our doctor now.”
“I think it’s a bad idea to risk—”
“Carl, I’ll take my chances.”
“Stay away from the rest of us, then,” Vidor said sternly. “Lintz is an okay guy, but I don’t let him come too close. You touch him, same applies to you.”
Virginia was startled. She liked Vidor, but the man’s face was a stiff mask now, hostile and wary. He tugged at the comatose Quiverian’s tow-line and started it moving again. But his usual deft sureness was gone and he seemed to be having trouble keeping the forces acting through a single axis. He looked as clumsy as a groundhog.
“Don’t worry, I will,” Virginia said angrily. “Maybe I’ll just quarantine myself, too!”
She kicked off and sped away, not bothering to look back. Hell, Vidor looks worse than Saul. Then she put her irritation behind her as best she could.
When she entered the lab, Saul looked up in surprise. In the enameled lab glow his haggard, gray face lit with joy. She knew she had made the right decision.
“You really shouldn’t risk . . .” he said without much conviction.
She bore down on him.
The hell with poetry, she thought. I’ll take the real thing.
CARL
Jim Vidor wasn’t being much help.
He coughed into his hands, leaning against the wall of the sleep-slot prep room. Vidor was pale, with the same pasty mottling and strange stiff sheen that Quiverian had developed less than two days ago.
Carl finished fitting the nutrient webbing around Quiverian’s body and attached the sensor tabs. Everything looked right, but he went over the whole chemline and circuit layout again. You couldn’t be too careful. One bad connection and they died on you. The monitor computer should pick up errors, but the moment you started relying on the backup systems, well, that was the beginning of the end as far as he was concerned.
As the crisis went on and on, Carl increasingly found himself being meticulous, his way of compensating for fatigue.
“Blood pH stabilized. Metabolic Q-10 on track. Might as well file him,” Carl said.
Vidor nodded, eyes runny, and shuffled forward to help. Together they maneuvered the body into the slot, sealed it, and attached the external hoses. The banks of filled containers in the prep room formed a sphere around them, so they worked under a frosty dome. Cottony clouds drifted lazily in the air currents over their heads. These slots had flown out on the Sekanina and had tricky hose connectors. Somehow nothing ever gets completely standardized on a mission, Carl thought moodily. Then you spend years tinkering and retrofitting.
“No ceremony this time?” Carl said.
“Don’t feel like it,” Vidor agreed.
They were all too worn down to keep up the niceties. “Go on, get some rest,” Carl said kindly. Not that he really thought it would do much good.
He logged Quiverian into the over-all monitoring programs while Vidor left, moving as though his joints were sore. Same as Quiverian, Carl thought. But neither of them got that brown rash that grew all over Samuelson. Different symptoms—or different diseases?
Not that it mattered all that damn much, now. At this rate they’d all be gone inside a week.
Which meant he had to start some more unslottings right away. Now.
They were at a crucial point. The six thawing in sick bay would not be enough to keep Halley Core running, not while they recuperated. If the diseases felled Virginia, Saul, himself, Lani . . . the expedition would fail. Unattended, the slots would malf one by one. Halley would become an endlessly orbiting cemetery of frozen corpses.
He thumbed in his Priority control code and set to work. Some simple systems had to be warmed up, calculations made, drug inventories drawn on. Carl had some experience with the procedures from the Encke mission. He worked as well s he could, referring to the manual whenever he had doubts. Saul Lintz could advise him if absolutely necessary . . . even with rusty skills, Saul was still the doctor. But . . .
But what? Yeah, I know—I don’t want to call him. I don’t care if I never see the bastard again. And I know it’s just childish jealousy, too. But that doesn’t make things any easier. Just the opposite, maybe.
It was a good idea to get this practice himself, anyway. In a few days he would probably be slotting Saul. I hope Virginia doesn’t catch whatever he’s got.
He was working slowly, his thinking mired in mud. He had to shake off the mood, he knew that, or else he’d make some dumb mistake. Music? That was about all he had these days. He’d been listening to Mozart and Liszt and Haydn for sixteen hours every day, the only way to distance himself from the backbreaking, unending job of cleanup. And all the time watching over one shoulder to see if a goddamn purple hadn’t broken through the insulation nearby, wasn’t there waiting for him to. brush against it, burn through his suit, get its deadly poisons into him ....
“Carl!”
He turned, surprised by the feminine voice. Virginia! She didn’t go to him after all.
The sight of Lani entering the prep room crushed his sudden hope.
“I heard about Quiverian, thought I’d come down and…oh You’ve already slotted him?”
Carl nodded.
“No ceremony?”
“Wasn’t in the mood. Jim’s not feeling too well, and a ceremony by yourself . . .”
Lani studied him sympathetically. “I understand.”
“Maybe we’ll all get together tonight, hoist a few beers .. . .” He let the sentence trickle lamely away, remembering that they had almost started a romance, back a few lifetimes ago. He hadn’t thought of that for some time. Every day he revised his opinion of Lani upward, but his pulse still quickened for Virginia. Not that it matters .... We’re all run ragged.
She nodded emphatically. “Yes. We could use a little group solidarity. You’re the leader now, Carl. You’ll have to hold us together.”
He had been nominal leader for more than a week, though without time to think of himself that way. “All six of us? With two or three sick’? Some crew. Half of shift one gone in—what? ten days? No, less.” He shook his head. “Things’re movin’ too fast.”
What would Captain Cruz have done that I haven’t? What have I missed?
“You’re tired.” She put a hand on his shoulder and patted him gently. Like I was a big dumb animal, he thought. Well, I’m not much better than that right now.<
br />
“I . . . I’m glad you came.”
“So am I. You obviously need help.”
“I started unslotting a couple more.”
“Won’t we need a dozen at least?”
“That’s what I need help with. We must have good people, but . . . well, who would you pick to introduce into this death house?”
Lani nodded silently, her face pensive and withdrawn. He wondered how she was dealing emotionally with the ever-present threat. She might be catching something from him—or vice versa—right now. They had no real idea what vector these diseases followed.
“Not my friends . . .”