“Did they do this?” I asked, touching his arm and preparing to begin reduction of the injured joint.
He barely nodded his head. “I was—the only one—they were trying to get me—to help them but—I’ll always be—on the Captain’s—side.”
I gritted my teeth as I worked, trying to keep tears from filling my eyes. It was so heartbreaking—some mother somewhere had reason to be proud of this boy.
He gripped the sheets as I carefully and precisely moved the bone back into its socket, then felt the muscles around the joint to ensure that everything was correctly placed. When I laid the arm back down, he breathed out a sigh.
“Thank you,” he said.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Kerwin Merritt,” he said.
“Well, Kerwin Merritt, you’ll need to rest here for a few hours,” I instructed, preparing a sedative. “This will help you relax.”
He nodded again, and his “Thanks” was nearly a whisper.
After I’d administered the drug, I looked down at him one last time, and then slipped away to the other side of the room, where August lay.
His eyes were still closed, but some color had come back into his face so that he no longer looked like a breathing corpse. His breathing, though still rather shallow, had slowed some, and as I approached, I could see that his face was pinched, as if he were having a bad dream.
“August?” I said softly, laying a hand on his arm.
I hadn’t expected him to open his eyes, but he did, and they stared up into mine with deep astonishment. For a moment, neither of us spoke.
“You,” he said at last in a disbelieving voice. “You are Genevieve?”
I shook my head as suppressed emotions poured over me, leaving me utterly exhausted. “My name is Andi. Andi, and I don’t ever want to be called anything else!” I sank onto the cot opposite him and wept.
Another moment of silence, and then he said, “But... but my father said you were dead.”
I shook my head, unable to speak. Then, I asked the question that had been plaguing me somewhere deep inside ever since my father had made his revelation. “Did my mother—our mother—die in childbirth? Did I kill her?”
“No!” his answer was definite, and more stern that anything I’d heard from him.
Raising my head, I asked, “Then how did she die?”
He raised himself on one elbow and shook his head sadly. “I don’t know. I was only five. She disappeared the same time as you, that’s all I know. My father said you were both dead.”
A light came on in my mind. “She’s the one who took me to the Doctor,” I sniffed. That had to be it. She’d seen, somehow, that I was not safe, and had taken me to the Doctor. Why would she take me to him? He hadn’t seemed to know my father.
“How did he find me?” I asked.
He shook his head, the dazed look still in his eyes, and sat up slowly, never taking his eyes off me. “I don’t know. I never even knew until today that you were—alive.”
I couldn’t speak. The enormous lump in my throat prohibited it, so I gave up trying and kept on sobbing.
After a long moment, he stood up, took the few steps to me hesitantly, then, more hesitating still, he took my hands and lifted me up. Then he put his arms around me and held me close.
I cried on his shoulder, wishing he would hold me tighter, but glad that he had taken initiative to embrace me as his sister, his family. With the Doctor acting stranger all the time, and my real father having betrayed me, August was the only family I had right now.
When I had quieted somewhat, he spoke softly and seriously.
“Dad told me that he’d just come here looking for a job.”
“Why here?” I asked, pulling back and pushing my hair out of my eyes.
“He has a device to help him locate nuclear power sources with electrostatic ion thrusters, which is his specialty.”
Something didn’t seem right about that, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “I don’t understand...” I began, but when I looked up at August’s face, I saw that the color had drained from it again.
“What?” I cried.
He shook his head, and his Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. “I almost forgot... your father... I mean, Doctor Lloyd.”
“What about him?” I asked, my calm fleeing from me.
“Has he been acting strange—crazy—for a few days?”
“Yes. I scanned him—there must be something wrong with his memory.” I explained about the scan I’d done, and what I’d seen.
He turned from me, and I saw his hands begin shaking. “Did you say—vibration? Was it sporadic? Irregular?”
“Yes.”
He appeared to be holding his breath. “And—does he have an unusual obsession with washing his face and hands?”
My mind went back to his dripping face and hands, and the puddles of water in the sanitation room. “Yes... yes he does.”
“No,” he whispered. “I knew it, but—he promised!” He pounded a white fist on the wall, and his dark eyes expressed anger I hadn’t expected from him.
“What is it?” I gasped.
He looked back at me. “I know what’s wrong with him.”
“What? What?”
“My father,” he began, “—our father—is an inventor. Some call him a genius. Some call him a monster. He brought many of his inventions on the ship when we signed up. Like the device I told you about.”
He paused, and I pleaded with him to continue.
“One of the machines he brought... he—he calls it his memory eradicator.”
XVII
My mind reeled. “Memory... eradicator? What does that do?”
He spoke even more quickly. “He used to use it on his adversaries. It locks by x-ray to the portions of the brain related to memory and transmits disturbing electrical impulses. The impulses displace stored images, and cause the subject to confuse short and long term memories. It works over a period of time to...”
I couldn’t listen to any more. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream, feeling like I was going to be sick. August jerked his shoulders back.
“The process is reversible up to a certain point. My dad said twenty hours. That’s until he goes insane. After that, if he’s not taken care of in another twenty-four—he’ll die.”
It all came together in my head. “That’s what happened to Doctor Holmes.”
“Who?”
I grabbed his arm. “When Crash came, he said that he’d talked to Doctor Holmes on Earth, and he was barely lucid. He died the next day. He told Crash to warn the Doctor.”
“You mean Dad... used it to get this doctor to tell him where you were?”
I nodded. “He must have. And then—” I thought quickly, feeling my mind suddenly clear and begin to race. “When Crash heard about two scientists leaving Earth, he thought that was the threat. They were chasing after Commander Howitz—father—trying to get to the radialloy before he did.”
“The what?” he looked utterly lost. He must not have heard about the radialloy.
“Do you think he really means he’ll let the Doctor go insane if we don’t reach your speeder in time?”
August’s face grew angry. “Not only that, but I don’t believe he’ll stop it even if we do get there in time.”
“August, we have to save him! You have to stop it!”
“I can’t!” he cried back. “Even if I knew how, I couldn’t get to the machine! He has it locked in his quarters.”
My mind kept racing, grasping after a solution. There had to be one. There had to be one somewhere. “We have to contact Crash and Whales and get them to help.”
“But how? There’s no way to transmit—he’s taken communications offline.”
“Maybe we can get it back—or divert power from something else.”
“He’d be sure to notice. Don’t underestimate him, Andi.”
I backed up a step, angry. “I’m not just going to stand here
and do nothing! There has to be a way.”
Before he could respond, a voice from the door startled us. “Lieutenant Howitz, your father orders you to return to the bridge immediately. We’re making the warp jump.”
August looked down at me with a sorrowful expression. “I wish I could help you. But I can’t.”
Hot tears stung my eyes, overflowing, draining the hope out of me. I looked at him pleadingly, but he turned and followed the officer out.
I wanted to drop to the cot and cry again, but just as they left the room, Mr. Jarvis came back in with Mr. Yanendale, the comm marshal. I didn’t know what had delayed him, and didn’t want to. I just needed to focus on my work right now.
Taking a breath so deep I could feel the oxygen spreading to every cell, I approached the cot where he lay, his narrow face chalky and pained. Mr. Jarvis looked sternly at me.
“He is to be taken to the brig as soon as you have finished treating him,” the officer said brusquely, then seated himself watchfully on the other side of the room.
Blood covered the patient’s left shoulder, staining his uniform. So the blast hadn’t hit his chest, as I first thought. Still, it was a nasty wound, and they’d taken their own sweet time in getting him down here. The hole in his jacket was charred around the edges, indicative of blaster fire. I steeled myself. I’d dealt with things like this before, and hadn’t been bothered. It was just that my nerves had been worn nearly raw by the events of the day.
Carefully, gently, I pried the jacket away from the wound and slid the sleeve off his arm. “Did you manage to send a message?” I whispered hopefully.
In the same cautious tone, he replied, “I don’t think so. I pushed the button when he wasn’t looking, but nothing happened. I think communications—had already been—taken offline.” He moaned a bit as I pulled his shirt away from the bloody wound.
“How bad is it?” he asked faintly.
I sighed. “A ruptured artery, and some muscle damage. I can repair it, but you’ll need to wear the arm in a sling for awhile, to minimize movement until it finishes healing, and it will be sore for quite awhile.” I pressed a pad of sterile dressing to the wound to slow the bleeding while I got the regen ready.
After I’d finished repairing the wound, I carefully sat him up and slung the arm close to his chest, adjusting the strap so that it wouldn’t move too much. When I had at last finished, I looked at him. He looked back and tried to smile.
“He said you have to go to the brig.”
“I know.”
With a glance at his pale face, I beckoned to the guard, who sat sternly in the corner, to indicate that he could take the patient away now. With little ceremony, he escorted Mr. Yanendale from the room.
Exhausted, I sank into a chair in the corner closest to the door. My mind was too tired to think anymore. I had to rest for a few minutes—
Why. Why was my father so intent on having the radialloy? And how? How had he found me?
First I sorted out the stories I’d been told by him and by Peat and Sigmet. I decided to believe his story of what the radialloy was, since he’d proved that I did have Langham’s disease. The only part I discarded, for the moment anyway, was the idea that there was another cure. I no longer believed that he wanted to save me.
Then I put Crash’s story together with August’s and came up with an imperfect idea of what had happened in the past. My mother had taken me to the Doctor, dying before she could return home. Perhaps my father had planned to take the radialloy away from me, to sell it, and she’d wanted to save me? This didn’t make total sense, but I accepted it for the moment.
Several years later, after I’d been raised by the Doctor and gone to space, my father had for some reason decided he needed to find the radialloy again. Possibly he’d gotten in trouble with someone and needed the money or the radialloy itself to get out of it. Perhaps he’d worked with Peat and Sigmet, and they needed it. Or maybe their supervisor did, and he’d sent them after it. They must be the two scientists—Leeke and his assistant Mars—that Crash had mentioned. Regardless, my father had picked up August and come after me, after tracking me to Grand Forks, seeking out the Doctor’s closest friend—Doctor Holmes—and finding out from him that we’d gone to space.
One thing still didn’t make any sense at all—how? How had he tracked me here?
Impulsively, I stood up and walked over to where I’d left the CMR scanner the night before. What if this whole thing was a mistake, and I didn’t really have the radialloy after all? It was high time I made sure.
Seating myself on one of the cots, I plugged the scanner into the adjacent monitor and turned it on. I hesitated for one moment… The Doctor had said never to use it on myself, because the magnet could pull at my implant. But I’d just use it for a second. Not allowing myself time to think more about it, I pulled my skirt above my legging—clad right knee, set the scanner to one point, and moved it above my leg.
For an instant, my mind focused on the image displayed on the monitor. The patella was visible, but was most definitely not all bone. That was evident at a glance. There was metal in the middle of it, just as the Doctor had told me, though the scanner couldn’t identify what kind.
Then it was true—
Scarcely had I taken all this in, when my knee grew suddenly hot. The heat intensified rapidly, and a familiar spasm shot through my knee. With a cry of pain, I had the presence of mind to shut the scanner off. The pain dropped almost as rapidly as it had arisen, again leaving a numb, warm throbbing.
XVIII
Shaken from the experience and the horrible memories it brought, I fell back on the cot, breathing hard. Just like on the bridge.
Then, in one quick motion, I sat straight up. The bridge.
“...he has a device to help locate nuclear power sources with electrostatic ion thrusters...”
The Surveyor didn’t have electrostatic ion thrusters. She had ionized plasma thrusters, I remembered now.
So he had been lying to August. That wasn’t what the device was for. But the device must have led him here. And August was no fool—whatever his father told him would have to be close enough to the truth to seem plausible.
The CMR scanner! Compact magnetic resonance scanner. Magnetic resonance imaging. I knew that a few hundred years ago an MRI had filled up a whole room. Even when the Doctor was in medical school, they had been enormous, to accommodate the size of the magnet required. But now, they were small. A method had been developed to strengthen the magnet using safe radiation.
Dozens of facts flooded my mind. The twinges in my knee, that I’d thought nothing of at the time, had occurred less than a week before August and his father arrived. The intense, unbearable pain on the bridge—
My mind rushed back to that day. For the first second after I hit the ground I felt shaken, but normal. Then the pain arose suddenly, just like with the scan, and continued for several seconds before stopping rather abruptly, just as when I’d shut off the scanner. August had been resting in the quarters he shared with his father, and had later told me that many of his father’s devices had been thrown around by the impact, and he’d had to get up and take care of it.
Of course. The device that had led him here could detect the radialloy. The twinges—those had been brought on as he sought to ascertain where I was. And when we’d hit the asteroid, it had fallen and been accidentally turned on, and the close proximity of it had let off such radiation that it had resulted in greatly intensified pain. When August turned it off—not knowing what it really was—the radiation had abated, and the pain had subsided.
I no longer had any doubt that it was the radialloy that my father wanted—not me.
I should have told the Captain about everything long before, then we wouldn’t be in this trouble now. The Captain had never let me down, and was trustworthy.
Just like the Doctor.
I had to help him. I had to tell the Doctor I was sorry, and pay for my mistake. I had to fix everything, back t
o how it was before.
Just as I was about to head out the door to find the Doctor, an officer stepped in, his face stern.
“Miss Lloyd, dinner is served.”
My heart sank. Commander Howitz knew just where I was, and meant to ensure that I went to dinner. But it didn’t matter. Somehow, I would outsmart him, and save my father. My real father—the one who had the best right to my trust, love, and loyalty.
………
The Captain, Guilders, August, and the other primary bridge officers sat together at a table in one corner of the mess hall, along with myself. I looked around anxiously for the Doctor, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Armed guards stood in the far corners of the room, alert, and primarily focused on our little group.
The Captain was seething, and it was all Guilders could do to contain him.
“The villain.” He tore a bite out of his steak. “The audacity of that...”
“Calm yourself, Harrison,” said Guilders calmly. It was the first time I’d ever heard him use the Captain’s first name. I wasn’t sure what he expected to accomplish with that. “If they hear you talking that way, they’ll only keep a closer watch on us.”
It didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the Captain. He muttered, “Well what are we going to do about it? I’m not just going to sit here and let him take my command.” He glared at Commander Howitz, wrath shooting from his eyes. “He’s blocked my wristcom from transmitting. He says he’ll do the same to anyone who causes trouble.”
Curious, I entered the Doctor’s comm number and tried to call. Nothing.
I kept quiet and focused on eating. August, too, stayed out of the discussion.
“For now, we shall have to do as he says,” Guilders observed.
“You’re no help at all,” the Captain spluttered, then looked suspiciously at August. “And what are you doing here? Did your father send you to spy on us?”
Firmament: Radialloy Page 11