Still the compartment was growing warmer and warmer, even though we were in one of the coolest parts of the ship.
I was afraid to scratch, and one of my legs was itching fiercely. I watched the last thin wedge of remaining time, a mere thousandth of a day, vanish from the dial.
The view shifted to the forward camera. A streak shot out in front of the ship—the rocket to deploy our sail. Then a long silvery strand, pointing straight ahead, became visible—this was the sail itself, not yet unfolded, looking like an ultrafine wire reaching into infinity. A forty-eighth of a day crept by as it spun out from the spool. The distant glare of the rocket motor dwindled to nothing, and still the sail kept streaking out in front of us.
Finally a large white lump—the nuclear-fusion charge at the base of the furled sail—shot out into space, taking only an 8192nd of a day to zip out farther than we could see and reminding us just how fast the rocket still pulling the sail was going. After the charge, the shroud lines— hundreds of strings of spun diamond—followed the same line out into space. These were transparent, so that rather than shining in the sun like the sail, they glimmered and flickered. The shroud lines were so fine, yet so strong, that they would cut right through steel with a touch—the winches on which they were wound had to be jacketed with woven spun diamond. All of this took a long time. I could probably have scratched, I told myself, if I had realized how long the sail would take to deploy, but it was certainly too late now.
I thought I couldn’t endure watching the glistening stream pour into black space for one instant longer. It went on, flickering white-hot once it cleared the ship’s shadow and moved into the three-million-times normal sunlight, far out in front of the ship so that we seemed to be on a thin line to infinity. Time crawled by. A brilliant white silent flash, like a sudden star, announced that the little nuclear-fusion charge had been set off to deploy the sail.
The bright star in the viewscreen widened into a circle, swelling quickly. The nuclear-fusion charge had been reflected from the inside mirror surface of the sail, and the pressure of its light shoved the sail open at enormous speed. As I stared up at the viewscreen, the sail spread across it, over and over, a dozen times in the space of a single breath as the view kept scaling up to get the whole sail onto the screen. Each time it scaled up it darkened, as the filters compensated for more and more intense light being reflected back toward us.
The couch swung on its pivot and settled with my back pointing toward the rear of the ship, as “down” changed all but instantly from outward to rearward. The screen scaled up twice more and became stable. I felt a low vibration through my back as the blast of sunlight caught the open sail and flung it wide open, the shroud lines yanking the ship closer to it.
I thought of squeezing the button for anesthesia, but I wanted to know what this would be like—
Acceleration rammed me deep into the couch and kept increasing. Too late. I could no longer lift my hand. The force pulled my face backward, my lips sliding over my mouth guard. The liquid in my lungs was no longer uncomfortable, but welcome, as it held my chest open against the fierce pressure.
I felt as if I were pressed between blocks of stone. I fought for breath; even with the added pressure it took great effort to force my chest to expand. My eyes began to ache, I had trouble blinking to relieve their dryness, and it was getting dark around the edges of my vision. The mouthpiece felt like a giant piece of lead jammed into my jaws. I thought about how hard I was being pressed into the couch and then couldn’t focus enough attention even for that.
The world became dark gray, and then sank to black.
* * * *
At first all I knew was that I was beginning to dream again. I dreamed I lay on my back, and Mejox was piling rocks on top of my chest. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t cry out to him to stop. I looked up at his face and saw that he seemed to be in agony himself, that he didn’t want to do this to me, that it was all a mistake—
First dim gray. Then shapes. I began to be able to think, a little, and though my eyes ached and I was troubled by abrupt flashes of light (they said those would happen from the stresses on the vision center in the brain), I was able to see the screen and its clock a little. I had been unconscious for more than a sixteenth of a day. I was still almost nine times as heavy as normal, and it wouldn’t be safe to move, but I seemed to be all right, though I felt as if I had been beaten all over with a heavy stick and then rolled under a huge wheel.
Finally the indicator lights showed that I could expel the liquid from my lungs. I clicked the control button to tell the machinery yes, do it, by all means.
Instantly the suction through my mouthpiece began to take up liquid; I felt my chest spasming and struggling as it collapsed, but the pain was welcome as the liquid was pulled out of me. Then the tongue depressor and tooth grips released, and the mouthpiece lay inert on my face, still intrusive, but no longer forcing its way in.
The suction had only removed most of the support liquid; the rest came up in a savage fit of coughing, hard gutwrenching coughs followed by deep painful whoops for the hot, foul air. It was still, comparatively, wonderful.
At last my coughing subsided into occasional hard hacks, and I could pay a little more attention to my surroundings. The others around me were also just coming out of their coughing.
My lungs felt as if I had just had severe pneumonia, or been rescued from a near-drowning. But much as they burned and stung, it was a wonderful relief. At last I could breathe, and think.
The velocity gauge showed that we had multiplied our speed by a factor of ten, and it was still rising. I lay back and thought, The worst is over. Now all it would take would be patience.
It took a lot of patience. For the next twelfth of a day, there was nothing to see but the pictures of the sail and the sun behind us. The sun, mercifully, was shrinking, and the sail was growing less bright, but though that was good, it was hardly enough to keep a person amused for the long time I lay there, still weighing too much to safely move.
When acceleration was down to four times normal gravity, Poiparesis’s voice said, “Do not try to sit up, but you can now remove your mouthpieces if you like.”
My arm, four times its normal weight, at first seemed impossible to lift, but with an effort I raised it, gripped my mouthpiece, and pushed it upward away from me.
“Don’t forget,” Poiparesis added, “the relation between weight and inertia is different. Things are hard to lift, but they still have the same momentum you’re used to.”
I let my arm sink beside me and breathed the comfortable cabin air; outside temperature had dropped almost back to normal, internal cooling had taken hold, and from the other numbers crawling across the screen it appeared that the ship had come through unharmed. “All right,” Poiparesis said, “now that we’ve all breathed—how is everyone?”
“Fine here,” the captain said.
“Fine,” Poiparesis said, and Soikenn said, “Sore, but nothing serious.”
“I’m all right,” I said.
“Me, too,” Priekahm added, and then Otuz asked, “Does being really bored count as damage?”
Poiparesis laughed. “If it does, we’re all dead. Mejox, are you all right?”
The answer was just slow enough in coming so that I dreaded it before I heard it. “Uh, uh . . . “
“Are you all right?” Poiparesis repeated.
Mejox’s voice was strained and unhappy. “I got, uh, caught, trying to scratch, just when the charge went off. I thought I could do it and my leg itched so much—”
“Mother Sea’s blood,” Poiparesis said, softly. I had never heard him swear before. “Is there any bleeding?”
“Not that I can tell. Can I try to raise my head and look?”
“Very slowly,” Poiparesis said. “Come up slowly, take one look, gently bring your head back to the couch, and then tell us what you saw.”
There was a long moment while we all worried, and then Mejox said, “I am not
bleeding, but there’s a great big lump on the side of my thigh, and it hurts too much to try to move my hand out from under myself. I’m sorry, Poiparesis, I didn’t mean to break the rules but I thought—”
Poiparesis sighed. “I’m not worried about the rules, I’m worried about your condition. I bet it must hurt a lot.”
“Yeah,” Mejox said. There was a trace of a sniffle in his voice.
“I’m going over to him,” Kekox said.
“No, you’re not.” Captain Osepok’s voice was absolutely firm. “You could easily break your spine doing that.”
“But-”
“No buts,” Soikenn said. “Mejox is a big kid and he’s hurt, but he’s not dying. Mejox, it’s going to be at least a twenty-fourth of a day before we can get to you, and a lot longer than that before we can do much for you. That’s a long time to lie there in pain. I think you’d better just give yourself a shot of anesthesia. Can you reach the button?”
“Yeah. It’s the other hand that got hurt.” There was a long pause, and when he spoke again it was slurred. “I didn’t mean to break the rules!”
“That doesn’t matter now,” Poiparesis said gently. “Is the anesthesia helping?”
“Some. I still hurt.”
“If you want to give yourself a double shot, the control system won’t let you overdose. Go ahead and do that. It really would be common sense.”
Mejox sighed. “I know, but I’m scared, and I hate to quit talking to all of you and be all alone again. It was really scary before I could take out the mouthpiece.”
“It must have been,” Poiparesis said, sympathetically. “Really, just give it two good squeezes and I’ll keep talking to you till you fall asleep. Then when you wake up your hand will be splinted, that internal hemorrhage in your leg will be drained, and you’ll have all that uncomfortable support liquid out of you. Just give it two more squeezes, and keep talking to us, and it’ll be just like falling asleep after you’re tucked in.”
“That is, if we tucked you in by piling rocks on your chest,” Otuz added.
Mejox made a little noise that might have been a laugh. “All right, I guess that’s common sense. Squeezing the button now ... it really does hurt.”
“Of course it does,” Poiparesis said. “Having your hand crushed hurts. So does internal bleeding. You’re dealing with it really well.”
“Yeah,” Mejox said. “Kekox, what do they do about these in the Imperial Guard?”
“We saw off the leg and use it to beat the patient to death,” Kekox said.
It was so unexpected that we all laughed, even Mejox. The old Imperial Guard added, “Mejox, you don’t have to prove how brave you are to all of us. Save being brave for when you have to use it. For right now just make yourself comfortable and we’ll have you mostly fixed when you wake up.”
“Is it going to be safe for me to make the pass by Zoiroy?” Mejox asked.
“The cast will be stronger than the bone, so it should be,” Poiparesis said.
“Besides, it’s not like you can get out and walk,” Otuz added.
“Guess not.” We heard a long sigh from him. “I’m getting really sleepy now. I really was scared, you know, when I first came out of blackout and started to feel the pain. And I’m still really sorry about breaking a rule.”
“Anybody would be scared,” Poiparesis assured him. “And you can stop worrying about the rules. Now go to sleep.”
He didn’t answer. We lay on our couches for another third of a day; Kekox told a couple of stories, and Poiparesis sang for us, and we made up games in our heads, but it was still a long dull time, and we were all worried about Mejox.
Finally, when the acceleration was down to little more than double normal gravity, and the sun in the screens was still huge but no longer the all-devouring ball of fire it had been, Soikenn and Kekox very carefully climbed from their couches and moved over to look at Mejox. “Crushed hand and a hematoma, just as we thought,” Soikenn said.
“Will he be all right?” Kekox asked.
“He’s going to be fine. And he’s a brave kid. That must have hurt a lot more than he was letting us know.”
“He did directly do what we told him not to do.”
“Yeah, that’s Mejox. But I bet he’s acquired a new respect for rules and advice.”
When the acceleration had come down still further, they moved him onto a cart and took him down to the outer deck. With only eight people, none of whom were expected to be sick very often, we didn’t have a sick bay or infirmary, but three of the rooms could be converted to emergency surgical spaces. The gravity was still too high for Soikenn to do any surgery on Mejox, but they could get the room set up.
Meanwhile the rest of us were left with just our thoughts for company. “You all can sit up,” Poiparesis said, “but we don’t need any more injuries, so I suggest you just sit. Your portable terminals are by your couches, so you can read, do homework, or play games, but I really don’t think anyone should get up and walk who doesn’t have to. I’m going down to the outer deck also, to see if I can help. I’m afraid we may have to wait till we’re back to much lower accelerations before we can do anything much for Mejox. One more failure of planning—we never thought we might need to do surgery while accelerating. It’s a good thing his hemorrhage wasn’t worse. Anyway, don’t add to our troubles by moving around and getting hurt.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Captain Osepok said. “There’s not really any use for me in the cockpit till it’s time for course correction and furling the sail.”
“Thanks,” Poiparesis said. He climbed slowly and carefully to the door—the direction of down was still almost ninety degrees from what we were used to—and went out.
“Is Mejox really going to be all right?” Priekahm asked.
“Well, Soikenn is about as good a doctor as you can be without doing it full time,” the captain said, “and Kekox has seen a lot of injuries. And they both seemed worried, but they didn’t act like it was anything that they couldn’t handle. It should be all right. Would you all like to get that foam out of yourselves? You won’t need it anymore, not till we make our close pass at Zoiroy.”
She wasn’t as gentle as Soikenn, maybe because of the high gravity, so the needles and tubes hurt more going in, but she was efficient, and it felt good to have all that filler removed. As soon as it was out, we all noticed that we were exhausted, and ended up stretching back out on the couches to sleep. Priekahm and I slept right through Mejox’s operation, three-eighths of a day, and only heard about it over the first meal after we were allowed to move around again. But Otuz said that even though she was awake, they wouldn’t let her watch. “They said it might upset me and I said how can anyone get upset watching people stick knives into Mejox.”
“That isn’t funny,” I said. “He was really hurt.” We were sitting in the common dining area, still working on that huge meal. Not having eaten for a full day gives you an appetite.
“That’s what Soikenn said. Nobody has a sense of humor anymore. But I gave him a lot of my blood to replace what he lost, so I figure if he’s going to get the blood, the jokes come with it.”
“I just hope he’s all right,” Priekahm said.
“I do, too,” Otuz said. “But all the adults say that—”
Poiparesis leaned in the doorway and said, “You all have a friend who’d like to see you.” It took only a couple of breaths before we were gathered around Mejox in the improvised surgery.
“Hi,” Mejox said. “Hope I didn’t scare anybody too badly. I feel really stupid, but I’m glad to be here. And thanks for your blood, Otuz.”
She was so startled at his being polite that she barely gasped out a “You’re welcome.”
Five days later we were all piled together at the entry to the cockpit to watch Captain Osepok furl the sail. By now we were almost four times as far from the Sun as Sosahy and Nisu were, plunging on toward Zoiroy. The acceleration from the sail fell off with the cube of our dist
ance, so it was now only one one-thousandth of a normal gravity; we would need to have the sail furled again when we passed by the smaller star, so that we could unfurl it as we were moving away and thus receive another big kick along our trajectory.
It turned out to be just about the dullest thing we had ever watched. The robot winches slowly wound in the cable, and since the sail they were winding up was the area of a large island back in Shulath, or of a province in Palath, that took a very long time. Nor could we escape from watching the process. Captain Osepok pointed out that we would next get to see this several years from now—then many years after that—and finally we would have to do it ourselves. “If you’re only going to get to see it three times,” she said, “and the whole success of the mission depends on you doing it right as long as seventy years from now, I think just maybe you had better not miss chances to watch.”
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