Podkayne of Mars

VIII

We've had that radiation storm. I prefer hives. I don't mean the storm itself, it wasn't too bad. Radiation jumped to about 1500 times normal for where we are now-about eight-tenths of an astronomical unit from the Sun, say 120,000,000 kilometers in units you can get your teeth in. Mr. Savvonavong says that we would have been all right if the first-class passengers had simply gone up one deck to second-class passenger country-which certainly would have been more comfortable than stuffing all the passengers and crew into that maximum-safety mausoleum at the center of the ship. Second-class accommodations are cramped and cheerless, and as for third class, I would rather be shipped as freight. But either one would be a picnic compared with spending eighteen hours in the radiation shelter.

For the first time I envied the half-dozen aliens aboard. They don't take shelter; they simply remain locked in their specially conditioned staterooms as

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usual. No, they aren't allowed to fry; those X-numbered rooms are almost at the center of the ship anyhow, in officers' and crew's country, and they have their own extra layer of shielding, because you can't expect a Martian, for example, to leave the pressure and humidity he requires and join us humans in the shelter; it would be equivalent to dunking him in a bathtub and holding his head under. If he had a head, I mean.

Still, I suppose eighteen hours of discomfort is better than being sealed into one small room for the whole trip. A Martian can simply contemplate the subtle difference between zero and nothing for that long or longer and a Venerian just estivates. But not me. I need unrest oftener than I need rest-or my circuits get tangled and smoke pours out of my ears.

But Captain Darling couldn't know ahead of time that the storm would be short and relatively mild; he had to assume the worst and protect his passengers and crew. Eleven minutes would have been long enough for us to be in the shelter, as shown later by instrument records. But that is hindsight ... and a captain doesn't save his ship and the lives depending on him by hindsight.

I am beginning to realize that being a captain isn't all glorious adventure and being saluted and wearing four gold stripes on your shoulders. Captain Darling is younger than Daddy and yet he has worry lines that make him look years older.

QUERY: Poddy, are you sure you have what it takes to captain an explorer ship?

ANSWERS: What did Columbus have that you don't? Aside from Isabella, I mean. Semper toujours, girl!

I spent a lot of time before the storm in the control room. Hermes Solar Weather Station doesn't actually

warn us when the storm is coming; what they do is fail to warn us that the storm is not coming. That sounds silly but here is how it works:

The weathermen at Hermes are perfectly safe, as they are underground on the dark side of Mercury. Their instruments peek cautiously over the horizon in the twilight zone, gather data about Solar weather including running telephotos at several wave lengths.

But the Sun takes about twenty-five days to turn around, so Hermes Station can't watch all of it all the time. Worse yet. Mercury is going around the Sun in the same direction that the Sun rotates, taking eightyeight days for one lap, so when the Sun again faces where Mercury was, Mercury has moved on. What this adds up to is that Hermes Station faces exactly the same face of the Sun about every seven weeks.

Which is obviously not good enough for weatherpredicting storms that can gather in a day or two, peak in a few minutes, and kill you dead in seconds or less.

So the Solar weather is watched from Earth's Luna and from Venus' satellite station as well, plus some help from Deimos. But there is speed-of-light lag in getting information from these more distant stations back to the main station on Mercury. Maybe fifteen minutes for Luna and as high as a thousand seconds for Deimos ... not good when seconds count.

But the season of bad storms is only a small part of the Sun's cycle as a variable star-say about a year out of each six. (Real years, I mean-Martian years. The Sun's cycle is about eleven of those Earth years that astronomers still insist on using.)

That makes things a lot easier; five years out of six a ship stands very little chance of being hit by a radiation storm.

But during the stormy season a careful skipper (the only sort who lives to draw a pension) will plan his orbit so that he is in the worst danger zone, say inside

the orbit of Earth, only during such time as Mercury lies between him and the Sun, so that Hermes Station can always warn him of coming trouble. That is exactly what Captain Darling had done; the Tricorn waited at Deimos nearly three weeks longer than the guaranteed sightseeing time on Mars called for by the Triangle Line's advertising, in order to place his approach to Venus so that Hermes Station could observe and warn-because we are right in the middle of the stormy season.

I suppose the Line's business office hates these expensive delays. Maybe they lose money during the stormy season. But three weeks' delay is better than losing a whole shipload of passengers.

But when the storm does start, radio communication goes all to pieces at once-Hermes Station can't warn the ships in the sky.

Stalemate? Not quite. Hermes Station can see a storm shaping up; they can spot the conditions on the Sun which are almost certainly going to produce a radiation storm very shortly. So they send out a storm warning-and the Tricorn and other ships hold radiation-shelter drills. Then we wait. One day, two days, or a whole week, and the storm either fails to develop, or it builds up and starts shooting nasty stuff in great quantities.

All during this time the space guard radio station on the dark side of Mercury sends a continuous storm warning, never an instant's break, giving a running account of how the weather looks on the Sun.

and suddenly it stops.

Maybe it's a power failure and the stand-by transmitter will cut in. Maybe it's just a "fade" and the storm hasn't broken yet and transmission will resume with reassuring words.

But it may be that the first blast of the storm has hit Mercury with the speed of light, no last-minute

warning at all, and the station's eyes are knocked out and its voice is swallowed up.in enormously more powerful radiation.

The officer-of-the-watch in the control room can't be sure and he dare not take a chance. The instant he loses Hermes Station he slaps a switch that starts a big clock with just a second hand. When that clock has ticked off a certain number of seconds-and Hermes Station is still silent-the general alarm sounds. The exact number of seconds depends on where the ship is, how far from the Sun, how much longer it will take the first blast to reach the ship after it has already hit Hermes Station.

Now here is where a captain bites his nails and gets gray hair and earns his high pay....ecause he has to decide how many seconds to set that clock for. Actually, if the first and worst blast is at the speed of light, he hasn't any warning time at all because the break in the radio signal from Hermes and that first wave front from the Sun will reach him at the same instant. Or, if the angle is unfavorable, perhaps it is his own radio reception that has been clobbered, and Hermes Station is still trying to reach him with a last-moment warning. He doesn't know.

But he does know that if he sounds the alarm and chases everybody to shelter every time the radio fades for a few seconds, he will get people so worn out and disgusted from his crying "Wolfi" that when the trouble really comes they may not move fast enough.

He knows, too, that the outer hull of his ship will stop almost anything in the electromagnetic spectrum. Among photons (and nothing else travels at speed-oflight) only the hardest X-radiation will get through to, passenger country and not much of that. But traveling along behind, falling just a little behind each second, is the really dangerous stuff-big particles, little particles, middle-sized particles, all the debris of nuclear

explosion. This stuff is moving very fast but not quite at speed-of-light. He has to get his people safe before it hits.

Captain Darling picked a delay of twenty-five seconds, for where we were and what he expected from the weather reports. I asked him how he picked it and he just grinned without looking happy and said, "I asked my grandfather's ghost."

Five times while I was in the control room the officer of the watch started that clock ... and five times contact with Hermes Station was picked up again before time ran out and the switch was opened.

The sixth time the seconds trickled away while all of us held our breaths ... and contact with Hermes wasn't picked up again and the alarm sounded like the wakeful trump of doom.

The Captain looked stony-faced and turned to duck down the hatch into the radiation shelter. I didn't move, because I expected to be allowed to remain in the control room. Strictly speaking, the control room is part of the radiation shelter, since it is just above it and is enclosed by the same layers of cascade shielding.

(It's amazing how many people think that a captain controls his ship by peering out a port as if he were driving a sand wagon. But he doesn't, of course. The control room is inside, where he can watch things much more accurately and conveniently by displays and instruments. The only viewport in the Tricorn is one at the top end of the main axis, to allow passengers to look out at the stars. But we have never been headed so that the mass of the ship would protect that sightseeing room from solar radiation, so it has been locked off this whole trip.)

I knew I was safe where I was, so I hung back, intending to take advantage of being "teacher's pet"- for I certainly didn't want to spend hours or days

stretched out on a shelf with gabbling and maybe hysterical women crowding me on both sides~

I should have known. The Captain hesitated a split second as he started down the hatch and snapped, "Come along, Miss Fries."

I came. He always calls me "Poddy"-and his voice had spank in it.

Third-class passengers were already pouring in, since they have the shortest distance to go, and crew members were mustering them into their billets. The crew has been on emergency routine ever since we first were warned by Hermes Station, with their usual one watch in three replaced by four hours on and four hours off. Part of the crew had been staying dressed in radiation armor (which must be very uncomfortable) and simply hanging around passenger country. They can't take that heavy armor off for any reason at all until their reliefs show up, dressed also in armor. These crewmen are the "chasers" who bet their lives that they can check every passenger space, root out stragglers, and still reach the shelter fast enough not to accumulate radiation poisoning. They are all volunteers and the chasers on duty when the alarm sounds get a big bonus and the other half of them who were lucky enough not to be on duty get a little bonus.

The, Chief Officer is in charge of the first section of chasers and the Purser is in charge of the second- but they don't get any bonus even though the one on duty when the alarm sounds is by tradition and law the last man to enter the safety of the shelter. This hardly seems fair ... but it is considered their honor as well as their duty.

Other crewmen take turns in the radiation shelter and are equipped with mustering lists and billeting diagrams.

Naturally, service has been pret'ty skimpy of late, with so many of the crew pulled off their regular

duties in order to do just one thing and do it fast at the first jangle of the alarm. Most of these emergencyduty assignments have to be made from the stewards and clerks; engineers and communicators and such usually can't be spared. So staterooms may not be made up until late afternoon-unless you make your own bed and tidy your room yourself, as I had been doing-and serving meals takes about twice as long as usual, and lounge service is almost non-existent.

But of course the passengers realize the necessity for this temporary mild austerity and are grateful because it is all done for safety.

You think so? My dear, if you believe that, you will believe anything. You haven't Seen Life until you've seen a rich, elderly Earthman deprived of something he feels is his rightful due, because he figures he paid for it in the price of his ticket. I saw one man, perhaps as old as Uncle Tom and certainly old enough to know better, almost have a stroke. He turned purple, really purple and gibbered-all because the bar steward didn't show up on the bounce to fetch him a new deck of playing cards.

The bar steward was in armor at the time and couldn't leave his assigned area, and the lounge steward was trying to be three places at once and answer stateroom rings as well. This didn't mean anything to our jolly shipmate; he was threatening to sue the Line and all its directors, when his speech became incoherent.

Not everybody is that way, of course. Mrs. Grew, fat as she is, has been making her own bed and she is never impatient. Some others who are ordinarily inclined to demand lots of service have lately been making a cheerful best of things.

But some of them act like children with tantrums- which isn't pretty in children and is even uglier in grandparents.

The instant I followed the Captain into the radiation shelter I discovered just hçw efficient Tricorn service can be when it really matters. I was snatched- snatched like a ball, right out of the air-and passed from hand to hand. Of course I don't weigh much at one-tenth gravity, all there is at the main axis; but it is rather breath-taking. Some more hands shoved me into my billet, already stretched out, as casually and impersonally as a housewife stows clean laundry, and a voice called out, "Fries, Podkayne!" and another voice answered, "Check."

The spaces around me, and above and below and across from me, filled up awfully fast, with the crewmen working with the unhurried efficiency of automatic machinery sorting mail capsules. Somewhere a baby was crying and through it I heard the Captain saying, "Is that the last?"

"Last one, Ca~tain," I heard the Purser answer. "How's the time?'

"Two minutes thirty-seven seconds-and your boys can start figuring their payoff, because this one is no drill."

"I didn't think it was, Skipper-and I've won a small bet from the Mate myself." Then the Purser walked past my billet carrying someone, and I tried to sit up and bumped my head and my eyes bugged out.

The passenger he was carrying had fainted; her head lolled loosely over the crook of his arm. At first I couldn't tell who it was, as the face was a bright, bright red. And then I recognized her and I almost fainted. Mrs. Royer- Of course the first symptom of any bad radiation

exposure is emythema. Even with a sunburn, or just carelessness with an ultraviolet lamp, the first thing you see is the skin turning pink or bright red.

But was it possible that Mrs. Royer had been hit with such extremely sharp radiation in so very little

time that her skin had already turned red in the worst "sunburn" imaginable? Just from being last man in?

In that case she hadn't fainted; she was dead.

And if that was true, then it was equally true that the passengers who were last to reach the shelter must all have received several times the lethal dosage. They might not feel ill for hours yet; they might not die for days. But they were just as dead as if they were already stretched out still and cold.

How many? I had no way of guessing. Possibly- probably I corrected myself-all the first-class passengers; they had the farthest to go and were most exposed to start with.

Uncle Tom and Clark- I felt sudden sick sorrow and wished that I had not

been in the control, room. If my brother and Uncle Tom were dying, I didn't want to be alive myself.

I don't think I wasted any sympathy on Mrs. Royer. I did feel a shock of horror when I saw that flaming red face, but truthfully, I didn't like her, I thought she was a parasite with contemptible opinions, and if she had died of heart failure instead, I can't honestly say that it would have affected my appetite. None of us goes around sobbing over the millions and billions of people who have died in the past ... nor over those still living and yet to be born whose single certain heritage is death (including Podkayne Fries herself). So why should you cry foolish tears simply because you happen to be in the neighborhood when someone you don't like-despise, in fact-comes to the end of her string?

In any case, I did not have time to feel sorrow for Mrs. Royer; my heart was filled with grief over my brother and my uncle. I was sony that I hadn't been sweeter to Uncle Tom, instead of imposing on him and expecting him always to drop whatever he was doing to help me with my silly problems. I regretted

all the many times I had fought with my brother. After all, he was a child and I am a woman; "I should have made allowances.

Tears were welling out of my eyes and I almost missed the Captain's first words:

"Shipmates,' he said, in a voice firm and very soothing, "my crew and our guests aboard... this is not a drill; this is indeed a radiation storm.

"Do not be alarmed; we are all, each and every one of us, perfectly safe. The Surgeon has examined the personal radiation exposure meter of the very last one to reach the shelter. It is well within safe limits. Even if it were added to the accumulated exposure of the most exposed person aboard-who is not a passenger, by the way, but one of the ship's company-the total would still be inside the conservative maximum for personal health and genetic hygiene.

"Let me say it again. No one has been hurt, no one is going to be hurt. We are simply going to suffer a mild inconvenience. I wish I could tell you how long we will have to remain here in the safety of the shelter. But I do not know. It might be a few hours, it might be several days. The longest radiation storm of record lasted less than a week. We hope that Old Sol is not that bad-tempered this time. But until we receive word from Hermes Station that the storm is over, we will all have to stay inside here. Once we know a storm is over it usually does not take too long to check the ship and make sure that your usual comfortable quarters are safe. Until then, be patient and be patient with each other."

I started to feel better as soon as the Captain started to talk. His voice was almost hypnotic; it had the soothing all-better-now effect of a mother reassuring a child. I relaxed and was simply weak with the aftereffects of my fears.

But presently I began to wonder. Would Captain

Darling tell us that everything was all right when really everything was All Wrong simply because it was too late and nothing could be done about it?

I thought over everything I had ever learned about radiation poisoning, from the simple hygiene they teach in kindergarten to a tape belonging to Mr. Clancy that I had scanned only that week.

And I decided that the Captain had been telling the truth.

Why? Because, even if my very worst fears had been correct, and we had been hit as hard and unexpectedly as if a nuclear weapon had exploded by us, nevertheless something can always be done about it. There would be three groups of us-those who hadn't been hurt at all and were not going to die (certainly everybody who was in the control room or in the shelter when it happened, plus all or almost all the third-class passengers if they had moved fast), a second group so terribly exposed that they were certain to die, no matter what (let's say everybody in first class country), and a third group, no telling how large, which had been dangerously exposed but could be saved by quick and drastic treatment.

In which case that quick and drastic action would be going on.

They would be checking our exposure meters and reshuffling us-sorting out the ones in danger who required rapid treatment, giving morphine shots to the ones who were going to die anyhow and moving them off by themselves, stacking those of us who were safe by ourselves to keep us from getting in the way, or drafting us to help nurse the ones who could be helped.

That was certain. But there was nothing going on, nothing at all-just some babies crying and a murmur of voices. Why, they hadn't even looked at the exposure meters of most of us; it seemed likely that the

Surgeon had checked only the last few stragglers to reach the shelter.

Therefore the Captain had told us the simple, heartwarming truth.

I felt so good that I forgot to wonder why Mrs. Royer had looked like a ripe tomato. I relaxed and soaked in the warm and happy fact that darling Uncle Tom wasn't going to die and that my kid brother would live to cause me lots more homey grief. I almost went to sleep

and was yanked out of it by the woman on my right starting to scream: "Let me out of here! Let me out of here!"

Then I did see some fast and drastic emergency action.

Two crewmen swarmed up to our shelf and grabbed her; a stewardess was right behind them. She slapped a gag over the woman's mouth and gave her a shot in the arm, all in one motion. Then they held her until she stopped struggling. When she was quiet, one of the crewmen picked her up and took her somewhere.

Shortly thereafter a stewardess showed up who was collecting exposure meters and passing out sleeping pills. Most people took them but I resisted-I don't like pills at best and I certainly won't take one to knock me out so that I won't know what is going on. The stewardess was insistent but I can be awfully stubborn, so she shrugged and went away. After that there were three or four more cases of galloping claustrophobia or maybe just'plain screaming funk; I wouldn't know. Each was taken care of promptly with no fuss and shortly the shelter was quiet except for snores, a few voices, and' fairly continuous sounds of babies crying.

There aren't any babies in first class and not many children of any age. Second class has quite a few kids, but third class is swarming with them and every family seems to have at least one young baby. It's why they

are there, of course; almost all of third class are Earth people emigrating to Venus. With Earth so crowded, a man with a big family can easily reach the point where emigration to Venus looks like the best way out of an impossible situation, so he signs a labor contract and Venus Corporation pays for their tickets as an advance against his wages.

I suppose it's all right. They need to get away and Venus needs all the people they can get. But I'm glad Mars Republic doesn't subsidize immigration, or we would be swamped. We take immigrants but they have to pay their own way and have to deposit return tickets with the PEG board, tickets they can't cash in for two of our years.

A good thing, too. At least a third of the immigrants who come to Mars just can't adjust. They get homesick and despondent and use those return tickets to go back to Earth. I can't understand anyone's not liking Mars, but if they don't then it's better if they don't stay.

I lay there, thinking about such things, a little bit excited and a little bit bored, and mostly wondering why somebody didn't do something about those poor babies.

The lights had been dimmed and when somebody came up to my shelf I didn't see who it was at first. "Poddy?" came Girdle's voice, softly but clearly. "Are you in there?"

"I think so. What's up, Girdie?" I tried to keep my voice down too.

"Do you know how to change a baby?"

"I certainly do!" Suddenly I wondered how Duncan was doing ... and realized that I hadn't really thought about him in days. Had he forgotten me? Would he know Grandmaw Poddy the next time he saw her?

"Then come along, chum. There's work to be done." There certainly was! The lowest part of the shelter, four catwalks below my billet and just over the

engineering spaces, was cut like a pie into four quarters-sanitary units, two sick bays, for 'men and for women and both crowded~~L~and jammed into a little corner between the infirmaries was a sorry pretense for a nursery, not more than two meters in any dimension. On three walls of it babies were stacked high in canvas crib baskets snap-hooked to the walls, and more overflowed into the women's sick bay. A sweeping majority of those babies were crying.

In the crowded middle of this pandemonium two harassed stewardesses were changing babies, working on a barely big enough shelf let down out of one wall. Girdle tapped one of them on the shoulder. "All right, girls, reinforcements have landed. So get some rest and a bite to eat."

The older one protested feebly, but they were awfully glad to take a break; they backed out and Girdle and I moved in and took over. I 'don't know how long we worked, as we never had time to think abut it-there was always more than we could do and we never quite got caught up. But it was better than lying on a shelf and staring at another shelf just centimeters above your nose. The worst of it was that there simply wasn't enough room. I worked with both elbows held in close, to keep from bumping Girdie on one side and a basket crib that was nudging me on the other side.

But I'm not complaining about that. The engineer who designed that shelter into the Tricorn had been forced to plan as many people as possible into the smallest possible space; there wasn't any other way to do it and still give us all enough levels of shielding during a storm. I doubt if he worried much about getting babies changed and dry; he had enough to do just worrying about how to keep them alive.

But you can't tell that to a baby.

Girdle worked with an easy, no-lost-motions efficiency

that surprised me; I would never have guessed that she had ever had her hands on a 'baby. But she knew what she was doing and was faster than I was. "Where are their mothers?" I asked, meaning: "Why aren't those lazy slobs down here helping instead of leaving it to the stewardesses and some volunteers?"

Girdle understood me. "Most of them-all of them, maybe-have other small children to keep quiet; they have their hands full. A couple of them went to pieces themselves; they're in there sleeping it off." She jerked her head toward the sick bay.

I shut up, as it made sense. You couldn't possibly take care of an infant properly in one of those shallow niches the passengers were stacked in, and if each mother tried to bring her own baby down here each time, the traffic jam would be indescribable. No, this assembly-line system was necessary. I said, "We're running out of Disposies."

"Stacked in a cupboard behind you. Did you see what happened to Mrs. Garcia's face?"

"Huh?' I squatted and got out more supplies. "You mean Mrs. Royer, don't you?"

"I mean both of them. But I saw milady Garcia first and got a better look at her, while they were quieting her down. You didn't see her?"

"Sneak a look into the women's ward first chance you get. Her face is the brightest, most amazing chrome yellow I've ever seen in a paint pot, much less on a human face."

I gasped. "Gracious! I did see Mrs. Royer-bright red instead of yellow. Girdle-what in the world happened to them?"

"I'm fairly sure I know what happened," Girdle answered slowly, "but no one can figure out how it happened."

"I don't follow you."

"The colors tell the story. Those are the exact shades of two of the water-act vated dyes used in photography. Know anything about photography, hon?"

"Not much," I answered. I wasn't going to admit what little I did know, because Clark is a very accomplished amateur photographer. And I wasn't going to mention that, either!

"Well, surely you've seen someone taking snapshots. You pull out the tab and there is your picture-only there's no picture as yet. Clear as glass. So you dip it in water and slosh it around for about thirty seconds. Still no picture. Then you lay it anywhere in the light and the picture starts to show... and when the colors are bright enough to suit you, you cover it up and let it finish drying in darkness, so that the colors won't get too garish." Girdie suppressed a chuckle. "From the results, I would say that they didn't cover their faces in time to stop the process. They probably tried to scrub it off and made it worse."

I said, in a puzzled tone-and I was puzzled, about part of it-"I still don't see how it could happen."

"Neither does anybody else. But the Surgeon has a theory. Somebody booby-trapped their washcloths."

"Huh?"

"Somebody in the ship must have a supply of the pure dyes. That somebody soaked two washcloths in the inactive dyes-colorless, I mean-and dried them carefully, all in total darkness. Then that same somebody sneaked those two prepared washcloths into those two staterooms and substituted them for washcloths they found there on the stateroom wash trays. That last part wouldn't be hard for anyone with cool nerves-service in the staterooms has been pretty haphazard the last day or two, what with this flap over the radiation storm. Maybe a fresh washcloth appears in your room, maybe it doesn't-and all the

ship's washcloths and towels are the same pattern. You just wouldn't know."

I certainly hope not! I said to myself-and added aloud, "I suppose not."

"Certainly not. It could be one of the stewardesses-or any of the passengers. But the real mystery is: where did the dyes come from? The ship's shop doesn't carry them ....ust the rolls of prepared film

and the Surgeon says that he knows enough about chemistry to be willing to stake his life that no one but a master chemist, using a special laboratory, could possibly separate out pure dyes from a roll of film. He thinks, too, that since the dyes aren't even manufactured on Mars, this somebody must be somebody who came aboard at Earth." Girdle glanced at me and smiled. "So you're not a suspect, Poddy. But I am."

"Why are you a suspect?" (And if I'm not a suspect then my brother isn't a suspect!) "Why, that's silly!"

"Yes, it is ... because I wouldn't have known how

even if I'd had the dyes. But it isn't, inasmuch as I

could have bought them before I left Earth, and I

don't have reason to like either of those women."

"I've never heard you say a word against them."

"No, but they've said a few thousand words about me-and other people have ears. So I'm a hot suspect, Poddy. But don t fret about it. I didn t do it, so there is no possible way to show that I did." She chuckled. "And I hope they never catch the somebody who did!"

I didn't even answer, "Me, too!" I could think of one person who might figure out a way to get pure dyes out of a roll of film without a complete chemistry laboratory, and I was checking quickly through my mind every item I had seen when I searched Clark's room.

There hadn't been anything in Clark's room which could have been photographic dyes. No, not even film.

Which proves precisely nothing where Clark is

concerned. I just hope that he was careful about fingerprints.

Two other stewardesses came in presently and we fed all the babies, and then Girdle and I managed a sort of a washup and had a snack standing up, and then I went back up to my assigned shelf and surprised myself by falling asleep.

I must have slept three or four hours, because I missed the happenings when Mrs. Dirkson had her baby. She is one of the Terran emigrants to Venus and she shouldn't have had her baby until long after we reach Venus-I suppose the excitement stirred things up. Anyhow, when she started to groan they carried her down to that dinky infirmary, and Dr. Torland took one look at her and ordered her carried up into the control room because the control room was the only place inside the radiation-safe space roomy enough to let him do what needed to be done.

So that's where the baby was born, on the deck of the control room, right between the chart tank and the computer. Dr. Torland and Captain Darling are godfathers and the senior stewardess is godmother and the baby's name is "Radiant," which is a poor pun but rather pretty.

They jury-rigged an incubator for Radiant right there in the control room before they moved Mrs. Dirkson back to the infirmary and gave her something to make her sleep. The baby was still there when I woke up and heard about it.

I decided to take a chance that the Captain was feeling more mellow now, and sneaked up to the control room and stuck my head in. "Could I please see the baby?"

The Captain looked annoyed, then he barely smiled and said, "All right, Poddy. Take a quick look and get out."

So I did. Radiant masses about a kilo and, frankly, she looks like cat meat, not worth saving. But Dr. Torland says that she is doing well and that she will grow up to be a fine, healthy girl-prettier than I am. I suppose he knows what he is talking about, but if she is ever going to be prettier than I am, she has lots of kilometers to go. She is almost the color of Mrs. Royer and she's mostly wrinkles.

But no doubt she'll outgrow it, because she looks like one of the pictures toward the end of the series in a rather goody-goody schoolbook called The Miracle of Life-and the earlier pictures in that series were even less appetizing. It is probably just as well that we can't possibly see babies until they are ready to make their debut, or the human race would lose interest and die out.

It would probably 'be still better to lay eggs. Human engineering isn't all that it might be, especially for us female types.

I went back down where the more mature babies were to see if they needed me. They didn't, not right then, as the babies had been fed again and a stewardess and a young woman I had never met were on duty and claimed that they had been working only a few minutes. I hung around anyhow, rather than go back up to my shelf. Soon I was pretending to be useful by reaching past the two who really were working and checking the babies, then handing down the ones who needed servicing as quickly as shelf space was cleared.

It speeded things up a little. Presently I pulled a little wiggler out of his basket and was cuddling him; the stewardess looked up and said, "I'm ready for him."

"Oh, he's not wet," I answered. "Or 'she' as the case may be. Just lonely and needs loving."

"We haven't time for that."

"I wonder." The worst thing about the midget nursery was the high noise leyel. The babies woke each other and egged each other on and the decibels were something fierce. No doubt they were all lonely and probably frightened-I'm sure I would be. "Most of the babies need loving more than they need anything else."

"They've all had their bottles."

"A bottle can't cuddle."

She didn't answer, just started checking the other infants. But I didn't think what I had said was silly. A baby can't understand your words and he doesn't know where he is if you put him in a strange place, nor what has happened. So he cries. Then he needs to be soothed.

Girdie showed up just then. "Can I help?"

"You certainly can. Here ... hold this one."

In a few minutes I rounded up three girls about my age and I ran across Clark prowling around the catwalks instead of staying quietly in his assigned billet so I drafted him, too. He wasn't exactly eager to volunteer, but doing anything was slightly better than doing nothing; he came along.

I couldn't use any more help as standing room was almost nonexistent. We worked it only by having two baby-cuddllers sort of back into each of the infirmaries with the mistress of ceremonies (me) standing in the little space at the bottom of the ladder, ready to scrunch in any direction to let people get in and out of the washrooms and up and down the ladder-and with Girdie, because she was tallest, standing back of the two at the changing shelf and dealing out babies, the loudest back to me for further assignment and the wet ones down for service-and vice versa: dry ones back to their baskets unless they started to yell; ones that had fallen asleep from being held and cuddled.

At least seven babies could receive personal

attention at once, and sometimes as high as ten or eleven, because at one-tenth gee your feet never get tired and a baby doesn't weigh anything at all worth mentioning; it was possible to hold one in each arm and sometimes we did.

In ten minutes we had that racket quieted down to an occasional whimper, quickly soothed. I didn't think Clark would stick it out, but he did-probably because Girdle was part of the team. With a look of grim nobility on his face, the like of which I have never before seen there, he cuddled babies and presently was saying "Kitchy-koo ldtchy-koo!" and "There, there, honey bun," as if he had been doing it all his life. Furthermore, the babies seemed to like him; he could soothe one down and put it to sleep quickest of any of us. Hypnotism, maybe?

This went on for several hours, with volunteers moving in and tired ones moving out and positions rotating. I was relieved once and had another snatched meal and then stretched out on my shelf for about an hour before going back on duty.

I was back at the changing shelf when the Captain called us all by speaker: "Attention, please. In five minutes power will be cut and the ship will be in free fall while a repair is made outside the ship. All passengers strap down. All crew members observe precautions for free fall."

I went right on changing the baby under my hands; you can't walk off on a baby. In the meantime, babies that had been being cuddled were handed back and stowed, and the cuddling team was chased back to their shelves to strap down-and spin was being taken off the ship. One rotation every twelve seconds you simply don't notice at the center of the ship, but you do notice when the unspinning starts. The stewardess with me on the changing bench said, "Poddy, go up and strap down. Hurry."

I said, "Don't be silly, Bergitta, there's work to be done," and popped the baby I had just' dried into its basket and fastened the zipper.

"You're a passenger. That's an order-please!"

"Who's going to check all these babies? You? And how about those four in on the floor of the women's sick bay?"

Bergitta looked startled and hurried to fetch them. All the other stewardesses were busy checking on strap-down; she didn't bother me any more with That's-an-order; she' was too busy hooking up the changing shelf and fastening baby baskets to the space. I was checking all the others and almost all of them had been left unzipped-logical enough while we were working with them, but zipping the cover on a baby basket is the same as strapping down for a grown-up. It holds them firmly but comfortably with just their heads free.

I still hadn't finished when the siren 'sounded and the Captain cut the power.

Oh, brother! Pandemonium. The siren woke the babies who were asleep and scared any who were awake, and every single one of those squirmy little worms started to cry at the top of its lungs-and one I hadn't zipped yet popped right out of its basket and floated out into the middle of the space and I snagged it by one leg and was loose myself, and the baby and I bumped gently against the baskets on one wall-only it wasn't a wall any longer, it was just an obstacle to further progress. Free fall can be very confusing when you are not used to it, which I admit I am not. Or wasn't.

The stewardess grabbed us both and shoved the elusive little darling back into her straitjacket and zipped it while I hung onto a handhold. And by then two more were loose.

I did better this time-snagged one without letting

go and just kept it captive while Bergitta took care of the other one. Bergitta really knew how to handle herself in zero gravity, with unabrupt graceful movements like a dancer in a slow-motion solly. I made a mental note that this was a skill I must acquire.

I thought the emergency was over; I was wrong. Babies don't like free fall; it frightens them. It also makes their sphincters most erratic. Most of the latter we could ignore-but Disposies don't catch everything; regrettably some six or seven of them had been fed in the last hour.

I know now why stewardesses are all graduate nurses; we kept five babies from choking to death in the next few minutes. That is, Bergitta cleared the throat of the first one that upchucked its milk and, seeing what she had done, I worked on the second one in trouble while she grabbed the third. And so on.

Then we were very busy trying to clear the air with clean Disposies because- Listen, dear, if you think you've had it tough because your baby brother threw up all over your new party dress, then you should try somewhat-used baby formula in free fall, where it doesn't settle anywhere in particular but just floats around like smoke until you either get it or it gets you.

From six babies. In a small compartment.

By the time we had that mess cleaned up, or 95 percent or so anyway, we were both mostly sour milk from hair part to ankle and the Captain was warning us to stand by for acceleration, which came almost at once to my great relief. The Chief Stewardess showed up and was horrified that I had not strapped down and I told her in a ladylike way to go to hell, using a more polite idiom suitable to my age and sex-and asked her what Captain Darling would think about a baby passenger choking to death simply because I had strapped down all regulation-like and according to orders? And Bergitta backed me up and told her that

I had cleared choke from at least two and maybe more-she had been too busy to count.

Mrs. Peal, the C.S., changed her tune in a hurry and was sony and thanked me, and sighed and wiped her forehead and trembled and you could see that she was dead on her feet. But nevertheless, she checked all the babies herself and hurried out. Pretty quickly we were relieved and Bergitta and I crowded into the women's washroom and tried to clean up some. Not much good, as we didn't have any clean clothes to change into.

The "All Clear" felt like a reprieve from purgatory, and a hot bath was heaven itself with the Angels singing. "A" deck had already been checked for radiation level and pronounced safe while the repair outside the ship was being made. The repair itself, I learned, was routine. Some of the antennas and receptors and things outside the ship can't take a flare storm; they burn out-so immediately after a storm, men go outside in armored space suits and replace them. This is normal and unavoidable,' like replacing lighting tubes at home. But the men who do it get the same radiation bonus that the passenger chasers get, because old Sol could burn them down with one tiny little afterthought.

I soaked in warm, clean water and thought how miserable an eighteen hours it had been. Then I decided that it hadn't been so bad after all.

It's lots better to be miserable than to be bored.