Spaceship medic

Chapter 10

'No localized pain, Mr Preece?' Don asked. He touched the man's neck and his armpits. There was no swelling of the lymph nodes that would indicate a major infection.

'No, and if there were I would tell you quickly enough Preece had a lean face and a hawk-like nose, and was obviously used to having his orders obeyed. 'I paid a lot of money for this trip and it hasn't been much of a holiday so far. Meteors, miserable food, my luggage stolen. Now this. If you ran a clean ship I wouldn't have caught anything.'

'All spaceships have to be hospital clean, to prevent the spread of disease from planet to planet.' The man's temperature was over 100, but his pulse and breathing were normal. 'The chances are that you brought this infection with you from Earth. After an incubation period it has made its presence known.'

'What is it?' He sounded worried now.

'Nothing major, we can be sure of that. So far it's just a fever and nothing else. I'm going to ask you to stay here in the sick bay for a few days, mostly to protect the other passengers. Well give you some drugs to knock out the bug and some antipyretics to bring the fever down. You don't have anything to be concerned about.'

The phone rang while Don was filling the hypodermic, and he almost dropped it in his haste to answer.

'Captain here.'

'We've done it!' It was Kurikka, his normal reserve cracked by the sudden change of events. 'Mars reports that our orbit is now right on the button, or so close that a minor correction will take care of it. Since the reaction mass was so short they have put us into a capture orbit, instead of a normal braking orbit.'

'What is the difference?'

'Normally we head towards the spot where Phobos Station will be, and brake until we match orbits. But we have no mass left for braking. So we are aimed at Mars. Not close enough to hit the atmosphere, but still close enough in so that we'll be captured by their gravity field and will swing back into an orbit around the planet.'

'This is very good news, Chief. Give my thanks to everyone for helping us do the job the right way.'

'Everything will be in the green now.'

Don cut the connection and memory returned. Everything was not in the green. It wouldn't do them much good to arrive safely in an orbit around Mars if they were all dead of suffocation at the time.

He gave the injections and started up the stairs to C deck where air technology control was located. This entire deck was given up to the ships operations and supplies, and rang like a tomb now. He passed empty storerooms - even their doors had been removed - and the places where surplus machinery had been ripped from the deck. Hansen was waiting for him.

'Here are the charts, sir,' he said. 'You can see for yourself.'

Don looked at the pages and the rows of figures blurred as fatigue pulled at him. He handed them back.

'I would rather not see for myself. You're the specialist and I'm going to ask you to explain just what is going on here. What, basically, is causing the drop in oxygen level?'

Hansen pointed at the apparatus on one wall. An illuminated inspection port showed an almost transparent, green liquid.

'It's the phytoplankton, you can see them there, in the port. They are one-celled plants that float in water. When they receive the carbon dioxide we breathe out in the ship they convert it back into oxygen. We lost too many of them when the water was lost during the accident. And a lot more died or mutated during the solar storm. There are not enough left to produce the amount of oxygen we need.'

'Is there any chance of growing more?'

Hansen shook his head. I'm doing my best to weed out the mutant strains and encourage cell division and growth. But it's too slow. There is plenty of nutrient to be added to the water, but the rate of division can't be accelerated.'

I can appreciate that.' Don looked around at the other machinery in the large compartment. 'What is the rest of this apparatus?'

'Mostly water processing, testing, microscopic analysis, automated monitor system and that kind of thing. Over there is the raw air processing. Filters to take out contaminants, and the carbon dioxide reducer.'

'Doesn't that help?'

'Some, but not enough. I have it going flat out now. It breaks the carbon dioxide back down into carbon and oxygen all right, but it was just designed to take up the slack in the main system. Sort of fill in when there is an excess of CO2 for limited periods.'

Don tried to prod his tired brain.

'We have stored oxygen. Won't that help?'

'Negative, sir. Only for a limited time. The total stored oxygen is less than enough for a twelve-hour period for everyone on the ship.'

Then what can we do?'

'I don't knowl' Hansen said, and his face was white with fear. Don was sorry he had asked. The man was doing his assigned job well enough, but he could not cope with the bigger problem.

'Then don't worry about it, well come up with something'

Easy words to say - but what could they do? Where could they get more oxygen in the depths of interplanetary space? Think! He cudgelled his tired brain but the results were a complete blank. Yet he had the gnawing feeling that the answer was right before his eyes.

The only thing before his eyes were the tiny plants in their watery environment. They were doing their best, he knew that, yet the answer was there. But where...?

Don laughed out loud.

'The answer was right in front of our eyes!' he said and clapped the astonished air tender on the back. 'Look in here - what do you see?'

'Why... the plankton, sir.'

'Anything else?'

'No, nothing. Just them in the water

'What was that last word?'

'Water.'

'And what is water made of?'

Sudden comprehension brightened Hansen's face. 'Hydrogen... and oxygen!'

'Absolutely correct. And we have all the power we need from the atomic generator. By feeding electricity into water, the two elements will be separated by the process of electrolysis...'

'We bleed the hydrogen off into space - and use the oxygen. But, Captain, we need the water too. The plankton are still necessary.'

'I wasn't thinking of depriving them. But I'm looking forward to more complaints from the passengers! All the ship's water is recycled - but we have far more than we need for survival. We'll determine the minimum amount needed and leave that much. The rest can be converted to oxygen. They may be dirty and a little thirsty - but at least they will be breathing!'

'What will we need for equipment?'

Don, feeling the drag of fatigue again, sat down wearily before he answered. He ticked off the points on his fingers.

'A container first, something like a bathtub. There's nothing complex about the reaction, and the container doesn't have to be sealed. We need direct current. A heavy cable from the generator will take care of that. Then we must have a weak solution of electrolyte to conduct the current. A simple salt or base dissolved in water.'

'Table salt?'

'That's what we don't want! That is sodium chloride - which means we will be getting some chlorine mixed in with our oxygen and we positively do not need a poison gas like that. We need an alkaline salt. Do you have anything like that among your plant nutrients?'

Hansen pulled out his supply list and ran down it. 'Will this do?' he asked. 'Magnesium is essential for the production of chlorophyll, so we have a store of magnesium sulphate...'

'Epsom salts! Couldn't be better. The only complication will be making some sort of container and piping for the cathode, the negative electrode in the solution. That's where the hydrogen will form. We'll draw that off and release it into space. The oxygen from the anode can just bubble off into the air.' He made a quick sketch of the details and passed it over to the air tender.

'This should work fine, sir,' Hansen said. 'We can use that glass-lined settling tank there for a vessel. I'll clean it out and mix a weak solution of electrolyte. But I'm not sure about the wiring, or pumping out the oxygen.'

'I'll get you some help. Chief Kurikka will know how to rig it, and if he doesn't he'll know who in the ship's crew will be able to do the job. Get him down here.'

Kurikka brought Sparks, then called in Acting-Chief Engineer Tyblewski. The cables from the now vanished frozen food lockers were located under the decks and torn out to bring in the necessary amount of current. While this was being done a glass dome, formerly a viewport in the observatory, was put over the cathode, and piping hooked from it to a valve that connected with the vacuum outside the ship. This could be adjusted so that the hydrogen was drawn off, but not the watery electrolyte.

'Ready,' Sparks announced finally.

'Well let her go,' Don said, so weary he could hardly sit up.

Kurikka threw the heavy-duty switch and Tyblewski slowly turned the handle on the rheostat. As current was fed to the electrode immersed in the bath, tiny bubbles began to form about it. Then, more and more, as the current was increased, large bubbles rose up and broke on the surface. Don leaned over and breathed deeply.

'Wonderful!' he said, as the pure oxygen cleared his head. 'It looks like our problems are over once and for all.'

He blinked, happily, in the oxygen-rich atmosphere so close above the tub, and was only vaguely aware of a phone ringing, and the handpiece being passed over to him.

'Speaking,' he said, then looked down to see the tiny image of Rama Kusum on the screen.

'Would you come to the sick bay sir. There are four more cases of fever, just like the first. And the first one, I do not know what to do about him. He is in a coma and his pulse is very slow and I cannot awaken him!'