Survey Ship

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ching startled awake with a cry, the sharp nightmare shock, the old atavistic terror of falling… no, she was not falling, the sleeping net held her closely restrained; but it was the floor that was not anywhere, she was floating, spinning, no down or up, no orientation — she felt her stomach heave, heard herself moan, and shut her eyes against the impact of it, struggling with sickness.

This was absurd; of course there was only one explanation, the damned DeMag units were off again in her cubicle. Was it through the whole of the living quarters? Or only in her own cubicle, or what? She clung to the bunk, frozen, incapable of what she knew she ought to do; clamber down and turn the DeMag unit firmly off, then on again, to bring back the needed gravity. She fought to force her fingers to unclip the sleeping net, let herself slide along the bunk, clinging to the rails as to a crawl bar. Yet her inner-ear channels convinced her that the bunk, which ought to be in an orderly spot halfway between floor and ceiling, was somehow suspending her upside-down at a crazy, sickening angle.

She shouted, “Hey!” Had this happened in all the cubicles? Had anyone else been awakened by it? Would anyone else even notice, far less be awakened by that nightmare plunge? They all seemed to manage, somehow, none of the others felt that sickening physical disorientation and terror. In response to her cry there were a few sleepy sounds, and then Teague thrust his sinewy shoulders through the opening of the cubicle, and made strong swimming motions up toward the bunk where she clung. He undipped the safety net and, clasping her tight in his arms, propelled them both down to the floor.

“Poor love, poor little thing,” he murmured, stroking her hair, “were you frightened? You should have called out before, only I thought it was only in my own cubicle; I should have come in and checked to make sure you were all right.”

She hid her face against Teague’s naked chest, wondering why she felt so boneless, so wholly devoid of strength in his arms. Could a simple biological process, even when aided by hormones, do that to her, or was it simply a matter of suggestion and psychology, was it all in her mind after all?

Still holding her in the circle of one arm, he slid down toward the DeMag unit, turned the dial firmly off and then on again. Ching, still holding her breath and struggling against nausea, felt the world blessedly settle down to normal again.

“Are you all right, sweet? I’d better check up on the others, and then I’ll be right back,” Teague promised. She heard his voice, calling out to the rest of them, one after the other, reassuring them.

“I guess it was only your cubicle, and mine, Ching, everyone else seemed to be all right.”

“Did — it — wake you?”

He shook his head. “No, I was awake, working. Working on my string quartet; it’s not going the way I want it to go. I really don’t have the training in theory that I need. And I’m not a good enough violinist to know whether the things I write are playable or not. Theoretically, they should be, but I can’t really imagine if they would sound the way I expect them to sound. And I don’t know how to resolve it,”

“Ask Peake to play them for you,” Ching suggested. Teague had crawled into the bunk beside her, clipped the safety net over them both: he lay on his side, facing her, his face almost invisible in the dimness; there was no light except the dim rim of illumination just outside the door of the cubicle, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark she could make out that he looked dejected.

“Peake? No, I couldn’t. He’s a real musician. He’s used to great music, or at least to the computer doing things right, and my stuff is so crude. I’d be ashamed to show it to Peake.”

“Don’t be foolish, Teague. He likes you, he’d be glad to tell you what’s good about it and what’s wrong with it—”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Teague muttered.

“Even if it was awful, Teague — and honestly, I don’t think it is — Peake is much too nice to be rude to you about it, or make fun or you. He’d understand what you were trying to do, and I’m sure he’d be nice and helpful.”

“That’s not what I’m worrying about,” Teague said, his face buried in her neck, so that she could hardly hear the words. “I wouldn’t mind how rude he was, or how much he made fun of it, if he levelled with me. What I’m afraid of is that he’d just be — be nice about it. Nice and polite, and not take it seriously. How could anybody take it seriously, writing string quartets in this day and age? It’s like writing sonnets. Peake would think it was sort of quaint and cute and be ever so nice about it. Kind and, well, condescending, but he wouldn’t take it seriously as music, he couldn’t.”

“How can you possibly know that without asking him?”

“Oh, well, maybe I will,” said Teague, in such an offhanded way that Ching knew he wouldn’t. “Are you all right now, not feeling sick any more?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you, Teague, you don’t have to stay with me any more…”

“But I want to,” he whispered holding her close. “You don’t mind, do you? Let me stay, Ching.”

She knew that she should make him go, she had resolved that she would make him go, it was not right to use Teague this way, to give herself confidence, to hold her fears and loneliness at bay.

We are all foolish, she thought. Teague is foolish about showing his music to Peake. And I am foolish too, I let Teague stay when I should make him go, learn to cope with these fears on my own.’

“Have you tried making in love free-fall?” Teague urged. “It’s fun, it’s like flying…”

Much as she wanted to please him, Ching flinched from the idea. She said ruefully, “I don’t think you’d have much fun with me vomiting all over you.”

“Oh, you’re doing better, you didn’t get sick this time—”

“I almost did, though. If it had lasted any longer, I would have,” Ching said, and Teague hugged her. “Well, we’ll work on it. But it’s a good thing, sometimes, free-fall. For instance, my weight wouldn’t be so heavy on you — you’re so tiny, I’m always afraid I’ll crush you beneath me!”

“I don’t mind,” she murmured, drawing him down to her, and for a time they did not talk at all, only murmuring, soft love-sounds.

A considerable time later, she asked him, “Where did you have experience making love in free-fall? Was it in Lunar Dome?”

“No, it was here on the Ship,” Teague said. Her eyes were dilated enough to the dark now that she could see his face clearly. “Fontana — you don’t mind my talking about that, do you, Ching?”

“No, no, of course not,” she said, “Fontana and ! were talking about that. I know there aren’t enough of us for — for any kind of permanent pairings. And, Teague, you don’t have to choose between us, really. 1 don’t mind, if you want Fontana sometimes—”

“I know that,” he said gently, petting her, “but I’m glad you can be sensible about it, too, Ching. It’s going to be a long trip Even provided we get the computer fixed.”

“We will,” she said, “I’ve gone through a lot of the connections, and found out where some of the trouble might be. I can’t imagine what they were thinking of in Lunar Dome when they assembled it; I wish I’d been there when it was done, it would have made my work so much easier now. At least you had a chance to help install the drives!”

“Along with Fly and Dolly and Duffy and Perk,” he said, smiling, “and each of us wondering if it would be our one and only sight of the Ship.”

“Are you glad you were chosen, Teague? Really?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, at last, slowly. “It happens, it’s done, there’s no chance for second thoughts. I spent my life wanting to be Ship when our class graduated. Now, I wonder. Maybe that’s just let down. But yes, I suppose I’m glad. It’s an adventure. It’s real.”

She yawned, tucking her hands behind her head. She said, “I think we ought to try and get some more sleep; I have work to do. I would think making love in free-fall would be a lot of trouble. Every time you moved, you and — the other person — would go flying apart…”

“Oh, you do, unless you’re careful,” Teague said. “You have to do it with a safety net clipped on, or one of you could crack your head against the wall and get a concussion. But it’s fun. Free-fall is fun, Ching, only you have to learn to relax, to go with the flow, be willing not to be in control all the time. Just let it happen. Just surrender to it.”

Although he had spoken gently and without any personal emphasis, Ching felt her cheeks flushing with heat, aware that she had still the horror of losing control, surrendering — whether in free-fall or in sex. She said, trembling, “I don’t want to be afraid of free-fall. Teach me to like it, Teague, the way you do.”

“I will,” he promised, “Later today. But sleep now, Ching. We have a lot to do — and everything should be verified and the final course corrections made before we leave the Solar System.”

“We still have three days,” Ching murmured. “Anything could happen in that time.”

Curled against Teague, she slept.

“Did you find anything in the DeMag tie-ins?” Moira asked.

Ching stretched, wriggling free of the computer module. “So far, nothing. There is absolutely no reason why the DeMag units should go on and off like that, and therefore, going by pure logic, they should stay on unless they are turned off, and stay off unless they are turned on.”

“But the fact is that they don’t,” Moira said, “and it doesn’t make sense! Dammit, Ching, I like machinery to make sense, to do what it’s designed to do. When it starts acting temperamental, it’s no better than a man!”

“Are all men really that bad, Moira?” Ching murmured.

“All of them. No exceptions. Believe me.”

“Well,” Ching said, with a wisp of a smile, “you should know.”

Moira flung back her head and laughed. “I think you’ll do, Ching. I was beginning to think you were just too sweet and kind to be true, but that remark sounded quite normally catty!”

Ching raised her straight brows, ironically. “Thank you, my dear. Coming from you, I’m sure that’s intended for a compliment!”

They laughed together. Ching found herself wondering why, suddenly, Moira treated her as one of them. Was it, simply, that she had felt different, before this — and that Moira had been reacting to her, Ching’s, perceived difference, instead of any real difference? Did the fact that she was a G-N really make as much difference as she had always believed? If she had felt more like one of them, would they have treated her that way?

Had her isolation been, somehow, of her own making?

“I promised to meet Teague in the gym,” Ching said, moving past her, and Moira, suddenly frightened, caught at her arm to detain her. But what was she going to say? It was not as clear as a psychic warning, just a faint, strange unease. She tried to make a joke of it.

“You should always keep a man waiting, just a little. Never let them be sure of you.”

Ching laughed gently. “Is that the way you treat Ravi? I’d rather make Teague happy than unhappy, Moira.”

“Yes, I suppose you would,” said Moira, with a strange bitterness. But again she touched Ching’s arm, as if to hold her back.

“Ching — be careful.”

“I will,” Ching promised, startled, and, seeing the troubled look in Moire’s green eyes, sensed that the other girl was distressed; though she didn’t know why. She hugged Moira, gently, and kissed her cheek. She had never felt close enough to either of the other women to do this before.

“I will, Moira. Don’t worry,” she promised, and went. Moira stood looking after her for a little while, frowning, wishing she could identify the angry unease she telt. That damned gym, she thought with sudden violence, I wish the meteor had carried it right away off the Ship! Is any of us ever going to feel safe there again? Here I am dithering for no reason!

Ravi found her in the main cabin, idly leafing through some music.

“Are you going to the Bridge?”

“In a minute,” she said absently. “It’s time to make the routine sail-trim.” She drew a deep breath. She enjoyed manipulating the sails to optimum light-pressure; since the meteor damage and the varying DeMag failures, and the terrifying failure of the computer, she felt a definite pleasure in something like the sails, which did exactly what she wanted them to do, exactly as she wanted them.

When I was in primary division they called me manipulative. I suppose, when you come right down to it, I am.

“The sails can wait a minute.” said Ravi firmly. “I have to talk to you, Moira. Why are you avoiding me?”

“Don’t be silly, my dear,” Moira laughed, “I see you all the time, just as I do all the rest of us.”

“You know what I mean.” He took her hand lightly in his; she started to pull it away, then sighed and let it lie in his; but so limp and passive that he knew she was simply avoiding an argument. Pulling her hand away would have been less offensive.

“Why have you changed, Moira?” he asked, “We were happy for a few days, and then — then you turned me right off. Don’t you care at all about me?”

She said, irritably, “Oh, Ravi, don’t. I’m your friend, and we agreed to keep it that way. I’m not ready for any kind of emotional, romantic relationship — I don’t think I ever will be. Most people believe as I do, that romance is a kind of mental aberration. We’ve got sex and we’ve got friendship, and if that’s not enough for you — well, I’m sorry, but I won’t be pressured into something I don’t want. If you’re horny, go and sleep with Fontana — now that Teague’s all wrapped up in Ching, she’s probably lonely and hard up for a man in her bed.”

Ravi said quietly, “How can you be so cynical, Moira? Don’t you even know how much I care about you?”

“I know,” she said languidly, “and nothing has ever bored me so much in my life.”

Ravi recoiled as if she had struck him. But he resolved to make one further effort. Surely, if she understood, she would be less unkind.

“Moira, I don’t know how to say this. Ever since — since before we left Earth, I’ve been looking — looking for something. Please don’t think I am foolish — it’s a kind of,” he hesitated, “a spiritual search, a longing for something greater than humanity, and I, I think I’ve found it. It’s what Peake and Jimson were groping toward, trying to find a kind of completion in each other. A fulfilment. I, I, I—” he was stammering in his urgency to communicate something of what he felt, “I’m trying to find the Cosmic, the universe, God if you like, and I am trying to find it, to worship God in you, Moira — do you see what I’m trying to say?”

Moira stared at him, appalled, bored, angry, half tempted to puncture him with a flippant obscenity. Instead she said, in a flat hard voice, “I can only imagine that you are going insane, Ravi. Maybe you’ve been staring out the window too much. You’d better keep your eyes on the Navigation instruments, or it won’t take a computer failure to send us to nowhere. I never heard such rubbish in my life.”

Ravi drew a sharp, shaking breath, wounded, and for a moment she hoped he would fling something insulting at her, give her a chance to justify her words. Instead he kept on looking at her, and finally said, almost inaudibly, “I suppose I can’t expect you to feel any other way. But I love you, Moira. Try and remember that.” He stood up and went out of the cabin.

In the gym, Teague knelt and set the gravity to one-half of normal. “Does this bother you?” he asked.

“N-no,” Ching said, “As long as there’s enough to know whether I’m right-side-up or upside-down.” Was that what he had meant by fighting to stay in control?

“Here, try the springboard,” he said “Spring up in the air and somersault; and let me catch you in midair. I won’t let you fall, I promise you.”

Hesitantly, Ching sprang up from the board, letting her narrow body spin free in a double somersault in midair; felt Teague’s arms clasp around her and they spun the length of the gym in a single soaring leap.

After a few more maneuvers, feeling that Ching seemed somehow less frightened, Teague went back to the controls.

“All the way off, this time?”

She looked at him, scared and yet exhilarated, given confidence by his own ease in midair. Then she nodded, laughing a little, breathless. “I don’t think I could be afraid of anything when you were with me, Teague.”

With a decisive movement, Teague turned the controls all the way to OFF, felt himself float upward and made a bound to catch Ching as she drifted free. She laughed again, clasping him in her arms, letting him soar with her the full length of the gym, giving herself over to the strange, empty, falling sensation.

“You’re right, Teague, it is fun when you don’t try to fight it!” She slid from his arms, soaring free, spinning dizzily around the room, her laughter still high and breathless as she leaped toward the ceiling, flew downward. He bounded after her as she took off like a swallow, arms folded, soaring.

Teague felt the sudden, hard jolt, put out a hand to save himself; came down on one wrist, feeling agony tearing through the tendons as the wrist let go; clasped it, with a cry of pain, fighting to recover his balance; the movement ripped lightnings of renewed pain through his arm as he ran, but too late. Ching fell like a stone, striking head-first, and lay still.

Peake was on the Bridge with a silent, sullen Ravi, doing the painstaking work of triangulation from four points of reference to work out the Ship’s precise position; a necessary, daily ordeal until they could absolutely trust the computers again.

“I hope Ching gets that finished before we leave the Solar System,” Ravi muttered.

“There’s no way she could do that. Not if she worked round the clock,” Peake said, “and she’s been virtually doing that; she stops for meals and a two-hour exercise period and the daily music session, and the rest of the time she’s been wedged inside the computer module, where for all I know she’s tearing the infernal thing to pieces! She estimated another ten days when I asked her, and that’s assuming she can keep up that murderous routine without her health or morale suffering.”

“She’s not in the computer now, is she?”

Peake shook his head. “I think she’s probably sleeping; she and Fontana were sorting some music, some fairly archaic duets they wanted to try singing. Or she and Teague may have gone off to their cabins for a bit of rest and recreation — so to speak. And they’re certainly entitled, the way they’ve been working to repair everything.”

“I wish I could do something to help,” Ravi said, “but inside the computer I’d be about as much help as a snowball inside a nuclear reactor. ”

Peake looked at the small, dark man with sympathy. He said, “I know, I hate feeling helpless. I do feel they should have sent a second computer technician; if I had been making the decisions, I’d probably never send a crew smaller than ten. It would make the trip easier on all of us, too. But as things are, we simply have to do what we can in our own fields, and let the others do theirs. At that, I suspect that if Ching picks someone to teach, in order to have a backup computer technician, you’ll probably be the one. You’re a natural mathematician — and on top of that, you’re physically small enough to fit into the computer module. I understand that makes a difference.”

“So Ching said,” Ravi agreed, “and I admit I’d be interested. There was a time, when we started choosing specialties, that I considered computer work. But having started with navigation and astronomy, I felt that meteorology and oceanography would be more useful; two specialties for in space, two for any planet we were surveying.”

“That’s what they usually recommend,” Peake said. “I wish there had been a Navigation first specialist, though. When I think of all the trouble they would have saved if they had added another four people to the crew. Another navigator. Another computer tech. At least. Maybe another medic. Perhaps another engineer.”

“I don’t understand why they didn’t,” Ravi said, “and of course well never know. I’d have been glad to have Mei Mel, or Fly, or even Jimson…”

“It wouldn’t have bothered you, Ravi? To have both of us?”

Ravi shook his head. He said, “No, certainly not. I liked Jimson, though he was a little — well, unpredictable. No more so, certainly, than Moira, though.” And pain moved suddenly in him again. He did not believe that what he felt for Moira was a neurotic obsession. He simply wanted to love her, cherish her, treat her as the other half of himself, to love her as his own soul, the female part of his humanity. She had so completely misunderstood him. He did not want to possess her; if she desired other men she was free to have them, he did not want in any way to narrow her horizons, but only to help her expand them to cosmic limits. And she had rejected this, rejected it entirely. He loved her no less for the rejection; it still seemed to him that in loving Moira he had learned more about love, about the secrets of awareness locked at the heart of life; only now it seemed to him that instead of God’s self being centered somewhere in the great, eternal, infinite vastness of stars out there beyond the window of the Bridge, he was somehow linked to that cosmic pulsing, and that its echo was here within the focus of the Ship, that it was in his comrades here. It was within Moira, within himself, within all of the others, and even Peake’s craggy face seemed infinitely beautiful to him, infinitely worthy of love and even worship. He knew that if he carried this even a little further it would dissolve into sentiment and self-pity, but now he looked at Peake and felt, with an overflow of pure and unsentimental emotion, that he would give his life for him, or for any of them, and that he would not even notice the difference. As long as one of them lived he would continue to survive as part of the cosmic unity he felt flowing among them all. Even the pain and regret he felt because Moira had refused his love was irrelevant; he had somehow moved to a point where pain and pleasure were irrelevant and interchangeable. He would love Moira, he would continue to pour out his love upon her, as upon God, uncaring whether she accepted it, or even knew about it; his mistake had been in telling her about it, the love was no less because she did not return it. Describing the position of the Ship among the stars, entering it formally in the log, he felt somehow that he had described his relationship to God with the numbers.

This new state of mind was so unexpected, so much a strangeness, that he actually stopped a moment to wonder, Am I going insane, is this exultation only insanity’s dangerous leading edge of euphoria? Maybe I should talk to Fontana about it. And yet he was functioning perfectly well, his mathematical calculations were impeccable — for Peake, duplicating his work on the calculator, had validated them to the last decimal place — he was making accurate observations, his body performed exactly as well as he told it to, he was eating normally, digesting his food, and playing music with the others, not going off on some ecstatic trip of his own. His pulse, respiration, color perception, blood pressure, and urine were all normal, or so Peake had pronounced them at the regular three-day medical checkups. He reacted well to normal gravity, to partial gravity and to free-fall. Therefore he assumed he was physically and mentally normal, in an abnormal emotional state.

Maybe abnormality is in the mind of the Beholder?

Even the feeling that I partake of God does not give me any delusions of omnipotence. I personally am a very small and helpless part; but I perceive myself as a very real part, partaking in the Whole. I do not feel dwarfed by the immensity of Space, but enlarged; I am part of the Whole, and the Whole is part of me.

And this religious consciousness does not make me less sane, but saner, if functioning is any criterion of sanity.

He even felt hungry, and said so.

“It’s dinner time fairly soon,” Peake said, yawning, Twenty minutes standard, more or less. Teague said he was going to begin synthesizing carbohydrate, fairly soon, I’ll probably miss having normal rice and wheat grains, won’t you?”

“I doubt if I’ll be able to tell the difference,” Ravi admitted. “Where I’m concerned, a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate, and the shape doesn’t matter. I never could understand the tribes who starved to death rather than eat wheat when rice was their preferred staple, or eat rice when wheat was scarce or unavailable.”

Peake’s smile was wry. “Maybe that’s why we survived instead of dying, man. I survived one famine year when I was about five, and as I remember, I ate anything I could cram into my mouth without worrying what it was. ! still get the nightmare about that, sometimes. Hungry, and no food anywhere. Then I remember being tested for the Academy, and at first all it meant to me was, never hungry no more. That’s what my uncle said to me when he took me there… hey, look, we’re not supposed to talk about the past, are we?”

“I don’t think it does any of us any harm,” Ravi said gently. “Come on, Peake, we’re finished here. Let’s go down to the main cabin…”

He broke off, for the intercom had leaped into sudden life.

“Peake, Peake,” it said, “Peake, Peake, anybody, anybody down here — Peake, Fontana, somebody, come quick, there’s been an accident, oh, come help, somebody—”

“Teague!” It was like an expletive; Peake was out of his seat within seconds. Ravi said urgently into the intercom, “Teague, where are you? Are you hurt?”

“In the gym. Damn DeMags…”

Peake cut him off. “I’m on my way. Ravi, go back to the main cabin and get my medical kit — I’ll go straight there, I could save some time—”

But in the entry to the free-fall corridor outside the gym he bumped into Fontana, and she had his medical bag in her hand, “I heard Teague on the intercom and I knew you’d need this,” she said. “Hurry, Peake!”

He pushed through the sphincter lock ahead of her: took in Teague, kneeling over Ghing; noted the limp dangle of one hand, dismissed it to fumble quickly for a pulse in Ching’s limp wrist. Yes, it was there, feeble but definite. There was a small blue bruise on her temple, bloodless.

“Fontana,” Peake said tersely, “you fix up Teague’s wrist, or hand, while I find out what’s wrong with Ching. Teague, tell me what happened? Did the gravity go off?” In his mind was a clear memory of the time when he had nearly crashed into a wall while running; luck and superb co-ordination had saved him at least a concussion, perhaps a skull fracture. Ching had not been so lucky.

“The gravity was off,” Teague said. “It went on.” He was sobbing, covering his face with his good hand. “She wanted to learn to handle herself in free-fall, I talked her into it, oh, God, it’s my fault — I promised I wouldn’t let her fall, I promised I wouldn’t let her get hurt, she trusted me, oh. she trusted me and I let her fall—”

He was clearly hysterical; Fontana snapped, “Shut up and let me get this wrist bandaged! You can’t do any good by blubbering!” She chose the word deliberately, and it shut him up with a gasp.

“Now try and tell us coherently,” she said, “exactly what happened.”

Teague took a deep breath; cried out in sharp pain as Fontana manipulated his wrist.

“Broken finger here,” she said to Peake, “fourth finger, left hand. Probably need a splint. Possible damaged tendons or ligaments. Those damned, infernal DeMags!” She set her mouth tightly, and continued manipulating Teague’s hand. “Wriggle that ringer. Here, does that hurt? Good, that’s all right. What did you do, come down hard on it?”

“Ravi,” Peake said, “try and find ammonia in the bag. Small vial, glass ampoule — yes, that’s it.” He broke it under Ching’s nose, wondering if the glass fragments would scatter and be dangerous in the case of another DeMag failure. He wanted to get her out of there, but he didn’t dare to move her until he was certain there were no spinal injuries; and he couldn’t tell that until she was conscious.

Ching stirred fractionally and opened her eyes.

“Teague—” she whispered.

“I’m here, darling. Don’t move.”

“What happened? Teague, move out of the way, please—” Peake said, bothered by the intrusion, but watching Ching’s hands groping for him, he was relieved. No gross damage to the spinal cord, at least, if she could move her hands. He slipped off the thin fiber sandals she was wearing.

“Ching, can you wriggle your toes?” But she had shut her eyes again and drifted off into unconsciousness.

He had to know. Quickly he selected a probe from the bag, ran it quickly along the sole of her foot, was rewarded by a strong flinching and twitching of the toes. He felt immensely relieved; no paralysis. Concussion, certainly, and in view of her stuporous state, they could not even rule out a skull fracture; but there was no spinal cord damage and, at least, it was safe to move her. Not that there was any absolute safety anywhere. There had been DeMag failures in the main cabin and in the living quarters, which meant that the trouble with the DeMags was not confined to the unit in the gyro: it had to be in the computer tie-ins, or else some major design flaw in the units themselves, or the controls on the units.

In shock, Peake remembered: Ching was their only access to the computer! Damn the people at the Academy who had let them go out with only a single computer technician! Remembering his conversation with Ravi, he damned them further.

If Ching was badly hurt, or worse — he flinched away from remembering that head injuries were the most commonly fatal of all injuries — the computer might never be wholly trustworthy again.

In which case, they were probably all doomed….

Rising to his full height, he angrily brushed that thought aside. It was more than probable that Ching’s injury was only a minor concussion; most head injuries, after all, were no more. He said, “We’ve got to rig a stretcher. There’s no way we can get her through that free-fall corridor without one.”

“It’s not going to be any too easy even with one,” Fontana said. “Ravi, you’re able-bodied, go and find Moira and get her to help you rig something to carry Ching; she’s about the best mechanic aboard.”

Even with Ching’s unconscious body firmly strapped to a stretcher and a safety net stretched over her to immobilize her, it was not at all easy; Peake, weighing danger against danger — in head injuries any kind of depressant was dangerous — finally took out a pressure-spray hypo and gave her a shot. He explained tersely, to Fontana’s raised eyebrows — she had had a secondary specialization in medicine, enough to make her a competent technician or assistant — “If she vomits in free-fall while she’s unconscious, she could aspirate vomit, and you know as well as I do what that would do to her lungs. It would be safer not to move her at all. But I don’t trust the DeMags in here even as much as I trust the ones in the main cabin.”

But Ching did not stir or show the slightest sign of distress as the stretcher, guided by Peake at one end and Fontana at the other, was floated carefully down the corridor and maneuvered through the sphincter locks. They swept music hastily to one side and laid her on the table in the main cabin.

Paradoxically, though he did not wish Ching any distress and was glad she was spared the ordeal of vomiting in free-fall, her very failure to do so troubled Peake. Interfering with that reflex action, necessary as it was, would make it even harder to diagnose accurately what, if any, damage she had sustained; nausea was a good and accurate gauge of the depth of concussion. Grimly he recalled a hospital tenet from his training; better complaining than comatose! The more miserably sick Ching had been, the better he would have felt about her.

He folded back an eyelid to check the pupils of her eyes; flashed a light, and set his teeth, knowing there was trouble. The two pupils were unequally dilated; and ammonia failed, this time, to rouse her to consciousness. He got out a set of probes and started pricking her feet with them,

“You’re hurting her,” Teague protested, as he slid the probe under a toenail; Teague could feel his own toes shrink in sympathy, but Peake looked alien, grim, distant. “I wish I could hurt her,” he said. “Damn it, Teague, I’m not being brutal, I have to check how much she’s responding to painful stimuli!”

“Oh. Right.” Teague shut up, looking miserably at the stranger Peake had suddenly become; distant, frighteningly efficient, not at all the good-natured, soft-spoken crew member, but vested with all the charisma, power and authority of Medicine. Ching too had become wholly strange, limp and apparently lifeless, her face without expression as if cast in marble, the bland meaningless features in cold and chiselled silence. Her small blue-veined foot was like a baby’s foot, the sole soft and pink as if it had never been walked on. There was a small spot of blood where Peake had driven the probe under the nail.

And less than an hour ago she had been laughing in his arms; the memory of her words tore at him with agony and guilt.

I don’t think I could ever be afraid of anything, with you, Teague.’

And I could let this happen to her! He put his hands over his face again and began to weep softly, trying not to disturb Peake, who was, with grim concentration, testing responses. Once or twice he made a small sound of approval; but mostly his craggy black features grew grimmer and more set.

Finally he covered Ching with a blanket, and straightened, sighing. He flinched, seeing four faces turn to him as if — the thought came to him without volition — they were waiting for the word of God.

How am I to do that? For the first time since he had begun his serious hospital training — at the age of fourteen — he realized how desperately unprepared he was for this kind of thing. He had surgical and medical experience, certainly; the kind that would be presumably needed among healthy young people. He could splint a fracture, repair a serious compound fracture or severe muscular injury, deal with the most common accidents and traumas; he had taken out a round dozen of appendixes and gall bladders, sewed up any number of wounds, even assisted at several deliveries and done the odd Caesarean section. But complex neurological problems — and it looked as if this was turning into a major one — were beyond him. He had the book knowledge but no experience with them.

I might as well not be a doctor at all, just a glorified medical student.’

They were still waiting, every face depending on his word. He drew a deep breath, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

“It’s not good,” he said, “but it may not be all that serious. Everything is going to depend on keeping her quiet and undisturbed and on what happens in the next two or three hours. It may be simple concussion, in which case she will get well without any further trouble, except for needing rest and quiet. If it’s more serious — a depressed skull fracture, or if there’s bleeding somewhere inside the skull — well, then it could be very, very serious. But there’s no point in worrying about that until we’re sure. We don’t have X-Ray equipment; they didn’t foresee any such serious medical emergencies. If we did, we could rule out a fracture, one way or the other, right away. But we don’t. So we have to wait and see; if she gets worse, that will mean it’s serious, and if she doesn’t, that will mean that it isn’t.“ He bared his teeth in a nervous grimace. ”For all our medical technology, that’s the ultimate primitive medicine — wait and see.”

“But we can’t sit here and do nothing,” Moira burst out in shock. “Suppose she — she just dies while we’re waiting?”

That was simple hysteria and Peake took refuge in textbook answers; not answering the question but the anxiety behind it.

“Moira, she could have been picked up dead from the floor in there; we are better off than we would have been in that case, because she is still alive. Anything I do now, without knowing precisely what the problem is, could only make it worse.”

As he had known it would, his air of total control and confidence silenced them for the moment. The Doctor had Spoken, and for the moment, at least, all was well. If only they knew how little I feel like a Medical Authority at this moment? It’s probably just as well they don’t.

“Now,” he said, “we should leave Ching in quiet. Get some food out of the console — anything you can get quickly and quietly — and leave the main cabin to her. Go to your living quarters, or to the Bridge, or wherever you wish, but this place has to be kept quiet, preferably kept dark. I’ll stay here and monitor her vital signs every few minutes. As long as she’s still responding, there’s nothing to worry about. If she should stop responding, then there’s — well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

One by one, sobered, they went to the food console, dialed themselves some quick and easy rations, and started to carry them out of the room.

Teague said, “Can’t I stay with her, Peake? I’ll be quiet, I won’t disturb her, I promise.”

Peake shook his head. “It wouldn’t do either of you any good. At this moment, even if she should come around and ask for you, the last thing she needs is your guilt! It’s absolutely imperative that if she wakes up, she should be kept quiet, should just lie there and vegetate, without being disturbed in any way. And if she doesn’t — well, that would be harder on you. I’ll send for you the minute you can do anything helpful, believe me, Teague.”

But while the others were collecting trays of food, more, Peake suspected, from habit than hunger, he approached Fontana.

“You’re the only other one with any medical training,” he said, very low. “If Ching doesn’t come around within a few hours, you know what it will mean: either a subdural or a depressed fracture. Either way, you know what that will mean.” He stared down at his hands, steadying them by an act of will. He said, more to himself than to Fontana, “It’s a simple operation, really. The Egyptians did it with their flint knives, and people lived through it; there’s evidence of new bone growth to prove that they lived years afterward.”

But inwardly, beneath the calmness, he was thinking; my first really major surgery, and it has to be on the brain. And on a friend!

Was this why they separated me from Jimson? If he had been the one hurt, could I have operated on him? Were they deliberately isolating me, so that as a surgeon I could be detached?

He kept his voice calm. “If I do have to operate, you’ll have to assist, you’re the only one who could manage it. You’d better be prepared for it; I hope it won’t come to that. But we may have to do it, as a last resort.”

And then he was frightened; for Fontana stared at him, her eyes wide, blank, expressionless, as if she were in shock. Her mouth twitched.

And then she said, harshly, her voice like a shriek, “Damn you, Peake, how stupid you are! Haven’t, you figured it out yet? Do you really think there’s anything we can do? You know as well as I do that this whole Crew business is a final test, and we’re just the ones who failed, that’s all! Not the ones who passed triumphantly, just the ones they thought they could spare! The Academy throws us out, every year, like spores, Ship crews going out to sink or swim, live or die, probably ninety out of a hundred of the Ships have died already, but it doesn’t matter, as long as one or two Ships get through to establish us on the stars — that’s all they care about, as long as one in a hundred might get through! We don’t have proper equipment, not even an X-ray — doesn’t that show you how little they care about our survival? Look at her!” She gestured at Ching’s blanketed, silent form. “She’s the only one of us who knows anything about computers, and we have a major computer failure — if they really cared about whether we survived, wouldn’t they create more of a backup system? We don’t even have any way to communicate with Earth in an emergency! Peake, we’re dead, don’t you see? Even if she lives, she could be a vegetable, massive brain damage, never be able to fix the computer — if she dies, she’s just the lucky one who died first! And you’re thinking about saving her life with a major brain operation — you, a half-trained medical student they crammed with a few facts and sent off thinking you were a surgeon? Forget it, Peake! We’re going to die, that’s all there is to it, and we’ve just got to accept it!“ Her voice rose to a scream. ”Accept it! Accept it! We’re dead, dead, dead, we’re all of us dead! This whole Crew business is just a sick, horrible joke! We’re the salmon swimming upstream, the lemmings plunging out into space — and we’re one of the ones who didn’t make it, we’re dead, ail of us, dead!”

Shocked silence in the main cabin. Peake blinked, squeezing his eyes shut at the vehemence of her rage. Fontana! Fontana, of all people, the calm one, the psychologist, the one who helped everyone else with their problems — if she could blow loose this way, was there even a grain of hope for any of them?

Fontana thought not….

But Peake acted without thought, from his training; by sheer reflex. He swung back his hand and slapped Fontana hard, right across the mouth.

“Shut up,” he said, his voice cold and clipped, “I will not have my patient disturbed with this kind of hysterical nonsense.”

“It’s not hysteria and it’s not nonsense and you know it,” Fontana screamed at him.

Peake gestured with a quick movement of his head.

“Moira. Teague. Get her out of here. Take her to her quarters, give her a shot of tranquilizer if you have to — Teague, you’re on Life Support, you know the stuff. Knock her out, sit on her if you have to. Every one of you, out of here, right now. Ching’s going to be kept quiet, if ! have to shoot every damned one of you full of sedatives! Out, damn it! Not another word!”

He watched, his face like stone, as Teague and Moira grabbed Fontana around the waist and wrestled her out of the cabin. She was crying now, tears raining down her face, her mouth contorted, broken protests still coming from her lips.

The sphincter locks finally closed behind them; Ravi, always practical, had caught up the full trays of food and taken them along. Peake let himself collapse into his seat, staring at Ching’s pale motionless face. After a moment he got up again, got himself a hot caffeine drink from the console and sat down, sipping it, beside Ching.

That was the textbook talking. Suppose Fontana was right, after all? Isn’t all this a fairly futile gesture? Should F accept what Fontana said, that we’re all dead, and just let Ching die in peace? His face taut, reaching for the almost indefinable pulse, he told himself that the choice might not lie in his hands at all.