The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales from Fantasy Adventures

BRIDES FOR MARS, by Eric C. Williams

3D photographs and talking medical certificates tell you next to nothing about the person with whom you have contracted marriage.

Miriam Chokewater, aged nineteen, burdened with an ugly name but moderately pretty to the eye, thin, just emerging from boneyness and pressing towards svelte; blonde, blue eyes, good teeth, in-growing toenail on left foot, vaccinated against Martian pelagia, bubonic and Styx pollen, blood group Al, twisted the photograph of Franco Parzetti, aged twenty-three, Martian pioneer farmer, etc. etc. She watched him take his two 3D paces for the hundredth time and wondered what he was really like, you know, deep in his soul. Was he gentle? Would he love her?

Franco had her colored image pinned to the curtain of his sleeping dome where the light wind caused Miriam to twist her torso first this way and then that, and he imagined for the hundredth time what it would be like to hold her under the thermosheet, and what they would talk about after (and in his less heated moments, whether she could cook Martian cactus).

The photograph told him fifty percent of what he wanted to know — she looked even-tempered, placid, but not particularly strong (though very often these thin girls were resilient). She looked as if she had a good pair of lungs which she would find a help in Mars’ still thin air — the terra-forming process begun in the previous century was still in its early stages and ongoing. She had a kissable mouth. What he couldn’t tell was whether she knew much about farming in sand; how she would stand up to being sealed in a dome for two or three weeks when the storms came; whether she scratched herself (he couldn’t stand people who scratched); whether she had BO (God! he hoped not); whether she could cook Italian-style; oh, and whether she would love him.

These two mortals were, at the moment, separated by a gulf of 63 million miles, but this gap was being reduced at the rate of ten miles per second. They were due to unite in contracted marriage in about 140 days if the voyage to Mars went well and if traveling conditions on Marr allowed passage to the great depression of Hellas when Miriam arrived.

Miriam, still in torment as to whether she had done the right thing in pledging herself to a photograph of someone sixty-three million miles away, sat on her bunk in the SS (Settler Ship) Mayburg along with 499 other Martian brides and spoke to her cabin mate Laura Krankovsky about the anguished reaction when her mother had learned of her loved daughter’s registration in the Pioneer Brigade.

“She cried for days. I felt awful. I’ve never hurt my mother in all my life and I thought she would be glad to see me married off, me being nineteen, but no! She said I’d done it just to get away from her and she cried and cried ’til I thought my heart would break.”

Laura Krakovski stared at Miriam without much sympathy or understanding. Her English was the rudimentary sort taught in the outlying districts of New Russia and she was due to be wedded to Ivan Zarkow, a Russian-speaking farmer in Coprates.

“Cry? Why cry?” she asked, her heavy brow beetling in puzzlement.

Miriam did not note the lack of comprehension. She sighed and went on with a voice quivering on the edge of tears.

“We loved one another so much; we never had secrets from each other. Ever since I was a little girl I used to tell her everything, and even after that when I grew up. And she used to tell me all her thoughts, just like a sister, really. We’d talk for hours together and laugh. Of course, I never knew my father, so we only had each other, you know, and that’s why she cried. She’d got nobody else. She said she’d die. I tried to get out of the Brigade — I pleaded with them but they wouldn’t let me.” Tears at last ran down her cheeks.

Laura watched them in puzzlement. “You no want go?” she asked tentatively. “You have bad man?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” sobbed Miriam. “Mother, mother…,” and could not proceed. Laura placed a thick arm across Miriam’s bowed shoulders, gathered her vocabulary and offered the following consolation “All mothers bitches. You happy now. Great big man, huh?”

Miriam shook her blonde head wildly, tore herself free from the restraining hawser and flung herself prone on the bunk. The photograph of Franco Parzetti fluttered to the floor carrying out quick two steps as he went. On the floor he stared up at Laura Krankovski’s baffled face. She shrugged, picked up the piece of plastic and put it in Miriam’s clenching hand. It crumpled (France Parzetti limped thereafter) and Miriam’s wailing became louder. Laura stood watching her with stolid thoughtfulness, then turned and pushed her way past the collection of women who had gathered outside the open cabin door. At the end of the corridor was the surgery and into this Laura went.

A moment later she came out behind Mary Elizabeth McPrince, chief medical officer, who was on duty at the time. McPrince shooed off all the onlookers, dismissed Krankovski to the common room, and shut herself in with Miriam. She pricked Miriam’s quivering bottom with a very sharp needle, and then asked her what ailed her.

Miriam turned and looked into McPrince’s matronly face, and in her emotional state and with a subtle drug seeping into her brain, immediately imprinted the McPrince face on her soul and henceforth the word ‘mother’ conjured to her the consoling face of Mary Elizabeth McPrince.

“Mother,” she choked, and buried her face in the soft bosom.

“Oh, come now, dear,” said the doctor. “You’ve got to do better than this: a big girl like you.”

“Take me back,” sobbed Miriam amongst the billows.

McPrince eased her tack gently. “You’ve got to be stronger than this, Miriam, Think of your husband waiting for you and try to be strong for him. He won’t want a silly girl all tears, will he? There’ll be a lot to do; no time to think about home on Earth. Mars will be home. Now don’t mope. Be a good girl. Find something to do. Do you go to the gymnasium? No? Well, do so. Go regularly, make friends with the girls, and keep fit and well so that when you meet your husband he will see you strong and lovely.”

Miriam looked into McPrince’s eyes with adoration. “Yes, oh yes,” she breathed, “I will.” She hesitated shyly. “May I come and talk to you now and again? Show you how strong I get?”

McPrince smiled a little thoughtfully and stood up out of the immediate aura of Miriam’s worship. “You keep busy — talk with the girls. Come and see me when your monthly check-up comes round. All right, dear?”

Miriam looked momentarily as if a cool wind had blown over her ardor, but then she smiled and nodded prettily.

McPrince departed briskly and went and sought out Captain Ronald Able in his cabin.

“The troops are getting restless,” she said after a brief kiss. “I think treatment should commence,”

“Right,” he said. “I’ll pass the word along.” He dismissed the subject and allowed more interesting things to mold his facial expression. “Got an hour to spare, you gorgeous thing?” He emphasized his meaning by clamping a hand around one of her wrists and pulling her into close contact. She turned her head a little but moved her body in another way.

“Why, Captain Able! How you do treat your subordinates!”

“Good, eh?” he mumbled into her ear, “Well.…”

Two hours later the alarms went off all over the ship and smoke seeped out of the ventilators. Crew members rushed along corridors frantically blowing whistles and appealing for calm. Immediate panic ensued. Five hundred young women recalled those terrible tales of fire in space that form the staple part of youngsters’ reading diet in the year 2579. Death in one horrible form or another was inevitable: the passengers fled in all directions searching for a place where the smoke was thinner.

The metal corridors echoed shrilly with screams. Smoke in even thicker concentrations rolled from the ventilators. One or two bodies slumped to the carpet coughing piteously. Miriam, slowly recovering from the tranquilizer injected by ‘mother’ McPrince, found her emotions rising like a thermometer column from cool to hot. It gradually penetrated her mind that the smoke in her room could be linked to the screams outside the room. She sat up as her vague fears turned to alarm and at that moment the cabin door was thrown open and Laura Krankovski rushed in with a face of iron heroism. This shock was enough to transmute alarm into terror, and Miriam made the welkin ring.

They have a way in the remoter parts of New Russia of quelling panic, and Laura used it. Her fist caught Miriam under the ear and stopped the screams in one last ‘eeek’. Limp and half conscious, she was dragged from the bunk and pulled into the corridor, briefly propped against the wall and then hoisted up and over Laura’s shoulder. At a run, like a powerboat forcing a way up rapids Laura made her way aft.

She battled across the maelstrom of the common room, down to a lower level and in through a steel door yanked open as if it had been a gossamer curtain. Inside, the air was pure, and two engineers eating sandwiches looked up in consternation as the door slammed behind Laura.

“You can’t come in here!” shouted one.

“Laura!” exclaimed the other.

“Heinrich, I come,” confirmed Laura, “You no fire here.”

“Who’s that you’ve got there?” blustered the first man standing up. “You know nobody’s allowed in here.” And then to Heinrich: “Is this your Russian bird? Christ, we’ll be crucified if she’s found in here! Get her out before Li comes along. Go on, get her out.” He moved forward as if to implement his own order. Laura moved forward and he stopped.

“We stay ’til no fire,” said Laura, and laid her burden down on the floor. She straightened up and looked at Heinrich. “You kill fire,” she commanded. Heinrich looked at the other engineer then at the clock above the control board along one side of the room.

“Not yet,” he said. “Kill fire in four minutes. Sit down, Laura, and have a sandwich.”

Laura’s broad shoulders seemed to swell. “Heinrich, you go kill fire…now!”

“I can’t leave here, Laura,” appealed Heinrich. He approached her with his hands moving in soothing curves. “They’ll have the fire out soon. Be a good girl and go back to your cabin.”

“No,” said Laura forcibly. She grabbed him by the throat of his loose uniform. “You kill fire now or me love others.” He was too much of a gentleman to use his feet or knees against her and slowly his face grew purple as she constricted his throat.

“Hey!” said the other engineer.

“Gug,” said Heinrich. “Kill it, Joe. For Christ’s sake kill it!”

Joe dithered, looked at the clock, looked at Heinrich’s face, then ran to the control board and snapped off various switches.

“What the hell we tell Li?” he rattled, “We’re two minutes early.”

Laura was still strangling her lover trying to inspire him with the need to rush out and perform heroic deeds. She did not connect Joe’s actions with ‘killing’ the fire.

“Fire’s out,” gasped Heinrich in last extremity. Laura dragged him to the door and pulled it open with one hand. Outside, the last traces of smoke were being sucked back into the ventilators. The screams were now shrill cries of joyous relief. Laura kissed her lover’s mauve lips and released him to stagger where he willed. She went to where Miriam was beginning to make whimpering noises and lifted her head solicitously.

“Come, baby,” she cooed, and gently slapped Miriam’s cheek. Miriam struggled out of unconsciousness and then away from the buffeting. She spiraled up into Laura’s waiting arms, Her head felt as if it had been flattened in the recent past and was now undergoing re-inflation, Blindly she was led out of the engineers’ room, through corridors full of women expressing every emotion from joy to fury, to the surgery.

Mary McPrince was administering throat soothers to those who claimed they had nearly suffocated. Automatically, without bothering to enquire, she handed Miriam several lozenges.

“Mother, I nearly died,” wept Miriam, freed herself of Laura’s supporting arm, and collapsed over McPrince,

“I am not your mother,” said McPrince pushing her off, “Take your medicine. I’m very busy,”

“She fall. Hit ear,” explained Laura. “Sleep.”

McPrince surveyed the drooping Miriam.

“Oh? Let me look.” She turned Miriam’s head a trifle sharply and tears started from Miriam’s eyes. Without a word McPrince got a prophylactic gun and sprayed the bump. “Get some sleep. Let me know if any sickness develops. Off you go.”

Feeling as if the whole universe had forsaken her Miriam returned to her cabin with Laura and cried herself to sleep.

The following day Miriam tried to approach McPrince in the surgery on a non-medical matter and was severely repelled. The next day, almost desperate for lack of motherly solace, she went to McPrince’s private cabin and without knocking opened the door and stared within.

She was horrified and terrified to discover a scene between her new mother and Captain Ronald Able the like of which she had never seen before and which she would not have imagined the human body capable of performing. Both were unaware of her and she was able to close the door and totter back to her own bed before she collapsed amongst the wreckage of a world, Her new mother was depraved, cared nothing for her, loved another, was incapable of understanding pure love. There was no reason to go on living.

When the alarm bells began ringing on the third day she welcomed them as if they heralded angels of vengeance. Laura was out of the cabin playing chess in the common room. Miriam threw open the cabin door then reeled back as a three-foot high wall of cold water collapsed inward upon her. Overhead in the corridor water cascaded from the fire dampers like escaping monsoons. Shrieks could be heard dimly above the roar of moving water.

Miriam tripped over something in the water swirling round the room and fell loudly into the whirlpool. Like flotsam she circled the room and then out into the river coursing down the corridor. She had no spirit to fight, nor strength to stand upright in the rush of water that was traveling round the vessel in reverse direction to the permanent centrifugal motion giving gravity to the ship.

She went under, hit her head on a corner, and breathed in. It was nasty at first; it hurt, and enormous booming noises sounded in her ears. Then suddenly two claws gripped her hard and tore her loose from the comfortable womb. The hands threw her painfully on to a hard, flat surface and then began crushing her in and out so that water spurted from her and air that burned like acid rushed into her lungs.

“Oh. Oh,” she moaned, and the claws allowed her to turn over and look upwards into the face of her tormentor.

It was a beautiful face, young, sun burned, sensuously intense, set now in lines of concern for her. Bending close to her to hear her words, full lips not more than three inches from hers. Quite unable to resist the vision she raised herself three inches and pressed her wet lips to his. His hands so recently manipulating her back made convulsive clutches at her front, the shock of which forced air from her and broke the kiss.

“Oh, Oh,” breathed steward Tony Bellini, and remained transfixed six inches above her. Gently she removed his hands and swiveled herself so that she could sit up on the tabletop on which he had deposited her for his ministrations. He straightened and put a warm arm around her shoulders.

“You saved my life,” she whispered. “How can I thank you enough!”

“You already have,” he said hoarsely.

“Silly. I can never repay you.” She lowered her eyes and looked around. “Where has all the water gone?”

The flood was at this moment roaring down corridors on the other side of the ship like a freak tidal bore on the rubber flooring. Bellini seemed to awake.

“Quick,” he commanded. “Into my cabin. The wave will be back any second now.” His strong arm swept her from the table and together they ran across the dining hall to a door in one wall. Already the hollow roar of water pounding down the restricting tunnels of the corridors came to their ears. Even as they fell into the little cabin and slammed shut the airtight door the roar swept into the dining room and pummeled on their door. Miriam clung to Bellini. He gently bent her to the neat bunk and comforted her. The frenzy without (and within) rose to a climax and passed.

“Oh, my love!” he sighed. She stroked his damp hair and let her thoughts wander into more mundane channels. His body kept her warm: she was very comfortable. “Tony,” she said, “Where did all the water come from?”

His one free hand wandered over her like a sleepy puppy over its mother, “Eh?” he muttered into her ear.

She smiled to herself and repeated the question.

“The water tanks.”

She thought this over. “How do you know?”

“Captain’s orders. Always happens.” He was almost asleep,

“Silly. How can it always happen? Such a waste of water…and dangerous, too!”

“All goes back. Nothing to it. And I was there to save you, wasn’t I?” He roused. “You wont tell anyone, will you?” His face paled.

“Tell them?”

“About it being a put-up job.” He got up on one elbow and looked down directly into her eyes. “I’d be fed to the reactor if the Captain heard.”

Miriam studied him in disbelief. “You mean it? It was done deliberately?”

He nodded and twisted away to sit on the bunk edge. “You’ll be on restricted water from now on. There’ll be other things, too. It’s supposed to make you girls ready for Mars: you know, used to less water, cope with danger and to stop you moping on the journey.”

“Other things?” Miriam stared at his back with her brow frowning but her lips twitching in a half smile. “What sort of things, Tony?”

He jerked his shoulders, “There’ll be a three day power failure next week. For God’s sake don’t say anything to anyone You’re not supposed to know.” He began straightening his clothes and then the few items of furniture in the little room,

“I don’t believe you,” laughed Miriam. “You’re having a joke with me. Naughty boy!” She leapt from the bunk and planted a. vicious kiss on his flinching lips.

“Ha ha,” he agreed. “Yes, a joke.” He held her off. “Better get going. Never do to be found here together. The water will be gone now.”

He opened the door, and it was true, the rubber floor of the dining area was already clear and nearly dry. Hot air poured through the ship. A calm voice came over the public address:

The Captain’s apologies to passengers for any damage done to personal belongings by the accidental release of the water tanks. Please bring any articles requiring drying out to the main common room where third officer Bancroft will arrange for this to be done. The situation is now in hand. There must, however, be a strictly rationed use of water from now on and an announcement regarding this will be made as soon as we have been able to measure the amount saved.’

“There,” said Miriam at the open door. “An accident,”

“Yes,” agreed Bellini. “Yes, an accident. I was joking.”

She gave him another kiss then ran off to see if any of her personal things had got wet. Bellini ran off in the other direction to establish an alibi to cover his dereliction of duty.

Five days later there was a power failure just as Miriam had made up her mind to search out Tony Bellini in an effort to repay further her debt to him. In the sudden blackness and immediate uproar she became disorientated, collided with a wall and hit her nose hard. She screamed along with the others. She felt the warm blood running down her upper lip into her mouth. Fury burst into her mind like a raging tiger leaping from an open cage door. Tony had not been joking. It was a dirty, deliberate act. The smoke, the flood, the five days of thirst, the blackness — all deliberate!

She shrieked: “Put ’em on! Put ’em on, you rotten beasts!” Then she made a great effort and steadied herself Carefully she turned and with one hand held before her, the other pinching her nose, she retraced her steps, and by sheer furious determination found her way to the surgery. Inside, Mary McPrince was waiting for the expected flood of bruises and abrasions with a portable fluorescent lamp burning on her desk.

She looked up as Miriam lurched in from blackness to light. Miriam leaned back against the door still holding her nose.

“You bitch!” she snapped. “You an’ your precious Cabtain Able! Put on the damn lights.”

“What are you talking about?” asked McPrince. “And what do you mean my ‘precious Captain Able’?”

“I saw you!” suddenly shrieked Miriam, releasing her nose. “You and him. You and him. In bed. Ha!” She could not continue, unable to express the disgust she felt because truly it was not disgust that motivated her but jealousy that her ‘mother’ could give herself to another.

“That’s none of your business,” declared McPrince with dignity. “And we can’t put on the power until the engines are repaired.”

“Lies!” shouted Miriam, “You arranged it: you and him. You’re waiting, aren’t you, for the broken bones? I know it all: the fire and the water and now no power, All faked. And what have you got arranged for us next while you and him roll about in bed? Well, you can forget it because I’m going to tell everybody what you’re doing. And they’ll kill you, mother! Damn you.…” Tears diluted the blood under her nose.

McPrince moved forward quickly and slapped Miriam on the cheek.

“Let me clean up your face, dear. You look an awful mess.” She took her hand and pulled her to the light. Miriam began sobbing. Expertly McPrince mopped her up and as deftly injected a quantity of tranquilizer. Miriam sat down in a chair and looked at the desk light in a daze. “Moooo,” she murmured.

McPrince looked at her and then turned to the intercom. “Julie,” she said. “I’ve got Miriam Chokewater in the surgery. She’ll need hospitalization. Can you come up here and help? I want to put her in the isolation bay until this crisis blows over. OK?” She turned round and stood watching Miriam.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to lock you up for a time, dear, until all the incidents are finished. Nurse Julie will look after you, but I’ll look in every day, Will you be a good girl?”

“Mmmm,” sighed Miriam, her eyes almost closed.

The surgery door opened and Julie Smith stepped in. Together the two women lifted Miriam on to a mobile bed, and after some consultation the body was wheeled off to the small isolation ward adjourning the surgery.

The power remained off for three days, and the temperature plummeted. The crew, dressed in heavy suiting, moved about the passenger quarters with hand lamps, but the five hundred women passengers suffered with the cold because only a limited stock of extra bedding and clothing was available. Groups took to sleeping in one bed taking turns to be top layer. Meals were cold and there were no hot drinks any more. On the third day alcohol intended for the two-month distant Christmas celebration was issued and there was much maudlin misery as the cold meal was consumed. Tony Bellini, helping to distribute bottles to the tables, made discreet enquiries as to the whereabouts of Miriam Chokewater. None of the girls knew where she was but one of the cooks who knew Julie Smith was able to tell him that Miriam was incarcerated in the ship’s isolation bay under sedation.

“On sedation? Isolated?”

“That’s what Julie said. Maybe they’re afraid her swollen nose might blow up.” The cook giggled.

Bellini thought sickly: Miriam was in possession of forbidden knowledge and she was being held indefinitely where others were unable to see her. The two things had to be linked. It was he who had given Miriam the forbidden knowledge — therefore it was up to him to get hers out of her predicament. He began to form a typically youthful, wild plan to do it.

Miriam, in the meantime, had had a lot of quiet time to think about herself. Sedation had been discontinued after the first day, but she was confined by a locked door to the little isolation ward behind the surgery. A small, low voltage light was allowed her and an extra blanket for her bed, and there she was left alone except for a brief visit from Nurse Julie with cold meals and her ration of cold water.

McPrince visited her after the first day and explained concisely the reason why the planned ‘accidents’ were arranged and why their efficiency would be nullified if Miriam divulged the secret to others.

“When it is all finished you will be let out. I’m truly sorry, Miriam, to do this to you, but you do understand the importance of it, don’t you?”

Miriam stared at her in the dim light. There was no mother-love in her regard, only coolness born of introspection.

“And what about me? Is it important for me? You don’t care about me, do you? Your tricks won’t do anything for me, will they? But you don’t care about that so long as the rest get off on Mars properly conditioned. They’ll be used to the cold and no water, they’ll be brave, and used to dim light and I expect other things. But me, I’ll never accept these things because I know you tricked us and I hate you for it. If I get out of here I’ll tell everyone.”

McPrince stared at her in some uncertainty. It was not that she was afraid of the effect any revelations Miriam might make to the rest of the brides once the accidents were over. The strengthening of their moral fiber would already have been achieved and their body adaptation to Martian physical conditions well underway and not to be altered by words. What concerned her was Miriam’s future. To be a settler on Mars was unlike being a settler on Earth; there was no way back; no mules crossed space, no buses, no ships; all that got back to Earth was Martian moss packed in the rooms now occupied by the women.

It was useless to dream of returning to Earth. Anyone who yearned for home was doomed to a life of misery more hopeless than any prisoner in any isolated prison on Earth. If Miriam was put down on Mars believing she had been callously used as a pawn in some incomprehensible game she would pine away within the year for Earth and her mother.

Somehow her fiber had to be stiffened, her courage and confidence increased, her spirit made to look forward rather than backward. Physically she was being hardened whether she liked it or not, and after the next ‘accident’ she would be well on the way to being perfectly adapted to current Martian conditions, but no girl likes being molded in a laboratory experiment like a caged rat, changed permanently just for the privilege of grubbing a living with some sweaty male on Mars.

It had been realized that no ordinary girl would volunteer to go through the physical hardships involved for such a small reward, and after some trial and error the scheme of introducing the conditions by ‘accident’ was conceived. It both hardened the girls to the harsh physical conditions and also made them able to face up to crisis. Both were important, but on a world still only barely able to support terrestrials, crises were part of the daily diet and courage and steadiness as important as health. Miriam Chokewater had to have this stiffness of backbone. Medical officer McPrince went out and had a long discussion with Nurse Julie Smith.

A weak power supply was restored after two weeks of cold and blackness. A few dim lights were allowed in the corridors and common rooms, none in the cabins, and meals and rationed drinks began to be warmed. It was announced that the long period without power had led to a small deviation in their flight plan and for some days they must hold themselves ready to respond as directed to alarm signals as there was a possibility of collision with the Perseides passing through this area.

At midnight on this same day Captain Able spoke over the intercom to his Chief Engineer, Li. “Hallo Li. You can begin vacation. Take it down slowly. I’ll be ready at 0700 hours Ship Time to hit my first Perseid. You know what to do then.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Li in mock Scottish.

Able was referring to the forthcoming ‘accident’ whereby the ship would suffer holing by a meteor and lose much of its air, Chief Engineer Li was preparing the ground for a fast reduction in air pressure by subtracting some air while the passengers slept thus making the final job easier for his compressors. By slow leakage thereafter atmospheric pressure would be reduced to 8 p.s.i, the current Martian pressure. All this compressed air would be fed back into the ship on the return journey,

At about 0500 hours following Captain Able’s directive to Li. Tony Bellini sidled along the dim corridors panting a little with the combined effects of fear and Li’s evacuation of air. He passed the surgery door, freezing momentarily as he heard a movement within, then he silently pressed onward to the next door and went like a shadow into the blackness behind the door.

It was a small room used to store soap, of which a great amount was used in the six months of the trip. Locking the door behind him he switched on a small lamp and examined the shelves on the right hand side. Quickly he began lifting the cartons of soap tablets and stacking them in front of the opposing plastic racks. When he had cleared an area about the size of a door he examined the fixing of the slats.

They were lightly spot fused to the cross supports, and a few sharp upward blows with his fist were enough to break the welds and free the shelves. With the wall now accessible Tony Bellini pressed his ear to it and listened with all the intentness his love engendered. Beyond the wall lay Miriam Chokewater in her sick bay bed, and beyond her the surgery itself with Mary McPrince on watch.

He heard nothing except the roaring of blood through his cold ear. A look at his wristwatch, and then carefully he unwrapped a small package of what looked like thin sticky string and began pressing it against the wall in the shape of a tall oblong. To the bottom corner of this oblong he connected a minute detonator and two wires, one of which he attached to his hand torch. He then built himself a shelter from full cartons and sat down to wait for 0700 hours when the first Perseid was due to hit the SS Mayburg.

Bellini’s simple (lovelorn) plan was to blow a hole in the dividing wall at the moment when Engineer Li’s contrived explosions were going off around the ship, and then to bound through the hole, snatch Miriam from her prison and rush her back to his cabin while all the confusion prevailed, He would look after her until the excitement had died down and no harm could be caused by Miriam disclosing what she knew about the ‘Perseids’. Then he would take her to Captain Able and ask him to marry them. Beyond that he could not see; a rosy mist blotted out everything.

His watch read 0700 hours. He switched off his torch and carefully connected the second wire to the other side of the thumb switch. When the first “BOOM” echoed through the ship he pressed the torch switch. A tremendous “CRACK” hit his ears and a hard fist slammed soap into his body. Everything seemed to fall on him.

When his senses recovered it was to see a faint light shining through the hole in the wall and to hear a loud screaming noise. He scrambled up and battled his way across piles of burst cartons to the hold. Further “BOOMS” showed Engineer Li to be in full swing. The screaming came from Miriam thrashing in the bed, and the light came from the surgery beyond, the connecting door of which hung drunkenly from one hinge. A jagged section of wall lay half way across the room. Almost at Bellini’s feet on the other side of the hole lay Chief Medical Officer Mary McPrince unconscious and obviously broken in one or two places.

“Dio!” breathed Bellini in real horror. He stepped over McPrince and then stood hesitating between the opposing calls of love and duty. Miriam saw him while drawing breath for fresh hysterics and scrambled along the bed and into his arms.

“Tony!” she screamed into his ear. “Save me.”

Love won.

“Through here,” he shouted, pivoted, and dragged her to the jagged hole. They tottered over the chaos of broken cartons and fell against the door. Holding Miriam’s lightly clad body on one hand he unlocked the door and pulled. It did not open. He released Miriam and used two hands. It did not move,

“Oh, Christi!” sobbed Bellini. “It is jammed. Quick — the surgery door.”

They scrambled back, stepped over McPrince’s body, and rushed hand in hand into the surgery, around the examination table, and over to the door. This, too, was immovable.

Tony Bellini hammered on the door in rage and then fell silent as he realized that by making too much noise he would draw attention to himself and so to his crime. He swung and looked at Miriam in perplexity.

“We’ve got to get out,” he told her forcibly, his tone suggesting Mirian had got him into this contretemps. She was looking at him wildly, her pretty face white and wet with her recent hysterical outburst.

“What about mother?” she whispered and looked back at the door of the sick bay. Then seeing his puzzlement she added: “Doctor McPrince.”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. Then shrilly: “Christos! What was she doing there by the wall? Why wasn’t she asleep?”

“She had just woke me up. She had something to tell me.”

He was speechless with frustration. For a few moments he turned away and rattled at the door, but all doors on a spaceship are strong and airtight and if the wall they are mounted in becomes distorted they jam. Also there was quite a difference in air pressure inside the surgery to the lower pressure outside in the corridor and this helped to hold the door shut. They returned to the sickbay end looked down at the unconscious woman.

McPrince had a lacerated shoulder and back, and a broken arm where the section of wall had struck her as it flew past. She was concussed by the explosion and her right ear would be forever deaf. There was a big pool of blood expanding on the smooth floor. Bellini stood frozen by revulsion above the body but Miriam dropped to her knees and timidly tried to raise McPrince’s head and shoulders.

“Help me,” she gasped, and was nearly sick as she felt warm blood trickle over her fingers underneath the shoulder. Bellini grunted and stepped over and took hold of the good side.

“On the bed,” said Miriam, and with a gigantic effort they raised McPrince inert body from the floor and got her to the bed. They turned her over. Her whole back seemed a mass of scored flesh.

“Dio!” groaned Bellini and turned away. He made sick noises as he stood swaying at the foot of the bed. Tears dripped from Miriam’s eyes as she tenderly stripped away the blood soaked clothing, but she nevertheless managed to inject steel into her voice as she called him to assist her.

“Stop being a baby, Tony! Come and help me to get her clothes off.”

Reluctantly, loathing it, he came and they peeled the shredded cloth from the bloody flesh.

“Now go and find some bandages. I’ll wash her.”

He was more than willing to go into the other room to escape the horror of the blood and he rummaged vigorously through cupboards. She fetched a bowl of water from the basin in the sick bay and began mopping up McPrince’s back.

“Oh, you poor dear,” she murmured as McPrince groaned in her coma. Fresh tears dripped into the welling cuts. “And that poor broken arm! What shall we do with that?”

Bellini came back with an armful of assorted bandages, cotton squares, and an antiseptic spray. He dumped them alongside McPrince’s nude body and then retreated a step. His face looked sullen with revulsion and he averted his eyes as Miriam began spraying the back and fresh blood welled out of the cuts.

“Get some ointment,” said Miriam looking up suddenly.

“Don’t just stand there, Tony! She’ll die if we don’t help her. Get some ointment to put on her back to stop the bandages sticking.”

His face set into dark rebellion and momentarily he hesitated.

“Oh, let me!” snapped Miriam, and before he could retract his rebellion she had run into the surgery and began throwing open cabinet doors and rummaging through their contents. He turned his head and looked down coldly at the body on the bed.

What the hell could they do about that broken arm? The only thing to do was to hammer on the door until somebody outside heard and broke the door in and fetched Nurse Julie. She could mend the arm. He looked round for something weighty to use on the door.

What Bellini could not know, and this was most unfortunate, was that McPrince had planned with Nurse Julie and Captain Able to get Miriam in a situation of stress whereby McPrince would fake an accident to herself inside the surgery at the time of the Perseid explosions and Miriam would find herself in a locked surgery with an unconscious body. Nobody was to answer any calls for help and Miriam would have to fend for herself and a strangely ill McPrince over a period of two or three days without food or heat and with the surgery air pressure reduced over that time to simulate leakage into space. It was hoped Miriam would emerge sturdier in character from this ordeal, Accordingly, a second surgery had been set up elsewhere in the ship with Nurse Julie in charge, and all noise from the old surgery ignored.

Miriam hurried back with a jar of some white cream she had found just as Bellini had concluded his abortive search of the ward for a hammer and was about to move into the surgery itself.

“Where are you going?” she demanded frantically. “Don’t go now.” Her hair was wild, her face ugly with tears and fear.

“Got to make someone hear,” he blurted and pushed past her. “Must find something heavy.”

“But what about her?”

“You do it,” he called. He was already inspecting the mobile lamp standard to see whether part of it unscrewed.

“Oh…, muttered Miriam, then began clumsily spreading cream on one of the squares of cloth Bellini had brought. She laid it gingerly on the bare back feeling the pain that McPrince could not. Then she took one of the big rolls of bandage and after one helpless look in the direction of Bellini began passing the strip under and over McPrince’s body. From the surgery began a tremendous banging as Bellini attacked the door with a peculiar steel bar he had found in a cupboard.

After ten minutes Miriam had finished concealing those terrible cuts and rolled McPrince over, and outside the banging had diminished in frequency and amplitude.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” bawled Bellini, “Are you all deaf?” He hammered a few more strokes and then threw his ‘hammer’ down. He glared at the door, thinking: nobody passing along the corridor could have failed to hear the banging; even if it wasn’t on the usual passenger route it was certainly within the crews’ orbit and in these ‘accident’ exercises there was a lot of traffic along the corridor to build up the atmosphere of anxious activity and also conveying hysterical and bruised women to the surgery.

So why had no one come to the surgery? Surely, someone had fainted as the air pressure was pulled down. Could it be…? No. It would be too much of a coincidence if the ship had actually suffered holing by a meteor just at the time of the exercise and everybody was dead.

Bellini pressed his ear to the door. All he could hear was the sound of Miriam sniveling over her precious ‘mother’ in the other room.

“Shut up” he shouted. “I can’t hear anything.”

Miriam gave one last sniff and was silent. She quietly found her clothes and dressed then came to the ward door and watched him. He listened with maximum intensity, mouth open, eyes shut, but he could hear nothing outside.

“The engines are still going,” he announced. “But the funny thing is, there doesn’t seem to be anyone about.” They stared at each other.

“What does it mean?” asked Miriam “What does it mean?” asked Miriam.

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Could be there’s been an accident.”

She gave a hysterical, over-sarcastic laugh. “I know all about accidents! Now they’ve got a real one, have they?” She began to titter and would have gone on to scream only that a gasp and moan came from behind her. She ran back to the bed. McPrince stared up at her with a face transfixed in pain, afraid to move, almost white as the sheets she lay on.

“Don’t move!” cried Miriam, “You’re hurt.”

“I know,” breathed McPrince. Her eyes turned towards her broken arm but she did not move her head. “My arm. What happened?” Her voice was little more than a sigh as if she hardly dared fill her lungs. “Oh…my back!”

“There was an explosion,” said Miriam, her voice was very high-pitched, squeaky. Her hands came up to her throat and clenched there as she stared down at McPrince. “What can we do for you? Oh, mother, your arm is broken!” She broke into more tears.

McPrince closed her eyes and then said: “You can stop calling me mother, for a start.” She rested and then whispered: “I can’t hear very well.” Another pause. “You said ‘we’…is there…?”

“The steward — Tony Bellini — was here when it happened,” said Miriam.

McPrince opened her eyes and looked blankly at Miriam. “I’m cold. Cover me. Shock.” She closed her eyes again. “Thirsty.”

Miriam whirled away into the surgery, Bellini looked up from where he was sitting with his back to the corridor door,

“Find some blankets quickly; she’s cold. It’s shock.” She, herself, ran to the white sink and filled a beaker with water. He rose slowly and she screamed at him: “Move, Tony, move! She may be dying!”

Grumbling under his breath he rose and began searching in the cupboards lining the room. Bloody woman: Why did she have to be standing there at that moment? Why didn’t she stay on watch in the surgery as she was supposed to do? Viciously he slid doors open and shut.

“No damned blankets here. Ask her where they are,” he shouted.

Miriam appeared at the door as if there had been a fresh explosion. “Quiet!” she commanded in a voice as thin and keen as a scalpel. “Find them! And hurry!’ She turned to go.

“Find them yourself,” snarled Bellini.

She refaced him with teeth bared. Before he could move she lashed him across the face with her slightly clawed hand. The nails left four parallel scratches from ear to mouth. She raised her hand the second time and he flinched.

“Don’t speak to me like that again!” Her eyes seemed twice their normal size, her lips nothing like the soft bows he had kissed so ardently; she seemed to have grown taller, too. Bellini backed off.

“No need to…,” he muttered, “I’m sorry.” He began rubbing his face with one hand and gesturing at the open cupboards with the other, “But I can’t find them. I have looked.”

“Have you looked there?” Miriam pointed to the cupboard above head height at the back of the surgery.

“Not yet.”

“Well, do so.” She disappeared back into the ward leaving him to open the cupboard and extract the special blankets he found. Angrily he took out all there were, carried them into the ward, and dumped them at the foot of the bed. Perspiration was glistening on McPrince’s forehead; her eyes were closed.

“Look, she’s hot,” said Bellini truculently.

“She’s not. She’s frozen — shivering,” hissed Miriam. Carefully she covered McPrince with blankets while Bellini wandered round the small dimly lit room wondering what to do. He couldn’t believe that they were the only people alive on the Mayburg, but neither could he account for the absence of traffic in the corridor outside.

There remained a cold fantasy in his mind that he, Miriam and McPrince were speeding towards Mars in a giant coffin without food and with air slowly bleeding away until eventually they would join the rest of the ghosts patrolling the ship. Bellini was a great believer in ghosts. In his short life he had seen them, heard them and experienced them. He was an imaginative youth, very romantic, very emotional, and a believer in everything he read. He was religious, he believed in the existence of evil spirits and ghosts; in free love and also in the beauty of one and only true love; he was a fervent Marxist, a democrat, and a Royalist; anything that could be presented to him persuasively he was.

Bellini was young, and full to the brim with the thrust of life and he went wherever it pushed him. His imagination began to give him pictures of Captain Able sitting at the ship’s control desk his dead finger pressed on the ‘drive’ button and his dead eyes staring blindly at the ever enlarging sphere of Mars on the screen. He saw, too, the passenger lounge full of decoratively sprawled young ladies all dead. His young spirit insisted he do something, and yet he was afraid of the death that waited outside the door.

He struck the wall nearest him a blow with the ball of his hand (not his fist) and then rushed back into the surgery, found some more steel rods, and began hammering again at the door.

The noise roused McPrince and she groaned at the pain her involuntary movement caused. She looked into Miriam’s face hovering above her,

“My arm,” she said, “You must set it.”

Miriam drew away in horror. “Oh, no.” she breathed, “I couldn’t. It would hurt you.”

McPrince screwed her face up to fight a scream of pain and exasperation, “Don’t be foolish, girl. I’ll tell you how to do it,” She panted a little and then carefully moved her good arm across until she touched the broken arm. Slowly, with several winces she felt her way up the limb. “It’s the humerus. That’s easy. A light local. Some splints. I’ll do it myself.”

Miriam did not move.

“Get the splints,” repeated McPrince tiredly. “You’ll find them in cupboard number three.” And when Miriam slowly turned towards the door, “And bring me the hypogun…and the box of ampoules with it.” She was so exhausted she could not have said more even if Miriam had refused to go. She had completely forgotten her plan to fake an accident to herself. The irony was lost on her.

Her thoughts wavered like mirages, fading in and out of her control. How had her arm broken? What was the hole in the ward wall? Who was this steward? Why was he here? It was too much for her bruised head to hold and she lost hold of reasoning until a voice penetrated her awareness: “Are these them?” She opened her eyes. Miriam was holding up three very bent splint rods. McPrince gaped.

“They’re bent!” she whispered.

“Yes. Tony used them to hit the door.”

“Hit.…” Once again the strength to follow a line of thought failed her.

Miriam held up the hypogun. “Is this it?”

“Yes.” Miriam slanted a box of plastic bullets. “And these?” McPrince roused.

“Let me see.” She forced her head off the pillow and examined the lines of tubes. Slowly her good hand came up and she pointed to one tube. “This one, Load the gun.” She subsided; she looked asleep.

Miriam extracted the little tube and then took up the gun. Fearfully she Examined it, her first reaction being to ask Bellini to load it, but then recollection of his sulky-boy’s face stopped her and determinedly she turned the thing round and round pressing and pulling its parts. A panel above the trigger popped open and disclosed a cut-away section of tube that obviously fitted the bullet. Carefully she slipped the bullet in and closed the panel. Now what? The splints. She took them into the surgery and showed them to Bellini.

“These are no good. You’ve bent them—”

“No good for what?”

“As splints. They should be straight — you’ll have to bend them straight again.”

“They’re steel!” he expostulated. “I can’t bend steel.”

“You bent them once — now unbend them!”

He laughed caustically. “That’s different. It’s one thing to put a random bend in rods like these, it’s another to get it out again unless you’ve got a vice and tools. Women don’t understand things like that.” He laughed again.

“I understand that she’s got a broken arm and unless we set it and splint it for her she’s going to be in agony and finish up with a useless arm. Well, if you can’t straighten those we’ll have to find something else,”

“What?” asked Bellini unhelpfully. He stood looking at her with a slight smile, almost a sneer, on his lips.

“Anything straight,” she said,

He took something from his pocket and held it up. “Like this pencil?”

Instant rage hit her. She struck the pencil from his hand with one swinger and followed it up with a swinger from the opposite direction, He staggered and sat down with a thump.

“Get up you useless weed,” she screamed at him, “Get up and do something.” She assisted him with a kick to his left thigh. “Make a splint or I’ll bend this straight over your head.” She held one of the steel rods high over him, murder in her eyes.

“Don’t!” he gasped. He scrambled away from her like a crab and then ran to the other end of the room, “You’ve gone mad!” he shouted back. “How did I know what they were? You’re bloody mad!”

She ran two steps towards him with the steel rod back behind her head ready to smash his brains.

“All right. All right!” he shouted. “I’ll find something, Put that thing down.”

Satisfied, she turned back but she was panting with the effort she had expended. In the ward she bent over McPrince. “Are you warmer?”

McPrince nodded.

“Tell me what I have to do.”

McPrince’s shapely face was haggard. She breathed rapidly and shallowly, making a great effort to rally her thoughts.

“When you have the splints ready shoot me with the gun. I will show you where. Then I will position the bones. Then you must bind the splints to the arm and then to my body. That is all.”

“Will it hurt you?”

“Not much.”

Miriam studied the tired face and softly wiped away perspiration. “Is there anything I can give you for the shock?” she murmured. “Something to make you sleep?”

“Afterwards,” answered McPrince. She lifted her head slightly. “What is he doing? Where are the splints? What is happening?”

In one determined, sinuous movement Miriam was off the side of the bed and at the ward door. Bellini had taken a sliding door from one of the cupboards and was trying to break it into strips. His teeth were bared in manic frustration at the toughness of the plastic. He threw it on the floor and stamped on it, and when he saw her looking at him he gave a gurgle close to tears, picked up the door and hurled it across the room. Bottles and beakers crashed and bounced on the floor.

“Hell, hell, hell!” he shouted in a falsetto. “Why did she have to break her bloody arm? Get your own bloody splints!” He kicked hard at a chair and then had to retrieve it and sit down as his heart was pounding so hard. The air pressure was definitely low now. They both felt dizzy with the high emotions they were suffering.

“Tony,” she said, close to tears. “Please help. Once we have her fixed up we can both try to get attention, but she needs us now.”

He shook his head violently, almost like a dog, and turned away from her, “No. No. She’s the doctor; let her cure herself. If it hadn’t been for her we’d have been in my cabin by now. To hell with her — and you too!” He began crying.

She was shocked. She saw that Bellini was scared, so scared that his reason was leaving him. She went back to McPrince who stared back up at her.

“Give me the case,” murmured McPrince nodding towards the case of ampoules on the table by the bed. Miriam tilted the case for her and laboriously McPrince extracted one of the tubes.

“After you have injected me put this in the gun. If he gets uncontrollable, shoot him with it. It will make him sleep.” Her face grew firmer as she rallied her low forces to deal with the problem on hand. “In the drawer to the left of the door are some heavy scissors. The shelves in the soap store are plastic…you can cut them. Get four.…”

Miriam ran into the surgery. Bellini sat with his head in his hands and did not stir as she went by. She found the drawer open and the instruments scattered on the floor. She took the scissors and ran back. In the soap store it was dark but there were bits of shelf everywhere. She dragged out some pieces and using both hands on the scissors cut them to equal lengths. She returned to the bed and showed them to McPrince, who nodded.

“Inject me now.” A finger came across her body and pointed to a spot on her damaged upper arm, “Here and here,” And as Miriam hesitated: “It won’t hurt me.”

Miriam picked up the hateful gun and placed it where indicated. She pulled the trigger and there was an almost imperceptible psst.

“Now here,” breathed McPrince. More confidently Miriam fired the second shot.

“I shall set the bones in line,” said McPrince. “Get the bandages ready to bind the splints on when I tell you. Put some cloth round the splints so they don’t dig in as you bind them.”

While Miriam wrapped the strips, McPrince’s good hand began to explore, exerting more and more pressure as she steeled herself. A faint dry sound sickened Miriam. “Crepitus,” hissed McPrince through clenched teeth.

“Get ready. Don’t worry about me. Just do your job.” She suddenly pushed and twisted at her arm, arching her back at the pain and turning her head away to conceal it from Miriam. “Do it,” came her husky whisper. She kept a grip on her arm.

Miriam knew only that she must be quick and gentle, no flinching, no tears, cool, an ally to this brave woman. She pushed away every thought of herself. She positioned the strips around the limb, holding them loosely in place by quick twists of narrow bandage, then starting near the shoulder began winding the wider bandage round and round.

“Tighter,” murmured McPrince. She looked into Miriam’s intent face and smiled. “All over. Thank you, Miriam. I don’t know what I could have done without you.” Miriam smiled back as she worked,

“How does your back feel?” she asked professionally.

“Fine,” said McPrince. “What did you use?”

When she had finished Miriam held up the jar of ointment. “Can I get you something for the shock now?” she asked.

McPrince nodded and gave directions. “Keep the gun with you,” she reminded Miriam. “Load it with the tube I showed you.”

Miriam looked apprehensive. “Do you really think he would attack me? He saved my life when the water escaped.”

“He might not mean it but he might come to believe you are the cause of his predicament and then he might want to hurt you. Take the gun. Keep it in your pocket.”

Miriam marched into the surgery like soldiers used to march into battle: head up, face grim, muscles taut, waiting for death. Bellini watched her silently from where he sat. She searched amongst the bottles for the one McPrince wanted, but she kept one eye on Bellini.

“I’m hungry,” he said suddenly. “I want my breakfast.” His beautiful face was belligerently set against her. “Where is the food?”

She snatched at the bottle. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “There’s no food here.” She turned to the ward door.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” he demanded, and stood up.

“It’s for the shock,” said Miriam, and took a step towards the door.

“Show me,” he said, and with a quick step of his own was in front of her holding out his hand.

“Tony, don’t be ridiculous.”

His hand darted forward and seized her wrist. He pulled her to him. She held the bottle wide from him but he took no notice of it. His face dominated her no more than six inches away. There was perspiration on his forehead.

“Bitch! We’re going to die in here. Suffocate. Don’t you understand that? We’re the only ones left on the ship. In a day we shall be dead. And you play about with her. Before we die, I must have you. I love you. Give me this before we die.” His arms had encircled her and his lips strained towards her as she strained away.

There was a look of desperation on the edge of panic in his eyes and she could feel his body trembling against her.

This wasn’t an upwelling of love for her, it was a child trying to forget a nightmare in its parent’s arms. She recovered a little from his attack.

“No. Not now, Tony,” she managed to gasp. “Perhaps when we are sure.”

He wasn’t listening to her. One leg crooked behind her and with the weight of his body he bore her backwards so that they crumpled to the floor, she underneath. Before she could get her breath his mouth pressed against hers and his hands began to tear her clothes apart. The panic that had triggered off this attack took away his last trace of humanity. He snarled into her face while his hands shredded the light blouse she was wearing. His fingers came to the top of her skirt, and it was then she remembered the hypogun in the skirt pocket.

She let his hand go where it willed while she groped in the pocket and drew out the gun. She pressed it against his back and pulled the trigger. For a second the animal lust remained on his face, then a look of bewilderment swept all else away. He raised himself slightly from her and then rolled to one side and began to snore. Shaken, Miriam scrambled to her feet and ran into the ward. McPrince was half up in bed on her good elbow trying to swing her legs from under the blankets.

“No, no,” gasped Miriam. “Get back. I’m all right.” She helped McPrince to lie flat again. “I shot him with the gun. He’s asleep.” When McPrince was settled she asked: “How long will he sleep?”

“Two or three hours. What are you going to do about him?”

Miriam sat on the bed and thought, shaking from time to time. She was not averse to love making with Bellini, had adored it in his cabin, but this Bellini was halfway to being mad and that chilled her, If she had succumbed to him that would not have appeased his fear of dying no more than one boulder stops a flood stream, After rape would come other violence, and as the end got nearer nothing less than killing would relieve his tension. He had to be locked up. She looked around the small ward and then walked to the sagging door connecting with the surgery. She stood looking down at the sprawled figure of Tony Bellini and marveled at how quickly she had recovered from his assault. She was thinking as coolly about him as if he had been an item of furniture to be moved from one side of the room to the other,

The surgery was so much larger and brighter than the ward that she knew that if there must be a separation between them she and McPrince had to be in the surgery and Bellini in the ward. Also the water supply was in the surgery and all the drugs that McPrince might need. She turned back, made sure that the bed was narrow enough to go through the doorway, then wheeled the bed through avoiding Bellini’s spread-eagled limbs. Next she dragged Bellini into the ward and spread the spare blankets over him.

She took a jug of water and his torch and placed them by his body, then dragged the section of storeroom wall into the surgery and closed the door after her. It hung by one hinge but it closed properly and she was able to turn the key in the lock. Finally, she put the section of wall across the doorway and jammed the bed against it. McPrince watched her all the time with a thoughtful expression.

“I heard him say we would be dead in a day,” she said. “What did he mean? Tell me all that has happened. I can’t make head or tail of it.”

“It must have been the Perseids that Captain Able spoke about on the intercom. I suppose Tony came to steal me from the ward but just as he blew the wall down the ship was hit and the air is escaping. There doesn’t seem to be anybody left alive on the ship.”

“Oh…,” said McPrince, and looked far away.

Over the rest of the day the air pressure slowly bled away to 8 p.s.i. Miriam suffered dizziness and panted like a dog. Bellini woke up, made a lot of noise on the connecting door and then fell silent. McPrince administered medicines to herself and slept sporadically. Miriam thought a lot about life and stared at the sleeping face of her companion. She was soon to die, and at nineteen that is a terrible realization.

Once she went as Bellini had done and pressed her ear to the surgery door, but she detected nothing. Most of the time her thoughts went back to her childhood and her mother, then an awful pang would go through her as she remembered that soon all these lovely memories would be blotted out; she would think no more; her mother would cease to be; her home would vanish in agony.

“Oh no!” she cried to herself. “It can’t be like that! Something must be left of me; something which can look down and watch all these heart-aching things.” She could not imagine final blackness, final sleep. When you sleep something is still there experiencing the sleep, and when she tried to imagine what a final sleep would be like there was always a watcher observing the blackness, screaming at it, banishing it with a flick of the mind. She would see herself hand in hand with her mother walking round the local shops or sitting in their sunny upstairs room drinking tea together and laughing. Tears of sorrow continually leaked from her eyes, but there was not much fear of the end, only a kind of disgust that her body would probably twist about and choke for lack of air.

McPrince held a hand out to her once as she caught her weeping. “What are you thinking about?’ she asked gently. “Come here. Tell me.”

Miriam caught the one good hand and sat silent for a long while. Then she said, “You must think me a silly baby the way I called you ‘mother’, but my mother was, is, the center of everything good in life to me and I miss her terribly. I couldn’t resist calling you ‘mother’; you are so like her.”

“Why did you leave her?” asked McPrince.

Miriam shrugged and looked a little guilty. “I used to think it was to make her happy, you know, to see me married. It isn’t easy for a girl to get married these days, is it? But I realize now that that wasn’t the reason…in any case, it didn’t make her happy, she was terribly upset when I told her. No; I think it was that I knew I had to break the bond if I was to have any life of my own. I guess I knew I could never find it while I remained on Earth. I applied for this flight on the spur of the moment…like a prison-break.”

She hung her head. “It was intolerably selfish, but I can’t help it.”

McPrince gripped her hand. “When life takes hold of you, you don’t stand much chance,” she said. “Don’t blame yourself. Every girl on this ship did the same thing. Now forget it, my girl, and attend to business. Make up some kind of a bed for yourself and then see if you can find the food tablets. There was a box of them in that cupboard over in the corner.”

The second day took twice as long to pass. The air pressure sank no lower; they did not die. Bellini had an hour of shrieking and howling and pushing at the connecting door, then he relapsed into groans and finally silence. McPrince was able to get out of bed and, with Miriam’s help, dress herself in a spare uniform. They talked about the possibility that there was someone alive on the ship who had managed to seal the leaks in the hull: how else could the air pressure remaining stable be explained? They listened for long stretches at the surgery door hoping to hear footsteps outside. They talked about life on Mars. Miriam produced Franco Parzetti’s photograph.

“He looks a nice boy,” said McPrince. “Sensible. Not like.…” She nodded at the ward door. “How did you manage to get mixed up with him?” There was a lot of talk about that. The day eventually finished and they slept.

Day three began at double speed. In the small hours there was a tremendous noise and Bellini smashed his way into the surgery. His strength seemed to have doubled. He was waving the scissors Miriam had used to make splints and he obviously intended to do some cutting up himself. He had patiently used the scissors to chisel away the door jam round the lock and his eventual rush carried the door, the barricade and the bed before him.

McPrince had been in the bed and Miriam on the padded examination table in the center of the surgery. The bed was thrown over on its side and McPrince to the floor where she fainted with pain. Miriam, shocked into a confused awakening, flung herself sideways as Bellini plunged at her. She knocked over the mobile lamp and there was blackness. Bellini lunged in the darkness and buried the scissor points in padding. Miriam hit the floor and scampered off on hands and knees dragging blankets after her. Bellini stepped on a moving blanket and fell backwards, hitting his head on something that did not give way. He, too, fainted. There was a long period of respiratory noises.

Then: “Mary?”

More breathing.… “Tony?”

Miriam felt her way along the wall to the surgery door and then up the wall to the main light switch. All was revealed. Miriam did not waste time. She scrambled bandages out of a cupboard and tied Bellini’s hands and feet into an interlocked bundle. She then found the hypogun and loaded it with one of the ‘sleep’ ampoules. Then she looked at McPrince. Blood was staining the sheets wrapped round her, and when Miriam carefully unraveled her she found the bandages across McPrince’s back were soaked. Whether the bone in the arm had come unset she could not tell, but the binding and strapping still looked firm.

With the scissors she cut away the bandages from McPrince’s back and then began tearing the sheets into large swabs, gradually drying the flow of blood. McPrince groaned and roused. Quickly Miriam re-bandaged the torn area. She made an oblong of blankets beside McPrince on the floor and eased her on to it. “Don’t move. Let the bleeding stop. How is your arm?”

McPrince grimaced. “All right, I think. Thank you, Miriam. I shall be fine now.” She looked over at Bellini’s slowly moving body. “I see you’ve dealt with him. Good girl. He’ll need medication.… Or maybe the bang on the head will have brought him to his senses.” She looked surprised. “It seems to have brought me to my senses. I remember now there is a key to the door.” She looked around and then nodded. “In that drawer.”

“A key!” exclaimed Miriam. “You mean the door is only locked, not jammed? But I thought you never locked the surgery.”

“It was because I was sleeping here,” said McPrince, and she hoped it sounded convincing. Miriam found the key and put it in the lock.

“Supposing…,” she said, looking back at McPrince. Then took a grip on herself and opened the door. There were no corpses outside.

The reunion with the crew and 500 passengers went off very well. All the women were convinced they had escaped death by miracles of bravery on the part of the crew, and the crew were well rehearsed in their stories of damage caused by the Perseids.

If there was any lingering doubt about the authenticity of the Perseids the appearance of McPrince pale and properly bandaged dispelled them. There was also the tangible evidence of Bellini’s confinement to the brig for the rest of the outward voyage. That would have been carrying a trick too far,

When the women landed on Mars all were delighted with the moderate temperature, the brightness of the distant sun, and by the positively soupy thickness of the air. Most of all they were delighted with the warmth of the waiting men. Franco Parzetti was a lulu.