Survey Ship (20 page)

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 re-

lieved. 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!”