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Authors: Ben Bova

Venus (23 page)

BOOK: Venus
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So they kill him, I thought. And we pull out of Venus and go home. If I keep my mouth shut I can survive this. I can back up their story. I can convince them that if they kill me too the authorities will know they’d committed murder, but if they let me live I’ll corroborate whatever story they concoct about Fuchs and we’ll all get out of this alive. After all, Venus is so damnably dangerous almost any story they invent would be believable.
We can live through this! I won’t get Alex’s remains, but I can always come back. What we’ve learned on this mission will allow me to build a better, safer vessel for the return trip.
Fuchs was a few strides from the hatch. Bahadur and the two others stood on either side of the hatch, out of his sight, knives drawn.
If our positions were reversed Fuchs would let them kill me, I told myself. He set me up for this in the first place, making the crew think I was spying for him.
They could hear his footsteps too, I realized. They were waiting, poised to strike. Sanja stood frozen beside me, unwilling or unable to utter a peep.
I leaped off the pump housing and dove out the hatch, screaming, “It’s a trap!” at the top of my lungs.
I barreled into Fuchs, who simply pushed me aside. As I climbed to my feet, Bahadur and the two others pushed through the hatch, roaring with frustrated rage.
Bahadur reached Fuchs first, and the captain leveled him with a single powerful punch. The other crewman staggered back as Bahadur slumped to the deck. Fuchs kicked Bahadur in the head, then stood waiting in a semi-crouch, his lips pulled back in a ferocious grin.
The crewman slashed with the knife but Fuchs ducked under it and punched up into the man’s midsection so hard it lifted him off his feet. I heard the air gush out of his lungs and he dropped to his knees. Fuchs smashed a rabbit punch to the back of his neck and he fell atop the prostrate Bahadur.
All this happened in the time it took me to get to my feet. The woman stood in the hatch, amazed and confused, knife in hand, glancing from Fuchs to the inert bodies of her fellow conspirators.
Fuchs was still grinning terribly. The woman hesitated, wavered. Sanja hit her from behind with a karate chop that knocked her senseless.
It was over. Fuchs bent down and took the knives from them. Bahadur was moaning, his legs twitching slightly, the other crewman still on top of him, still unconscious.
Turning to me, the three knives in one hand, Fuchs said, “Well, that’s over.”
“Captain,” Sanja said, his voice shaking as he stepped over the women he’d knocked out, “I was forced by them … I would not betray you, I was—”
“Quiet, Sanja,” said Fuchs.
The man closed his mouth so quickly I could hear his teeth click.
“That took some nerve, warning me,” Fuchs said to me.
I was panting, my legs felt weak, my bladder full.
“I knew what was going on, of course,” he went on. “Clever of them to use you as bait. They would have slit your throat afterward, of course.”
“Of course,” I managed to choke out.
“Still, it took some guts to bolt out like that and try to warn me.” His face was almost devoid of expression; neither pain nor pleasure showed; not relief; certainly not gratitude.
“It made it easier to take them, bringing the fight out here to the passageway,” he went on, almost musing, reviewing the brawl like a general going over the after-action reports from a battle.
“They would have killed you.” I heard my own voice quavering.
“They would have tried,” Fuchs said. “It would have been a tougher fight inside the pump station, I admit.”
I was starting to feel almost angry. He was acting as if nothing much out of the ordinary had happened.
Bahadur moaned again and tried to sit up. Fuchs watched him struggle to get out from under the other crewman. He leaned his back against the bulkhead and held his head in both hands, eyes still closed.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Fuchs taunted, leaning slightly toward him. “Not as much as a knife in the ribs would hurt, but still I imagine your head’s pretty painful right now.”
Bahadur opened his eyes. There was no defiance in them, no hatred, not even anger. He was whipped and he knew it.
“Sanja,” the captain commanded, “you and Humphries take these three mutineers back to the crew’s quarters. They are confined to their bunks until further orders.”
“Mutineers?” I asked.
Fuchs nodded. “Attempting to kill the ship’s captain is mutiny, Humphries. The penalty for mutiny is summary execution.”
“You’re not going to kill them!”
Fuchs gave a disdainful snort. “Why not? They were going to kill me, weren’t they?”
“But …”
“You want to give them a fair trial first, don’t you? All right, I’ll be the prosecutor, you can be the defense attorney, and Sanja will be the judge.”
“Here and now?”
Ignoring my question, he leaned down and slapped Bahadur smartly on the cheek. “Were you going to kill me?”
Sullenly, Bahadur nodded.
“Speak up,” Fuchs said. “For the record. Did you intend to murder me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“To get away. To leave this place before all of us are killed.”
Fuchs straightened up and shrugged at me. “There you are. What need have we for further witnesses? Sanja, how do you find?”
“Guilty, Captain.”
“There,” Fuchs said. “Neat and legal. Put them in their bunks. I’ll deal with then later.”
S
anja and I led a trio of very cowed would-be mutineers back to the crew’s quarters. None of them spoke a word as they shambled along the passageway. In the crew’s quarters, the other off-watch personnel stared silently as Bahadur and the other two slumped onto their bunks. No one said anything; it wasn’t necessary. They all had known what Bahadur was planning, I thought. They all were content to stand back and let it happen.
I couldn’t stay in the crew’s quarters, not anymore. I saw to it that the three mutineers were in their own bunks, stiff and sore from the beating they had taken, then I headed back toward Fuchs’s compartment.
Marguerite was in his quarters, spraying a bandage around his left biceps.
“Come in, Humphries,” Fuchs called from the chair where he was sitting with his sleeve rolled up to the shoulder.
“You’re injured,” I said, surprised.
“Bahadur sliced me with his first move,” Fuchs answered easily. “My vest didn’t protect my arms.”
He gestured with his free hand to a mesh vest that was draped over one of the other chairs. I went to it and fingered the mesh: cermet, light but tough enough to stop a kitchen knife.
“You didn’t go into the fight unprepared, did you?” I said.
“Only a fool would,” he replied.
Marguerite finished the bandaging and stepped back. “You could have been killed,” she said.
But Fuchs shook his head. “Sometimes the captain has to bring things to a boil. Let the crew simmer in their complaints and fears for too long and they might cook up something you can’t handle. I saw this coming from the moment we were blown off course by the subsolar wave.”
“You knew this was going to happen?” she asked.
“Something like it, yes.”
“And you used me to set it up for you,” I said.
“You played your part.”
“They might have killed me!”
He shook his head. “Not until they’d got to me first. You were perfectly safe as long as I was still alive.”
“That’s your opinion,” I said.
He gave me a tolerant grin. “That’s the fact of the matter.”
Before I could reply, Marguerite changed the subject. “Van is going to need another transfusion.”
Fuchs’s brows rose. “Already?”
“Already,” she said.
“Too bad we cleaned up the blood from my wound,” he muttered.
“I’m worried about this,” Marguerite said. “If Van’s going to need a transfusion every few days—”
“We’ll only be here a few days more,” Fuchs interrupted. “Either we find the wreckage or we pack it in and leave.”
“Still …”
He silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’m good for another liter or two.”
“No, you’re not. You can’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” Fuchs said, his voice ominously low, threatening.
“If I could call back to Earth,” Marguerite said, “and tap into Van’s medical records, perhaps—”
“No.”
“It’s for your own good,” she said, her voice almost pleading.
He glared at her.
“I might be able to synthesize the enzyme Van needs from your blood. Then you wouldn’t have to give any more transfusions.”
“I said no.”
“Why not?”
“There will be no communication between this ship and Earth until we’ve recovered Alex Humphries’s remains,” Fuchs said, with steel in his voice. “I will not give Martin Humphries any excuse to renege on his prize money.”
“Even if it kills Van?”
He glanced at me, then turned back to Marguerite. “I’m good for another liter or two of blood, over the next few days.”
I spoke up. “
Truax
has my complete medical records in its computer files. You could get the full description of the enzyme from them.”
Fuchs started to shake his head, but hesitated. “
Truax
, eh?”
“In orbit around this planet,” I pointed out. “Nowhere near Earth.”
He mulled it over as he rolled his sleeve down and closed the Velcro seal at its wrist. “Okay,” he said at last. “Access
Truax’
s medical computer. But that’s all! You’re not to speak to anyone. Not a word, do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Marguerite said. “Thank you.”
Then she looked over at me. It took me a moment to realize what she expected.
“Thank you, Captain,” I mumbled.
He brushed it off. “You’re still going to need a transfusion, though, aren’t you?”
“Until I can synthesize the enzyme,” Marguerite said.
“Assuming you can,” Fuchs pointed out. “
Lucifer
isn’t equipped with a biomedical laboratory, you know.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Marguerite said.
“Okay.” Fuchs got to his feet. “Let’s get down to the sick bay and get this damned transfusion over with.”
 
Marguerite made me lay on the table and had Fuchs sit on a chair that she wedged into the sick bay’s cramped space. He seemed perfectly relaxed, chewing on a mouthful of those pills of his. I couldn’t stand to watch the needle go into my arm or Fuchs’s; I had to close my eyes.
As I lay there, I remembered my other problem.
“I can’t go back to the crew’s quarters,” I said.
“Why not?” Fuchs asked calmly.
I opened my eyes and saw that damnable tube sticking in his arm, filled with bright red blood. Suppressing a shudder, I focused on Marguerite, standing over us with a concerned expression on her beautiful face.
“After what happened with Bahadur and those others,” I began to explain.
“You’ve nothing to be afraid of,” Fuchs said.
“I’m not afraid,” I answered. And it was true. It surprised me, but I really wasn’t afraid of them.
“Then what?” Fuchs demanded.
“I just can’t sleep in the same room with people who would’ve murdered me.”
“Oh,” Fuchs said condescendingly, “you’re uncomfortable with ruffians as your bunk mates.”
Marguerite chided, “It’s not a joking matter.”
“I’m not joking,” Fuchs said. “Tell me, Humphries, just where do you think you can bunk, if not in the crew’s quarters?”
I hadn’t given that any thought at all.
“There’s no place else aboard,” Fuchs said, “unless you want to sleep on the deck someplace.”
“Anywhere—”
“And then you’d be sleeping alone,” he went on. “Unprotected. At least, in the crew’s quarters there are some loyal souls nearby: Sanja, or Amarjagal, for example. Nobody will try to slit your throat while one of them is around to witness it.”
“How can I sleep when people in the other bunks want to slit my throat?” I demanded.
Fuchs chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’ll be perfectly safe. They’ve shot their bolt.”
“I can’t sleep there.”
His voice hardened. “This isn’t a cruise ship, Humphries. You’ll follow my orders just like all the others. You go back to your bunk. Put some iron in your spine! At least you can pretend you’re not afraid of ’em.”
“But you don’t understand—”
Fuchs laughed bitterly. “No,
you
don’t understand. You’re returning to the crew’s quarters. End of discussion.”
He has my life in his hands, I told myself. There’s nothing I can do. So I shut my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut when Marguerite slid the transfusion tube out of my arm.
“Let my blood circulate through you for a few minutes,” Fuchs said, amused. “That ought to give you enough courage to crawl into your bunk and go to sleep.”
I was furious with him. But I said nothing.
Not even when he draped his beefy arm on Marguerite’s shoulders as the two of them left the sick bay for their quarters.
 
No one said a word to me when I returned to the crew’s quarters. They wouldn’t even look in my direction. Not even Sanja, who was off duty when I got there.
Amarjagal, the first mate, must have been up on the bridge. Fuchs was in his quarters. With Marguerite, I knew.
The two of them, together. I tried to shut the images out of my mind.
Despite everything, I fell asleep. Perhaps Marguerite had slipped a sedative or tranquilizer into my veins along with the transfusion. I slept deeply, without dreams. When I woke up I actually felt refreshed, strong.
I swung out of my bunk and padded barefoot to the lavatory. Two crewmen were washing up. When I entered they hastily rinsed themselves off and left.
A pariah. They were treating me as an outcast. Very well, I shrugged to myself. At least I get the exclusive use of the toilets and showers.
I always wrapped a towel around my middle when I went back to my bunk from the lav. Most of the others were not so modest. Even the women apparently thought little of nudity, although I must say that none of them stirred my interest at all. It wasn’t racism; some of the most exciting, erotic women I’ve ever known were Asians. But the women aboard
Lucifer
were either dour and chunky or dour and so gaunt you could count their ribs from across the compartment. Not my type at all.
At any rate, as I went back to my bunk with my hair still wet from the shower and a towel modestly knotted around my waist, I saw that several crew members were clustered around one of the other bunks. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, just standing there with their backs to me.
I thought little of it as I slid my sheet-covered shoji screen shut and pulled on a fresh set of coveralls. It was the last clean pair in the drawer beneath my bunk. I’d have to either find more in the supply locker or find out if the ship had a laundry unit aboard.
The crowd was still standing in the same spot as a few minutes before, their backs still to me. I recognized Bahadur’s tall form and shaved head.
I was curious, but they obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with me. It seemed to me, though, that they were clustered around Sanja’s bunk. At least, I thought that’s where his bunk was.
What was going on? I wondered. But I decided it would cause trouble if I asked or tried to push in among them to see what was going on.
I didn’t have to. They melted away from the bunk, each of them seemingly going in a different direction. Bahadur walked slowly toward the intercom unit set into the bulkhead by the hatch, shaking his head and muttering in his beard.
I could see Sanja’s bunk now. The privacy screen was open. He was lying on his back, eyes staring blankly upward. His throat was ripped open, caked with blood.
I threw up.
BOOK: Venus
8.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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