Balth smiled and said “Already rolling, captain. I anticipated this.”
Kandyce leaned forward to look at the screen closer. “It’s artificial, but I can’t make out what it is. Can we get a printout on this?” In answer to her question the printer came alive again.
Ross quietly looked over the printout when Balth handed it to him. He shook his head and spoke: “It’s a form of metal, but it’s got a base the computer doesn’t recognize. I’ll bet that whatever it is, we’ll find the same substance laced through the asteroids themselves. All right. We can come back to this later. Let’s see the next planet.”
Balth switched telescopes and panned to the right while a planet appeared on the screen. It was small and speeding along in its orbit. He activated the printer again. After he gave the printout to Ross, and, receiving a nod, he panned the telescope to the right again. Suddenly, two planets appeared on the screen, one behind the other. Kandyce gasped “It’s beautiful. It’s even more beautiful than any other planet I’ve seen. It looks like it’s mostly water.” Ross read the printout Balth handed him, smiling while Kandyce kept going on about the planet. “Is that moon circling this planet or is it part of that planet in the background? With that planet in the background, I’ll bet the evenings are simply spectacular.”
Kandyce finally stopped raving about the planet and Ross interjected what he had read from the printout, “Oxygen rich atmosphere, very few minor gases, nitrogen count is lower than the first planet. It’s even lower than Earth’s. No pollution in the air and the moon belongs to this one. Oceans cover the majority of the planet and don’t read as being very salty. And here’s one for you— it’s got a reverse rotation. So, the sun will rise in the west and set in the east. The moon is just the opposite. Its orbit rises in the east and sets in the west. Well, we’re going to have to set down on one of these planets. I’d rather not have to negotiate that asteroid belt, so I think we’d better head for that planet right there. I think we’d better be thinking up some names for these places if we’re going to be here any length of time.” Ross folded all of the printout sheets together and tucked them into his back pocket. He looked at the screen for a few seconds and then continued speaking. “As far as that fourth planet goes, it probably has a slower orbit than this other planet. So, we can wait awhile and get a readout a little later. Balth, plot us a course for an orbit, then…”
Ross was interrupted by a shrill clang and then Phall’s terrified voice came over the speaker. “Medical emergency! Captain to med-lab immediately, please!” Then the speaker went dead. Ross and Kandyce looked at each other and then turned as one for the corridor to the med-lab. Ross called over his shoulder, “Balth, take care of everything. I’ll let you know what’s happened.” Then they entered the corridor to the med-lab and disappeared from Balth’s view.
CHAPTER FOUR
Phall was still shook by the sound of that piercing screech echoing in her mind. Even the calm words of Doc didn’t still all of her fears. She had passed two more pods when she saw the cracks that laced the shield of pod 49. Reaching out, she snagged the I.D. card and slipped it into her pocket with the clutch of other cards she had already accumulated. She took another step, coming past the pod to look at the space between the pods, and froze. Flipping the stun wand into her hand, she called to Doc and he was instantly at her side. Together, they studied the dead chimp, then Phall turned to him as her eye caught a blur of movement behind him. As she recognized a large shaggy chimp with a look of wild anger on its face, her fright turned into pure terror. Doc had just started to turn towards her, when her terrified scream made him falter. The chimp hit him in the middle of his back, pushing him into Phall. She tried to catch him and bring up the stun wand at the same time. She saw the chimp sink its fangs into Doc’s shoulder, and then heard the dull thud of his head striking the sleeping pod.
Phall was off balance from Doc falling into her, so, when she tried to stun the chimp, she missed, the stun wand going wide and away from the chimp. Doc and the chimp hit the floor before she did. As she landed on her back she saw the chimp raise itself from Doc and jump towards her. She screamed again and brought the wand up between her and the chimp. It landed on her stomach, knocking the wind from her. Then the wand came into full contact with the chimp’s chest. It screamed a savage bellow before lapsing into unconsciousness, and fell off of Phall and lay on its side. She just lay where she was for awhile, out of breath and unable to move.
Finally, Phall was able to move and was able to take more than a gasping breath into her aching lungs. She rolled over to her side and raised herself off the floor and then remembered that Doc had been bitten and was bleeding. She was moving much faster now. Crossing over to him and rolling him to his back, she first checked his shoulder. It was bleeding from two deep wounds and half a dozen more shallow ones. Then she looked at his head where he had hit it on the sleeping pod. There was no bleeding, but one very large bump. He shouldn’t be unconscious, she thought, so she did some further checking. It wasn’t until she moved his arm that she found out his wand had discharged itself when it hit his thigh. He had been stunned by his own stun wand. She grabbed his arms and pulled him to a sitting position, then stepped behind him to lift him and drag him out of the bay.
When Phall reached the doors to the bay, she hit the panel to open them with her elbow and pulled Doc into the next bay. She laid him on the floor, removed her mask, but left his mask in place. The oxygen in the bottle would be good for him. She then turned to a small anteroom and rolled out a stretcher, positioning it beside him. Getting him onto the stretcher was a struggle, but eventually she had positioned him safely upon it. She almost ran as she rushed him the length of the bay and into the med-lab. Turning to the ship-wide intercom, she palmed the switch and spoke swiftly: “Medical emergency! Captain to med-lab immediately, please!”
Phall then grabbed a surgical pack from the sterile cabinet and moved back to Doc, Picking up a pair of scissors, she quickly cut through his jumpsuit to bare his right shoulder. Pressing a gauze pack to the wound to stem the flow of blood, she began to fumble with the surgical pack, trying to locate the items she needed. Finally locating another gauze pack, she discarded the blood-soaked pack and pressed the new one into place. She then taped the pack to his shoulder with as much pressure as she could apply. Turning away from him, she reached for the doors to the cabinet that held the injectables. Pulling out an injector with a full load of propellant, she began assembling the meds that she needed to inject into his system. Those meds would fight infection, aid in the process of healing, help him to recover from the stun quicker, and force his body to replenish the supply of blood that he had lost. She started to have trouble reading the labels on those meds and quickly swiped her palms across her eyes as she realized she was crying. ‘This won’t do,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’ve got to remain objective or I won’t be able to function properly. She blotted her eyes dry again and picked up the meds and the injector. Loading the first med, she pressed the injector to the junction of neck and shoulder where the blood vessel was located. It took a fraction of a second for the injector to read that there was a vein there before the medication was administered. One after another, Phall removed a vial and loaded the next one into the injector and pressed it into place at Doc’s neck. Finishing that, she went back to the wound itself.