(“Matt, can you hear me?” Cullinan asked. “I want you to back up a little…you’re aboard ship now. The time is approximately one month ago. You’re working in the converter section, you and Dave Murff, handling hot stuff. Got that?”)
(“Yes,” Falk said. “I know what you mean.”)
I’m in Converter Section AA, getting thorium out of hock to feed to the reactors; we’ve gotta keep the ship moving. Dave Murff’s with me.
We make a good team on the waldoes.
We’re running them now, picking up chunks of hot stuff and stowing them in the reactor bank. It’s not easy to manipulate the remote-control mechanihands, but I’m not scared. This is my job, and I know how to do it.
I’m thinking about that bastard Warshow, though. Nothing particular against him, but he annoys me. Funny way he has of tensing up every time he has to order someone to do anything. Reminds me of my uncle. Yeah, my uncle. That’s who I was trying to compare him with.
Don’t much like Warshow. If he came in here now, maybe I’d tap him with the waldo—not much, just enough to sizzle his hide a little. Just for the hell of it: I always wanted to belt my uncle, just for the hell of it.
Hey, Murff yells. Get number two waldo back in alignment.
Don’t worry, I say. “This isn’t the first time I’ve handled these babies, lunkhead.”
I’m shielded pretty well. But the air smells funny, as if the thorium’s been ionizing it, and I wonder maybe something’s wrong.
I swing number two waldo over and dump the thorium in the reactor. The green light pops on and tells me it’s a square-on hit; the hot stuff is tumbling down into the reactor now and pushing out the neutrons like crazy.
Then Murff gives the signal and I dip into the storage and yank out some more hot stuff with number one waldo.
Hey, he yells again, and then number two waldo, the empty one, runs away from me.
The big arm is swinging in the air, and I see the little fingers of delicate jointed metal bones that so few seconds ago were hanging onto a chunk of red-hot Th-233. They seem to be clutching out for me.
I yell. God, I yell. Murff yells too as I lose control altogether, and he tries to get behind the control panel and grab the waldo handle. But I’m in the way, and I’m frozen so he can’t do it. He ducks back and flattens himself on the floor as the big mechanical arm crashes through the shielding.
I can’t move.
I stay there. The little fingers nick me on the left side of my jaw, and I scream. I’m on fire. The metal hand rakes down the side of my body, hardly touching me, and it’s like a razor slicing through my flesh.
It’s too painful even to feel. My nerves are canceling out. They won’t deliver the messages to my brain.
And now the pain sweeps down on me. Help! I’m burning! Help!
(“Stop there,” Cullinan said sharply, and Falk’s terrible screaming stopped. “Edit out the pain and keep going. What happens when you wake up?”)
Voices. I hear them above me as I start to come out of the shroud of pain.
Radiation burns, a deep crackly voice is saying. It’s Doc Sigstrom. The doc says, he’s terribly burnt, Leon. I don’t think he’ll live.
Dammit, says another voice. That’s Commander Warshow. He’s got to live, Warshow says. I’ve never lost a man yet. Twenty years without losing anybody.
He took quite a roasting from that remote-control arm, a third voice says. It’s Psych Officer Cullinan, I think. He lost control, Cullinan goes on. Very strange.
Yeah, I think. Very strange. I blanked out just a second, and that waldo seemed to come alive.
I feet the pain ripping up and down me. Half my head feels like it’s missing, and my arm’s being toasted. Where’s the brimstone, I wonder.
Then Doc Sigstrom says, We’ll try a nutrient bath.
What’s that? Warshow asks.
New technique, the doc says. Chemotherapeutic incubation. Immersion in hormone solutions. They’re using it on Earth in severe cases of type one radiation burns. I don’t think it’s ever been tried in space, but it ought to be. He’ll be in free fall; gravity won’t confuse things.
If it’ll save him, Warshow says, I’m for it.
Then things fade. Time goes on—an eternity in hell, with the blazing pain racing up and back down my side. I hear people talking every now and then; feel myself being shifted from one place to another. Tubes are stuck in me to feed me. I wonder what I look like with half my body frizzled.
Suddenly, cool warmth. Yeah, it sounds funny. But it is warm and nourishing, and yet cool too, bathing me and taking the sting out of my body.
I don’t try to open my eyes, but I know I’m surrounded by darkness. I’m totally immobile, in the midst of darkness, and yet I know that outside me the ship is racing on towards Kollidor, enclosing me, holding me.
I’m within the ship, rocking gently and securely. I’m within something within the ship. Wheels within wheels; doors inside doors. Chinese puzzle-box with me inside.
Soft fluid comes licking over me, nudging itself in where the tissue is torn and blasted and the flesh bubbled from heat. Caressing each individual cell, bathing my body organ by organ, I’m being repaired.
I float on an ocean and in an ocean. My body is healing rapidly. The pain ceases.
I’m not conscious of the passage of time at all. Minutes blend into minutes without joint; time flows unbreakingly, and I’m being lulled into a soft, unending existence. Happiness, I think. Security. Peace.
I like it here.
Around me, a globe of fluid. Around that, a striated webwork of metal. Around that, a spheroid spaceship, and around that a universe. Around that? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m safe here, where there’s no pain, no fear.
Blackness. Total and utter blackness. Security equals blackness and softness and quiet. But then—
What are they doing?
What’s happening?
Blue darts of light against the blackness, and now a swirl of colors. Green, red, yellow. Light bursts in and dazzles me. Smells, feels, noises.
The cradle is rocking. I’m moving.
No. They’re pulling me. Out!
It’s getting cold, and I can’t breathe. I’m choking! I try to hang on, but they won’t let go! They keep pulling me out, out, out into the world of fire and pain!
I struggle. I won’t go. But it doesn’t do any good. I’m out, finally.
I look around. Two blurry figures above me. I wipe my eyes and things come clear. Warshow and Sigstrom, that’s who they are.
Sigstrom smiles and says, booming, “Well, he’s healed wonderfully!”
A miracle, Warshow says. “A miracle.”
I wobble. I want to fall, but I’m lying down already. They keep talking, and I start to cry in rage.
But there’s no way back. It’s over. All, all over. And I’m terribly alone.
Falk’s voice died away suddenly. Warshow fought an impulse to get violently sick. His face felt cold and clammy, and he turned to look at the pale, nervous faces of Sigstrom and Cullinan. Behind them sat Thetona, expressionless.
Cullinan broke the long silence. “Leon, you heard the earlier session. Did you recognize what he was just telling us?”
“The birth trauma,” Warshow said tonelessly.
“Obviously,” Sigstrom said. The medic ran unshaking fingers through his heavy shock of white hair. “The chemotherapy…it was a womb for him. We put him back in the womb.”
“And then we pulled him out,” said Warshow. “We delivered him. And he went looking for a mother.”