Saul had wriggled in though quite aware that he wasn’t wearing a suit at all. He tried not to think about the big man behind him, struggling with enough mass to crush a building, on Earth… prodigious even at half a milligee.
Thus had begun a hellish race to drag the survivors out. No one ever told Saul how long the ordeal took. All he knew was that Keoki Anuenue could have let go after one, or two, or three had been pulled free.
But Keoki did not. A figure carved in stone, he held the ragged, primeval mountain until Saul verified that the last two trapped crewmen were dead—and stopped briefly to take a ten-cc sample of pasty, reddish fluid from a crushed, pulped thing the size of an anaconda. Only after Saul had wriggled out of the utility tunnel—to see the relief party come jetting up the shaft at last—did the silent giant finally ease slowly back in a groan of ice and flesh.
All Keoki had said, when Virginia’s mechs moved in to take his burden away from him, was a mumbled phrase Saul remembered as clearly as his own name:
“Ua luhi loa au…”
Strange, magical words—a phrase ripe with secret strengths, the mysteries of exotic gods.
Later, Virginia told Saul that it meant, simply, “I’m very tired.”
That had been just a few days ago. The hall battles continued slowly tapering down. Diseases took their toll. And preparations for the Newburn rescue mission neared completion. One did not dwell on past heroics to any benefit. Let the billions following the “war news” on their vid sets, back on Earth, keep score. Here, people were simply too busy.
Keoki stood by his monitor screen and motioned to Saul. All appeared in readiness.
Saul stepped back and gave the spidery medical-mech the go-ahead command: “Five-two-seven Jonah, commence.”
An oval spot of light, about five inches by three, appeared on Marguerite von Zoon’s right thigh—only a soft laser spotter beam depicting where the machine’s synthetic aperture was now projecting invisible, finely modulated microwaves from Saul’s slapped-together treatment device.
Rube Goldberg science, he thought ruefully. This was much more difficult than using those giant beamers in the passageways to blast the bigger comet lifeforms.
There, we can just pour energy into the animals’ major cells through protein resonance bands. Don’t have to be too accurate in choosing the right frequency. Whatever misses just spills over into heat. Shove in enough power and the cells tear themselves apart.
Here, though, he couldn’t use that kind of overkill. In this microwave scrub of Marguerite’s skin, he wanted to wreck only the invader cells. Not only must the machine be tuned not to disrupt any of the patient’s own tissue, he could not even allow much waste heat.
They had to finely adjust each scrub beam to a narrow set of frequencies, and play the atoms like beads on a string, tapping and tapping again until the overstrained molecular threads fell apart. Tuning had to be orders of magnitude more exact than for the weapons being used by the hall crews.
Marguerite’s thigh quivered, from tension certainly. She shouldn’t feel more than a faint warmth… at least in theory.
Saul looked back to make sure Keoki had not read anything untoward in the patient’s vital signs. But the big Hawaiian watched the tank placidly, showing no sign of concern. He hummed softly, placidly, rocking in his spacer’s crouch.
That was when Saul saw Colonel Suleiman Ould-Harrad slip into the treatment room.
Oh, heaven help us. Now what is it?
The spacer officer sought through the dimness until his gaze finally lighted on Saul. Saul’s initial resentment evaporated as he saw Ould-Harrad’s expression—his lined face a mask of exhaustion mixed with open dread.
“I’ll be right back, Marguerite.”
“Take your time, Saul. I am not going anywhere.”
He touched her shoulder for encouragement. “Watch her carefully, Keoki.”
“Sure thing, Doctor.”
Saul passed through a disinfectant haze in the decon airlock and removed his helmet as the outer door cycled open. The acting expedition leader waited, absently rubbing the back of one hand with the other.
‘Colonel Ould-Harrad? How may I help you?”
“There is something that I…” Ould-Harrad shook his head and suddenly looked away. “I know you have no reason to wish to help me, Lintz. I would understand if you told me to go straight to hell.”
Saul shrugged. “Jerusalem est perdita.” Jerusalem is lost. “The past hardly matters now. We’re all in this mess together. Why don’t you tell me what ails you, Colonel? If you want to keep it quiet, we can arrange treatment outside of sick call…”
He trailed off as Ould-Harrad shook his head vigorously.
“You misunderstand me, Doctor. I need your advice in a non-medical area… a matter of most grave urgency.”
Saul blinked.
“Is it something new?”
The tall Mauritanian bit his lip. “There are so few left with level heads, anymore. My people are collectivists, and so I cannot deal with emergencies as Captain Cruz did. I need consensus. I must seek advice.”
Saul shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”
Ould-Harrad seemed not to hear him. His gaze was distant. “Earth is too far away, too confused in its instructions. I need a committee to help me decide how to deal with a dire emergency, Dr. Lintz. I am asking you if you are willing to please be a member.
“Of course. I’ll help any way I can. But what is all this about?”
“There has been a mutiny,” Ould-Harrad told him concisely, his lower lip trembling with emotion. “A band of fanatics has taken over the Edmund Halley. They seized Ensign Kearns when he discovered their plans and—”
The man hid his eyes. “They threw him out of the ship naked, onto the snow! They… they are demanding sleep slots and tritium, or they will blow up all the supplies in the polar warehouse tents.”
Saul stared. “But what do they think they can accomplish?”
The African spacer blinked, he shook himself, and at last met Saul’s eyes.
“They have computed a carom shot past Jupiter. The mutineers actually believe that they can steal the Edmund and make it all the way back to Earth alive.
“In the process, of course, they seem hardly to care if they doom the rest of us to certain death.”
VIRGINIA
She sped through Tunnel E, pulling a gray wool sweater over her jumpsuit. It was cold.
Too damned cold, even for her. All the mission crew were “warms”—people who had minimal vascular-seizure response. Virginia’s capillaries did not greatly contract when cooled, which meant she felt comfortable when most ordinary people—“freezers” —would be jittery with chill. The major disadvantage was that “warms” lost heat faster and needed more food. The flip side of that was freedom from fat— “warms” seldom needed to diet.
But now Carl had set the air temperature so low that even the “warms” were chilly. Virginia didn’t know if that really suppressed the algae growth, but it certainly depressed her.
She came into the warmer core bay of Central with relief. The big monitoring screens brimmed with shifting patterns of yellow-green. She read them at a glance—the Bio people were holding their own against the gunk, and the purple forms had eased off. Good. Not that they were the main problem any longer.
Saul was conferring with Ould-Harrad. The big man towered over Saul’s wiry frame, hands on hips, head shaking slowly in solemn disagreement. Saul’s mouth was twisted into a grim, bloodless curve she had never seen before. She snagged a handhold. swerved nimbly, and coasted to a stop beside them.