My problem now was where to find a doctor. I must not get one that could report this disability. I was racking my wits about it when my attention was drawn to a transport spaceship.
A huge, wheeled gantry was standing outside the hangar, gripping the vessel in its launch claws. The tall ship rose about four hundred and fifty feet as it sat on its tail. It was black, old, dented and shabby. An Apparatus troop carrier! When they were fuelled or repaired or whatever else they did to them in the hangar, their gantries were pushed out into the leaving zone. This was usually done toward sunset: the ship's crew was brought from barracks and put aboard and were supposed to spend the night readying their craft for takeoff in the dawn.
This one was outward bound for some planet of the Confederacy. She would have about fifty crew. Before sunrise, anywhere from two to five thousand Apparatus guard troops would be paraded out there and then file aboard to be packed like corpses into the personnel racks for the voyage. That ship would be gone for months and, with luck, within those months I, too, would be gone.
They would have a health officer on board!
It was my best bet. I would get him to fix this arm and no one would be the wiser.
I approached the gantry. The monstrous vessel loomed above me. There was a guard at the personnel loading airlock, a bored specimen. He blocked my way.
"I must inspect the vessel prior to its departure," I said and fished with my left hand for my identoplate.
The guard didn't bother to look at it. I entered the airlock. The stink of an Apparatus vessel hit me. Getting it ready for a voyage didn't include washing its interior: weightlessness can bring nausea and this vessel probably had troop vomit left over from its maiden voyage centuries before.
When they stand in gantries, their passageways are vertical. I had to climb and it was difficult with only one hand to hold to the bars. And even this was complicated by the many switchovers caused by branching passages.
Any crew or ship officers' cubicles would be way up toward the nose. It was easy to get lost inside these gigantic, fat-bellied things. The direction arrows were mainly filthed into obscurity and the signs and labels could not be read. I struggled along and then was glad to hear a distant sound far above me.
It was a song. Far from getting the ship ready, some of the crew were sitting up there somewhere, probably in their eating room, indulging themselves in a singing weep.
There was the throb of a hand air organ. It was beginning the chords of a new song. Spacers, I have always maintained, are not normal people. And the spacers of the Apparatus are insane.
They were beginning a song called, "The Spacer's Lot." It is a dirge! Why do they always sing dirges before they start a voyage? Hangovers?
It didn't make me feel a bit better to be climbing to the sad, sad melancholy of that tune. I was struggling as it was! The lament echoed down as though sung in a tomb!
To planets of the dead, And stars that have no light, We cruise throughout this endless space, Encased in darkest night.
I missed a rung and almost fell two hundred feet.
The eyes that do not miss us, The hands without caress, The hardened hearts behind us, Spare no slightest warmth to bless.
I tried to hurry my ascent. The awful dirge was depressing me.
The Forces of the firmament, Enfold us as our home.
The lost, the damned, the outcast, Cruise darkest space alone.
I almost fell again. The echoing walls made the song more deep and awful. Maybe if I got there quick, they would shut up. I was feeling bad enough already.
Shun space, you groundbound creature!
Suck in your planet's breath!
Hold safe to stable gravity!
For we of space live DEATH!
I stuck my head precariously in the compartment door. It was the end of the song and they all sat there weeping, about twenty of them.
"Is there a doctor aboard?" I asked in general.
A big, tough ape, probably wanted on half the planets for numerous crimes, turned his tearful eyes to me and then pointed silently across the passageway. The hand air organ was starting up again.
I made out a sign, very smudged: Health Officer. Do Not Open.
With a one-handed effort, I undid the seal cogs and stumbled into the room. A blast of decayed meat and tup fumes hit me. Somebody was snoring on the gimbal bed. With some difficulty, I woke him up.
Bleary-eyed, this doctor was representative of the profession, not the way they like to be seen in song and story but the way they really are: a stinking wreck.
"My arm," I said. "It suddenly has become paralyzed!"
"Well, buy a new one," he said and tried to turn over and resume snoring.
With some struggle I got him to sit up. "I have money," I said.
That reached him. He got professional.
"I want you to tell me what's wrong with it," I said.
I got off my gunbelt and somehow managed to get out of my tunic, all without the slightest aid from him. He started to examine the wrong arm and I had to direct his attention.
With a lot of yawns and some time out to get another drink of tup, he asked some questions and prodded. The questions were mainly a hopeful, "Does that hurt?" when he poked.
He had some sort of machine and he made me stand in front of it. I hoped he was looking but I heard him drinking more tup.
"No slugs, no bone breaks, no burns," I heard him mutter. Then, with a shrug, he indicated I could get back into my jacket.
He was looking at me rather peculiarly. "Well," he said, "I know what's wrong with it now." I was just finishing buckling my gunbelt. His fingers were sort of twitching. I got out the ten-credit note. I intended to ask if he could change it for this action he was doing never cost more than two credits.
He took the note and put it in his pocket.
He gave a tremendous yawn and then he said, "The diagnosis is, you can't use your arm." With that, he showed every sign of getting back onto his gimbal bed. I blocked him. "You'll have to do better than that!" The doctor looked at me, very bored. "You want a technical term? All right: you had temporary hysterical paralysis of the upper articulation muscles." And he started to climb back onto his bed.
I shouted, "That doesn't handle anything!"
"There's nothing to handle," he said. "You apparently did not notice that you used your arm perfectly normally when you put your coat and belt back on." I stared. I looked down. I swung the arm. I flexed my fingers. There was nothing wrong with it! I could use it perfectly normally!
Once more he started to get back on the bed. "Wait, wait! What could cause that?"
"The machine showed you had no slugs in your head or foreign matter pressing the nerves of the spine. So there is no cause." I made my voice sound deadly. "You better tell me how such a condition could come about!" He saw plainly that he was not going to be able to get back on that gimbal bed unless he either moved me out of the way or said something I would accept.
The doctor shrugged. "Hysteria? Battle shock? You're an officer, so no electric shock can be used on you. A lot of things can cause it."
"Such as?" and I continued to block his way back to bed.
He looked vague. "Neurotic predisposition which then precipitated into a temporary manifestation? Hypnotism?"
"You've got to do more than this!" I said.
"For only ten credits? I'm no Slum City head plumber."