“There’s something intensely not on the beam,” I said. “There's something inside McCord that none of us have dreamed, I think.”
“That stuff he drinks will preserve it for science until he dies, anyway,” said Captain Wilkins. “What I want to know is when can he get out and trade again?”
“You don’t get what I mean, Cap. In his head, I mean.”
“Is there anything there?”
“Plenty, I think. Just before you came in he was out of his head and he yelled Thorgersen’s name a half dozen times and then he said, ‘It’s boiling me, Thorgersen, it’s boiling me.’ After a while he started mumbling threats and then said, ‘I did it, fellows. For eight years I’ve been trying to get up courage to take a bath and I’ve done it. He can’t hurt me no more, and I’ll get my eight years back, too.”
Captain Wilkins scowled. “Sounds like he’s sore at Thorgersen. Maybe we hadn’t ought to let him out again. He might try to ruin the deal. Say . . . you don’t suppose it’s McCord that’s been back of all the trouble we’ve had here?”
I shrugged. “How could he be? He hasn’t always been the one to suggest the trade articles. He didn’t suggest the eggbeaters. And he couldn’t control the psychology of the Diomedes. Nope, I think this is, something concerning McCord alone—McCord and maybe Thorgersen.”
“Where does Thorgersen come in, I wonder?”
“They were here together the first time, remember.”
“McCord was nothing but a drunken bum long before that. He probably has carried some sort of a grudge all these years because Thorgersen made a success instead of going along with a failure like McCord. But what I want to know is where this bath business comes in. No, I don’t either. I want to know if it’s going to be safe to let him out when he comes to, and can we trust him to deal with the Diomedes and Arthoids for us?”
I shrugged again. “It’s either that or try to get as many Jewelworlds as we can by ourselves. In any event all we have to trade is the pens.”
“I guess you’re right.” Captain Wilkins turned to go. “Let me know when he comes around.”
McCord didn’t come around for two days. I thought the guy was going to die. I didn’t know enough or have the equipment—though I suppose Dunc Edwards could have rigged it up—to feed him intravenously. I was about to suggest Captain Wilkins try to raise a liner somewhere close enough to get to us a doctor when McCord finally roused.
He rose from the bunk with a glassy look in his eyes. The skin hung on him like a loosely draped rug after his two days’ fast. He got down shakily and gripped my shoulder.
“The pool, Stevens,” he said. “Help me get to it. I’ve got to take a bath again. Got to take a bath right now.”
“Easy does it, old man,” I said, trying to push him back into the bunk. It was still like trying to shove a baby elephant around.
“No. Got to take a bath, Stevens. Help me get to the pool.”
I helped him. There was nothing else I could do. Hap Paulson and a couple of machinists came along, too. All McCord had on was his shorts. He had even refused to don a shirt, and his great hulk was trembling and blue with cold. Hap was pleading with him.
“It’ll kill you, McCord. You can’t go in the water now!”
“Got to, fellows, or I may never be able to do it again. For eight years I’ve been trying to build up the courage. Now I’ve got it. Ask Doc here.” He nudged me.
“What about it?” Hap asked.
My feelings in the matter were based on no medical knowledge whatever, but I said, “I think we ought to let him go. I’ve got a hunch it’s going to do him more good than harm. If he gets pneumonia, we can lick that, but we can’t lick what’s in his head.”
Hap gave me a queer look as if he’d put me and McCord in the same classification, but he made no further protest.
When we reached the top of the rise by the pool, McCord stopped and began wagging his arms about in the air until the little furry Diomedes began tumbling over each other to get out of the water. Then McCord tossed off his shorts and gave the rest of us a shove to one side. He poised, trembling, looked into the water, and stopped—
He seemed to collapse all over like a pricked balloon. We couldn’t tell whether his body was trembling with cold or from the sudden great sobs that broke from him as he began to go back down the rise.
Hap and the machinists turned away. They couldn’t stand the sight of a man so broken by some inexplicable fear. But I touched him on the shoulder.
“Maybe if I gave you a shove—” I suggested.
He looked up at me with his tear-filled, baby-blue eyes like an ungainly St. Bernard. His head wagged slowly. “You know, don’t you, Stevens?”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.
It seemed to do something to McCord. He gathered himself into a knot and then ran back up the slope with all his might. At the top he closed his eyes and grasped his nose like a kid and leaped.
The tremendous splash covered us with icy water, but we didn’t duck. We looked to see what was going to happen to McCord.
For a moment it looked as if he were drowning, so violently did he thrash around. His face came up out of the water purplish as if he were struggling for air. Yet I knew he hadn’t been there long enough to use a half lungful.
It wasn’t lack of air. It w7as in his head.
Abruptly he stopped fighting the water. He struck out with a long, somewhat awkward stroke, but it was a stroke that had belonged to a once-experienced . swimmer. He went around the pool once, then stopped in front of us, treading water.
“It’s gone for good this time, fellows. My hydrophobia’s gone for good.”
When I saw Captain Wilkins next morning he was in a blue fury. I heard him raging up and down the bridge and before I even came in I could hear McCord’s name mentioned vigorously several times.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
The captain stopped long enough to eye me up and down as if I were an imbecile. “Wrong!”
Then his eyes settled on me steadily and a beatific expression came over him. “Stevens—it seems to me that McCord has taken a strange liking to you. He told me last night that you were the only one around here that understood him. Maybe you can talk to him and straighten him out.”
The captain’s voice was sugary and I knew it meant I’d better get some results or it would be my neck in the stocks next.
“What’s he done?” I asked.
“It’s what he’s going to do. He insists on taking this cargo of pens that I’ve lugged across seventy light-years of space and trading them to the Arthoids for their inferior grade of Jewelworlds that give enough distortion to make a man think he’s drunk every time he looks into one.”
‘‘Why not the Diomedes first?”
“That's what you’re going to find out.”
McCord was in the bathtub when I went in. He had taken six baths during the night and had had three more before breakfast.
“What’s the dope on our new trading angle?" I asked.
He dunked completely under the water and bubbled up again like a kid. “Just a new wrinkle. Going to make the Diomedes jealous and give us a better deal. I found out they could produce twice as many Jewelworlds as they do if they weren’t so darn lazy.”
It sounded a bit fishy. I didn’t think the Diomedes had any capacity for an emotion like jealousy.
"You don't mean to trade all our pens with the Arthoids, do you?”
“No, just eight or ten cases of them ought to be enough.”
“But that won't leave enough to make a decent trade with the Diomedes !”
“Sure it will. You’ll see.”
“I don’t know whether I will or not. Captain Wilkins is about ready to go out and try to make a deal himself.”