The compleat collected s.., p.593
The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 593
Nolan watched for the fogging or sudden explosion of vapor that would have indicated a ruptured suit, but without seeing anything. He knew that such a collision would certainly have opened the joints in his own suit, but the flexibility of the lighter garment had enabled it to survive without serious damage, although the same might not be true of its wearer. He released the line coiled around his arm knowing that because of the thickness of the shield support under him, next time around the line would be much more than twenty feet shorter and there would be no risk of a second collision—at least, not against the hull. When the weight at the other end had pulled the line out straight, he grasped it in both hands, detached his boot magnets, and swung his legs out and upward until they, too, were wrapped loosely around the line.
Hand over hand and feet-first, Nolan pulled himself toward the man. With every movement the line twisted and vibrated slowly, threatening to escape from between his hands and tightly crossed legs. But the farther outward he traveled the more he was affected by the centrifugal force, which began to pull so strongly that the line was slipping uncontrollably between his hands, and he came to a sudden halt with his feet against the injured man's backpack tanks.
For a moment Nolan clung to the line while they both swayed and spun around the new center of gravity, then he lowered himself carefully until he had his legs locked around the other's waist. Gripping the line with one hand to steady himself, he used the other to cover his visor briefly as their circular path intersected the cloud of oily fog. It had dispersed into a fine mist by then, but Nolan was taking no risks, because he needed very badly to see what he was doing.
They were no longer moving slowly. The stern section of the ship was whirling past them with steadily increasing frequency as the line wrapped more and more of itself around the shield support, and with the decrease in the radius of the swing, the centrifugal force and Nolan's apparent weight also increased. If his legs and hand once lost their grip on the man's oil-covered space-suit and rope, the Healer would be flung away like a stone from a slingshot. If he was released at the wrong moment he would hit the metal of the ship at high speed instead of shooting safely into space.
Nolan looked and felt around for the safety rope's quick-release stud and tried not to think about anything else.
The trouble was that by its very nature a safety rope should not be too easy to release lest it happen by accident. This particular fitting was a noncrew type and strange to him, and by the time he discovered that two overlapping safety latches had to be moved aside before the quick-release stud was revealed, more than half of the line had wound itself around the shield support and their speed did not bear thinking about. His apparent weight was increasing by the moment, and the stern section of the ship was whirling around them so fast that it was next to impossible to calculate a precise moment when it would be safe to let go, and the longer he delayed the more impossible the calculation became.
He waited only for the few seconds it took for the gap between the hull and the adjoining shield support to come around again, then pressed his thumb down hard on the release stud, simultaneously changing his grip from the safety line to the other man's equipment belt. Wherever they were going, he thought, they were going together.
The safety line whipped away behind them and suddenly they were free, weightless, spinning slowly about their common center of gravity and shooting toward the metal horizon that was the edge of the hull. Nolan was able to see individual rivets as it whipped past them and they shot toward the shield support on the opposite side, which they missed by about fifty feet. Then the ship was contracting slowly behind them and Nolan remembered to breathe again.
Still holding on to the other man's equipment belt, Nolan used his thrusters to kill their spin, then he carried out a quick visual examination without otherwise touching him. Normally the pressure within the suit would cause the limbs to drift apart starfish fashion, he knew, but in this case there was restricted movement in three of the limbs. He moved his head closer to the oily visor, and saw that the man's eyes were closed and his mouth slightly open, and there was no sign of the bleeding that would have signaled a decompression. The farspeaker indicator was still showing, which meant that the headset was still functioning. Nolan turned up the volume control to maximum and then switched on his own set.
He counted at least five voices talking at once and the consequent distortion rendered them all incomprehensible. Slowly and clearly he said, "Priority Yellow Five. Quiet, please. Priority Yellow Five ..."
It was the code for a single-person medical emergency not involving a radiation hazard, and Nolan repeated the message until only he was talking. Then he went on, "I'm trying to find out if this man is still alive. When I count to three, will all of you please take a deep breath and hold it so that I can hear if the casualty is breathing. One, two, three ..."
In the hissing silence of his earpiece it was like a faint, uncertain breeze blowing through long grass. Nolan contributed a loud sigh of relief.
"Thank you," said Nolan, and went on briskly, "You may resume breathing now. He is alive, unconscious, and, judging by the uneven respiration, going into shock. He has sustained fractures, probably multiple, to the lower legs and right forearm, and the subsequent motion will have caused severe crepitation, so he is fortunate to be unconscious. For that reason I don't want to risk complicating the injuries by subjecting him to the deceleration of my suit thrusters, gentle as it is ..."
"At your present velocity you wouldn't have enough power to get back," said the authoritative voice Nolan had heard earlier. "We'll come after you in our scow as soon as we can board it."
"How soon ...?" began Nolan.
"About twenty minutes to match velocities with you," came the reply, "and close on an hour to decelerate and return to the ship. You built up a lot of speed on that merry-go-round. And ... and that rescue was very well done, friend. In a hot spot you keep a very cool head."
If my head was cool, Nolan thought, why is the rest of me half-drowning in sweat? A sudden reaction to what had happened was making him shake inside his spacesuit, so that he felt embarrassed by what he considered an undeserved compliment and did not reply.
"We reported the accident to Control," the voice went on, "and since then they've been trying to contact Healer Nolan on the ship frequency but he isn't answering. They seem to have lost him ..."
"And now you've found him," said Nolan, more sharply than he had intended. The thought of yet another smiling, friendly rebuke from the monsignor, this time for not observing proper farspeaker procedure, had angered him for a moment. In a softer voice he went on, "We have enough air to last until you arrive. But I must immobilize the limbs before the transfer into surgery, to reduce the risk of further complicating the fractures. Holding the arm across the chest with the safety harness is no problem, but I'll need a rigid splint to bind between the legs. Do you understand what I want? A piece of rigid bar or tubing, metal or stiff plastic, about four feet long. And some tape or cable to hold it in position. Can do?"
There was an uncertain sound to the formerly authoritative voice as it replied, "The cable is no problem, but the only item we have that is long and strong enough to serve as a splint is ... well, it's an extremely important and valuable component we were delivering to the power module."
"Is it radioactive?" asked Nolan.
"No, but—"
"I'll be careful not to damage it," said Nolan impatiently. He was more concerned about the broken bones of the man floating beside him at that moment than with any possible damage to equipment. He went on, "I think I can see your vehicle moving away from the blast shield now. Can you still see us or shall I light a flare?"
"We see you, Healer."
With increasing distance the ship had lost the major distortions of perspective and had again become like the plastic model that had enabled him to get out of trouble on Brendan's Island. It was at times like this that Nolan wondered if everything he said, thought, did, or did not do would ultimately land him in trouble with the monsignor. Which reminded him of yet another sin of omission, that of failing to maintain contact with the ship.
"Healer Nolan," he said, changing to the ship frequency. "Please prepare the surgical treatment room to receive one casualty, unconscious, probably with multiple fractures to both legs and one arm, and with the possibility of thoracic damage presently concealed by the suit, arriving one hour from now. I will need help with this one, so please have two healing assistants standing by."
"Communications. Please wait," said a voice in his earpiece.
It was a cool, impersonal voice of the kind favored by all officers from the communications department; a voice, he had heard it said, that was supposed to remain calm and unemotional whether it was discussing the cataclysmic detonation of the Earth below them or the Second Coming of the Christus. Naturally it gave no indication of either approving or disapproving of Nolan's recent activities.
"Communications," it said again. "Fathers Conlon and Sanchez are being excused from their other duties. They will make the necessary preparations and will meet you at lock three. Have you any other instructions?"
"Nolan," he replied. "Thank you, no."
Both Fathers Conlon and Sanchez had chosen medicine as their noncrew specialty, and Nolan had found them to be particularly adept as surgical assistants. But being ecclesiastics and traditionalists in such matters, neither had aspired to full Healer status. And it was only during medical emergencies that Nolan could tell them what to do—at all other times the Healer was gently and continually reminded that he was the subordinate.
"Communications," said the voice again, and this time there was just a hint of unsteadiness. "Healer Nolan. As soon as you are finished treating your casualty, His Eminence would like to see you."
Chapter Fifteen
BY THE time the leg fractures had been reduced and immobilized, the weightless traction necessitated by the absence of gravity had been applied, and the casualty was no longer giving any cause for concern, Nolan was much too weary to care whether the cardinal-captain wanted to officially compliment him on the rescue or to kick him ceremoniously off the ship. He did, however, want to know which it was to be as quickly as possible.
"Thank you, Fathers," he said gratefully, taking his attention from the patient for the first time in three hours. "That was a long and difficult procedure and both of you performed very well indeed."
"It was at your direction, Healer," Father Conlon said quietly.
"Nevertheless," said Nolan, "you have every right to feel as pleased with yourselves as I am with you. There was a time, just after we cut his suit away, that I thought he might lose the right leg at least, but we were able to save it. Now, however, I would like one of you to stay with him until I return. Do either of you know where the captain is just now? I've an overdue appointment with him and must leave at once."
"We were told that he would be spending most of today in the power module," said Father Sanchez. "You could begin by looking there."
"There is no need," said Father Conlon in a very quiet voice. He was looking past the Healer's shoulder and seemed to be trying to stand at attention, a difficult feat in the weightless condition while one's boots were detached from the floor stirrups. Nolan turned quickly to see Cardinal-Captain Keon floating a short distance behind him.
"Sir," Nolan began, "I was about to—"
"I overheard you, so there is no necessity to repeat yourself," said the cardinal in a voice that sounded quietly stern and very impatient. "Since you have been too busy to visit me, Healer, must emulate Muhammad and come to the mountain. Where is it?"
"I—I'm sorry, sir ..." began Nolan.
"I am speaking, Healer," said the captain, as if he were talking to a not-very-intelligent child, "of the ceramic tube that you used in such cavalier fashion as a splint, not Muhammad's hypothetical mountain. Are you about to tell me you smashed it?"
"Oh no, sir," said Nolan. He slid open the door of the wall storage compartment beside him and reached inside. "Once it had served its purpose I took good care of it. And I've already looked at it in case it had been cracked or warped during—"
For an instant there was a sudden bone-crushing grip around his wrist, and it was the cardinal who used his other hand to reach within for the tube that was floating weightless among the remains of the casualty's spacesuit. Then Nolan's wrist was released and His Eminence began to slide the tube gently through his hands, and look along and through the hollow center at the smooth, annular projections on the tube walls, and at the finely worked inserts of copper and gold that decorated both the outer and inner surfaces. To Nolan's overtired mind it resembled nothing so much as a wand, a magic wand capable of wonders undreamed of except in the imaginations of children and, perhaps, in those of full-grown men who would use it in some arcane fashion to help guide their starship.
"A magic wand is as good a description as any, Healer," said His Eminence, making Nolan realize that he had been thinking aloud, "at least from one who is not engaged on this somewhat theoretical work, and there are few enough who are. My friends at the University of Peiping required more than three years to produce this particular wand, to devise and accurately position the circuitry in a rigid ceramic structure of precise dimensions and—But I'm sure the details are of small interest to you, Healer, other than that it would shatter and not bend. Now you have some understanding of my concern."
Nolan's mouth had gone dry and he could scarcely recognize his own voice as he said, "Yes, sir. But—but I didn't know. I mean, that I could have delayed the departure of the ship by three years ...!"
The captain shook his head quickly and said, "You would not have affected the time of departure in any way. But you would have wrecked a project of my own which has engaged me for more than a decade, and you would have displeased me greatly which, so far as you yourself are concerned, might have proved to be an even greater calamity. But it seems you have a talent for extricating yourself from dangerous situations. You are a most fortunate man, Healer, and from what I have heard, so is your patient. How fares he?"
"Very well, sir," said Nolan. He gave a brief report on the man's treatment and present condition, then went on enthusiastically, "at first we thought he would have to lose one leg, and he would have, if we had not been able to immobilize the limb before bringing him in. But as it is, he'll be ready for transfer to his local House of Sorrows in three or four days, and to resume work in two months with only a slight limp to show for—"
Nolan shut his mouth so quickly that the other must have heard his teeth come together. Cardinal-Captain Keon also had a limp, a very minor deformity that had kept him from ascending the throne of the High-King at Tara, and it was a matter about which he must feel very sensitive. Nolan wished that he had done the job properly and bitten off his tongue.
The captain looked at the fiery discomfort of Nolan's face without any change of expression, then he said mildly, "In the weightless condition a limp will not be noticed. He is very lucky to be alive, and it might aid his nonphysical recovery if you were to tell him that for a short time his legs were attached to a splint worth more than three times his body's weight in gold. His friends may disbelieve him, but his children and grandchildren will have no trouble believing in magic wands, or in the heroic figure of the Healer who braved the wrath of a starship captain to ... But why go on? Before we leave orbit you will have created a legend."
Nolan could feel the heat leaving his face, and he knew that the relief was apparent in his voice as he said, "I shall certainly tell him as soon as he wakes. But, sir, I was told that you wanted to see me as soon as possible. When and where shall I report?"
The thin, stern line of the cardinal-captain's mouth twisted into the faintest of smiles. He said, "I have already seen you and I now have no reason to see you again. But I would appreciate it, Healer, if henceforth you tried to perform your duties without creating any more legends."
The captain departed with his much-prized ceramic device held protectedly against his chest, followed shortly thereafter by Fathers Conlon and Sanchez, leaving Nolan alone with the patient to consider his good fortune. His Eminence might not entirely approve of his junior Healer, but neither was he actively displeased with him. It was likely that Monsignor O'Riordan would have something to say about the matter, but compared to what the captain could have said and done, that was a minor concern for the future. The strength and frequency of his yawning were threatening to dislocate his lower mandible, and he realized that he was becoming too tired even to think. He checked the patient's vital signs once again, placed padded calipers around his head to detect the movements that would signal his awakening, connected them to an audible warning, and then strapped himself loosely into his bunk.
But sleep did not come easily nor, at first, did it stay for long. Twice he dreamed that he was out on the shield support, dizzy and confused and fearful as he whirled around on the end of a safety line that was twist-shortening and threatening to smash his puny body against unyielding metal, to awaken sweating and struggling against his straps. On the third occasion he wakened because there was a hand shaking his shoulder.
He opened his eyes to see two faces looking down on him. The clock above his bunk told him that five hours had passed and the other face, which belonged to Healer Dervla, said, "It seems that both patient and Healer are resting comfortably. Nevertheless, if it isn't too inconvenient for you, I would like your report."
"Of course, Healer," he said, wriggling out of his straps. But before he could go on, she held up her hand.
"The clinical picture only," she said, "not the prior circumstances. I was made aware of those in great detail within a few minutes of my coming on board. Also, you have been in charge here long enough to tell me about the general run of minor injuries and ailments you have encountered up to now, so that I'll know what to expect as the on-board crew comes up to full strength and you take your last Earthside leave."
