* * * * *
He hauled Hughes into the air-break and slammed the door shut. He
valved air into the break and ripped Hughes' suit off. He felt for a
pulse and found one fluttering; he turned Hughes on his face and pumped
on the ribs in, out, in, out, wondering whether he was wasting his time.
Hughes groaned painfully. His voice echoed and re-echoed in the tiny
air break, but Farradyne could not hear more than the groan of a man
badly hurt. Hughes stirred and opened one eye halfway. Then he closed
it again and moaned under his breath. Farradyne checked the heart and
found it beating weakly; the pulse was not fluttering any more, and
the breath was coming naturally, even though the man's chest heaved
high and dropped low and there was a foghorn sound in the throat as he
gasped huge lungfuls of air.
Hughes would give Farradyne no trouble for some time. He carried Hughes
to his stateroom and stretched him on the bed. Then he went below and
closed the little hatches and reinserted the control rod, wondering
again whether missing a few would louse-up his landing.
He went to the control room and replaced the wiring torn out of the
audible-alarm panel. The phalanx of warning lamps had winked out, and
the clangor of danger did not sound.
Farradyne went back to Hughes' stateroom. "Can you hear me?" he
demanded.
Hughes awakened slightly. He looked up, his eyes dim but aware.
"You're a back-biting s.o.b.," snapped Farradyne. "And I'd have let
you die if it hadn't occurred to me that you might be good for some
information. What makes, Hughes?"
"Wiseacre," came from Hughes' lips in a whisper.
"What's the game, Hughes?"
"I don't know what--you're talking--about."
"I can break all your fingers and slip a hot soldering iron under your
armpits until you yelp loud and clear."
"You'd better kill me, then," breathed Hughes. "Because you aren't
smart enough to hold me."
"No? Hughes, you're wrong." Farradyne continued to smile as he went
into the medicine-bay and came up with an ampule and a hypodermic. He
filled the needle deliberately, eyed the dose critically and adjusted
the quantity by causing a droplet to ooze out of the needle until the
plunger was exactly at the mark.
"This is a fine pain-killer," he said. "Marcoleptine. Know it, Hughes?"
Hughes began to mouth curses. Farradyne paid no more attention to the
curses than if Hughes had been delivering benedictions. He caught the
man's arm, quelled the resulting struggle easily and locked the arm in
a cruel arm-bar between the elbow and the wrist beneath his arm-pit.
Farradyne lifted, and Hughes came up from the bed slightly; the arm
was both rigid and still because to move might break the arm. Hughes
glared; Farradyne put on more pressure.
Then, as deliberately as he had measured out the dose, Farradyne
slid the needle into Hughes' elbow, probed briefly for the vein and
delivered the shot. He withdrew the needle quickly and swabbed the ooze
of blood with cotton dipped in an astringent.
* * * * *
He dropped Hughes on the bed and sat down on the chair beside the bed
and relaxed a bit.
"Marcoleptine," he said conversationally, "is a fine pain-killer--and
habit-forming as hell. You'll blank out in a few moments, and when you
come to it will be about this time tomorrow. You'll see me, because
I'll be here with another healthy needle full of the stuff. By the time
we get to Pluto, you'll be willing to sell your eyeballs for a jolt,
Hughes."
Hughes' eyes were heavy-lidded, but beneath them pure hatred looked out.
"As for the reason you're here, that's easy. I can almost quote the
Spaceman's Guide to Diagnosis of Common Ailments. I think it's on Page
two forty-four." Farradyne did not really remember, but he wanted to
keep a drone of speech running to lull Hughes' mind--and also to help
keep himself awake until Hughes blanked out under the marcoleptine.
"Coryosis, one of the nine allied infections formerly grouped under the
ambiguous term 'Common Cold,' is contagious but not fatal except in
severe cases of extreme sensitivity. Treatment consists of isolation
of the patient plus frequent intravenous injections of MacDonaldson's
Formula 2,Ph-D3;Ra7. Nobody will want to spend much time with you for
fear of infection themselves, which would be both hazardous to them and
to you because of the danger of reinfection.
"I heard you coughing and sneezing and I came to help and found you in
severe pain. Good Old Samaritan Farradyne is going to take care of you
and he will also lug you back to Terra. You wouldn't want to stay on
Pluto where it's cold even despite the Terraconversion program. There's
only one thing more. They'll want to see you even though it's only a
peek in through the door, so you've got to look presentable."
Farradyne ran hot water into the lavatory and soaped a cloth. He
slapped the hot cloth over Hughes' face and let the soap and water soak
in. Then he began to scrub vigorously.
The caked blood came away from Hughes' face easily. And so did dark
pigment: makeup. The dark-complected Hughes turned paler; the lines of
his face faded as the reinforcing pigment washed away. Schoolteacher
Hughes came off on the soapy washcloth.
"Brenner!" exploded Farradyne.
* * * * *
But the man on the bed was out cold. Farradyne cursed his enthusiasm
with the marcoleptine, for his questions would fall on deaf ears and
torture would hurt only numbed nerves. He would have to wait; but there
would be plenty of time to pry certain answers out of Hughes-Brenner.
He left the doped man and went to his own stateroom and to bed. Oddly
enough, he fell asleep immediately and slept dreamlessly until it was
time to get up.
Warily he faced his passengers over the breakfast table, eyeing them
one by one. He explained about Hughes--"heard him moaning in the night
and found he had a nice case of coryosis. He's under treatment now and
he'll probably be out colder than a mackerel for some time."
There was no response that Farradyne could put down as strange or
odd. Either Hughes-Brenner had a confederate that was very cagey and
capable of running a good ad lib, or the crook was operating alone.
Farradyne felt that it was not impossible for the hellflower gang to
have a second operator on his ship to take over if Brenner failed,
perhaps unknown even to Brenner. But there was no evidence of such--no
more than there had been evidence of Brenner until the disguise was
removed--and so Farradyne decided to play cagey too.
He learned only one thing: the difference in attitude between himself
and normal people. Where Farradyne would not have accepted a statement
of sickness without taking a sample of Brenner's sputum or blood, these
people believed it easily and complimented Farradyne on his willingness
to help a fellow man. Farradyne carried this even farther by asking
Professor Martin about 'Hughes' and his home.
Hughes, according to Professor Martin, taught Ancient History in a
school in Des Moines, Iowa, but none of them knew much about him
because the teacher had joined them on Mercury not much before they had
contracted for this trip.
Farradyne then buttered up the program by suggesting that he take
Hughes back home to Terra, because a sick man would not find Pluto a
pleasant place. There was relief in their eyes; good and as honest as
they were, all of them were happy to be relieved of the responsibility
of a sick comrade. Some of them went with him to peek through the door
while Farradyne gave Hughes his medicine and they remarked on how pale
he looked. He was also weak enough to be convincing and he went back to
sleep as soon as the drug took hold.
Farradyne set a photoelectric alarm on the stairway below the
passenger's section; but if Hughes-Brenner had any cohorts from the
rest of the hellflower outfit aboard, they laid low. Farradyne kept
Brenner under dope until Pluto was looming in the sky, and then went to
him just before landing.