They were too sick with gasoline fumes to count the passing hours or
days. Food was brought to them from time to time, but it tasted like
avgas. They could not think for the sick headaches that pounded
incessantly behind their eyes. When Lee developed vomiting spasms that
would not stop, Charles Orsino pounded on the bulkhead with his fists
and yelled, his voice thunderous in the metal compartment, for an hour.
Somebody came at last--Regan. The light stabbed Charles' eyes when he
opened the door. "Trouble?" Regan asked, smirking.
"Miss Falcaro may be dying," Charles said. His own throat felt as though
it had been gone over with a cobbler's rasp. "I don't have to tell you
your life won't be worth a dime if she dies and it gets back to Syndic
Territory. She's got to be moved and she's got to have medical
attention."
"Death threat from the dago?" Regan was amused. "I have it on your own
testimony that the Syndic is merely morale and people and credit--not a
formidable organization. Yes, there was a mike in here. One reason for
your discomfort. You'll be gratified to learn that I thought most of
your conversation decidedly dull. However, the lady will be of no use to
us dead and we're now in the Seaway entering Lake Michigan. I suppose it
can't do any harm to move you two. Pick her up, will you? I'll let you
lead the way--and I'll remind you that I may not, as the lady said, be a
four-goal polo player but I am a high expert with the handgun. Get
moving."
Charles did not think he could pick his own feet up, but the thought of
pleading weakness to Regan was unbearable. He could try. Staggering, he
got Lee Falcaro over his shoulder and through the door. Regan
courteously stood aside and murmured: "Straight ahead and up the ramp.
I'm giving you my own cabin. We'll be docking soon enough; I'll make
out."
Charles dropped her onto a sybaritic bed in a small but
lavishly-appointed cabin. Regan whistled up a deckhand and a ship's
officer of some sort, who arrived with a medicine chest. "Do what you
can for her, mister," he told the officer. And to the deckhand: "Just
watch them. They aren't to touch anything. If they give you trouble,
you're free to punch them around a bit." He left, whistling.
The officer fussed unhappily over the medicine chest and stalled by
sponging off Lee Falcaro's face and throat. The deckhand watched
impassively. He was a six-footer, and he hadn't spent days inhaling
casing-head fumes. The trip-hammer pounding behind Charles's eyes seemed
to be worsening with the fresher air. He collapsed into a seat and
croaked, with shut eyes: "While you're trying to figure out the
vomiting, can I have a handful of aspirins?"
"Eh? Nothing was said about you. You were in Number Three with her? I
suppose it'll be all right. Here." He poured a dozen tablets into
Charles' hand. "Get him some water, you." The deckhand brought a glass
of water from the adjoining lavatory and Charles washed down some of the
tablets. The officer was reading a booklet, worry written on his face.
"Do you know any medicine?" he finally asked.
The hard-outlined, kidney-shaped ache was beginning to diffuse through
Charles' head, more general now and less excruciating. He felt
deliciously sleepy, but roused himself to answer: "Some athletic trainer
stuff. I don't know--morphine? Curare?"
The officer ruffled through the booklet. "Nothing about vomiting," he
said. "But it says curare for muscular cramp and I guess that's what's
going on. A lipoid suspension to release it slowly into the bloodstream
and give the irritation time to subside. Anyway, I can't kill her if I
watch the dose...."
Charles, through half-opened eyes, saw Lee Falcaro's arm reach behind
the officer's back to his medicine chest. The deckhand's eyes were
turning to the bed--Charles heaved himself to his feet, skyrockets going
off again through his head, and started for the lavatory. The deckhand
grabbed his arm. "Rest, mister! Where do you think you're going?"
"Another glass of water--"
"_I'll_ get it. You heard my orders."
Charles subsided. When he dared to look again, Lee's arm lay alongside
her body and the officer was triple-checking dosages in his booklet
against a pressurized hypodermic spray. The officer sighed and addressed
Lee: "You won't even feel this. Relax." He read his setting on the spray
again, checked it again against the booklet. He touched the syringe to
the skin of Lee's arm and thumbed open the valve. It hissed for a moment
and Charles knew submicroscopic particles of the medication had been
blasted under Lee's skin too fast for nerves to register the shock.
His glass of water came and he gulped it greedily. The officer packed
the pressurized syringe away, folded the chest and said to both of them,
rather vaguely: "That should do it. If, uh, if anything happens--or if
it doesn't work--call me and I'll try something else. Morphine, maybe."
He left and Charles slumped in the chair, the pain ebbing and sleep
beginning to flow over him. Not yet, he told himself. She hooked
something from the chest. He said to the deckhand: "Can I clean the lady
and myself up?"
"Go ahead, mister. You can use it. Just don't try anything."
The man lounged in the door-frame of the lavatory alternately studying
Charles at the wash-basin and Lee on the bed. Charles took off a heavy
layer of oily grease from himself and then took washing tissues to the
bed. Lee Falcaro's spasms were tapering off. As he washed her, she
managed a smile and an unmistakable wink.
"You folks married?" the deckhand asked.
"No," Charles said. Weakly she held up her right arm for the washing
tissue. As he scrubbed the hand, he felt a small cylinder smoothly
transferred from her palm to his. He slid it into a pocket and finished
the job.
The officer popped in again with a carton of milk. "Any better, miss?"
he asked.
"Yes," she whispered.
"Good. Try to drink this." Immensely set up by his success in treatment,
he hovered over her for a quarter of an hour getting the milk down a sip
at a time. It stayed down. He left trailing a favorable prognosis.
Meanwhile, Charles had covertly examined Lee's booty: a pressurized
syringe labeled _morphine sulfate sol_. It was full and ready. He
cracked off the protective cap and waited his chance.
It came when Lee grimaced at him and called the deckhand in a feeble
murmur. She continued to murmur so indistinctly that he bent over trying
to catch the words. Charles leaned forward and emptied the syringe at
one inch range into the taut seat of the deckhand's pants. He scratched
absently and said to Lee: "You'll have to talk up, lady." Then he
giggled, looked bewildered and collapsed on the floor, staring, coked to
the eyebrows.
Lee painfully sat up on the bed. "Porthole," she said.
Charles went to it and struggled with the locking lugs. It opened--and
an alarm bell began to clang through the ship. _Now_ he saw the
hair-fine, broken wire. An alarm trip-wire.
Feet thundered outside and the glutinous voice of Jimmy Regan was heard:
"Wait, you damn fools! You in there--is everything all right? Did they
try to pull something?"
Charles kept silent and shook his head at the girl. He picked up a chair
and stood by the door. The glutinous voice again, in a mumble that
didn't carry through--and the door sprang open. Charles brought the
chair down in a murderous chop, conscious only that it seemed curiously
light. There was an impact and the head fell.
It was Regan, with a drawn gun. It had been Regan. His skull was smashed
before he knew it. Charles felt as though he had all the time in the
world. He picked up the gun to a confused roar like a slowed-down sound
track and emptied it into the corridor. It had been a full automatic,
but the fifteen shots seemed as well-spaced as a ceremonial salute.
Regan, in his vanity, wore two guns. Charles scooped up the other and
said to Lee: "Come on."
He knew she was following as he raced down the cleared corridor and down
the ramp, back to the compartment in which they had been locked. Red
danger lights burned on the walls. Charles flipped the pistol to
semi-automatic as they passed a red-painted bulkhead with valves and
gages sprouting from it. He turned and fired three deliberate shots into
it. The last was drowned out by a dull roar as gasoline fumes exploded.
Pipe fittings and fragments of plate whizzed about them like bullets as
they raced on.
Somebody ahead loomed, yelling querulously: "What the hell was that,
Mac? What blew?"
"Where's the reactor room?" Charles demanded, jamming the pistol into
his chest. The man gulped and pointed.
"Take me there. Fast."
"Now _look_, Mac--"
Charles told him in a few incisive details where and how he was going to
be shot. The man went white and led them down the corridor and into the
reactor room. Three white-coated men with the aloof look of reactor
specialists stared at them as they bulled into the spotless chamber.