"I mean that you must use no more water than is absolutely necessary
for drinking and preparing your food. The food you must share between
you, on half rations. As for the air--"
"Yes," said Durham. "What about the air?"
"I believe that activity has the effect of increasing your metabolism,
thereby consuming more oxygen. So I would advise you both to move and
speak as little as possible. Remain calm. Remain quiet. In that way
you should be able to survive. It is not that we are grudging. It is
simply that we cannot share any of our supplies with you, because you
are alien life forms and totally incompatible. If we had known there
would be two, we would have prepared. As it is, you must work together
to conserve."
"But," said Susan, "but this isn't fair, it isn't right! You'll take me
back or my father will see to it--"
"Keep this speaker open," said the Senyan, "so that you will be sure to
hear the audio signal, a sustained note repeated at intervals of forty
seconds. Prepare to enter overdrive."
He did not say good-bye. He merely went away with his two officers.
Susan screamed after them. Durham clapped his hand over her mouth, and
took her forcibly and put her on the bunk.
"Lie there," he said. "Quiet. Didn't you hear him? Don't move, don't
talk."
He sat down in the chair, consciously trying not to breathe deeply.
"But--"
"Shut up."
"Don't you say shut up to me, Lloyd. This is all your fault."
"My fault? Mine? Because you had to shove yourself in--"
"Shove myself? Father was right about you. And it is your fault. If you
hadn't asked me to ride down with you--"
"Oh, shut up, damn it, that's just like a woman! If you knew your next
breath was your last one you'd still have to use it for talk. You want
to asphyxiate us both with your gabbling?"
She was quiet for a long while. Then he realized that she was crying.
"Lloyd, I'm scared."
"So am I." He began to laugh. "When I come to think of it, it was your
father that got us both into this. I hope he sweats blood in great gory
streams."
"You're a drunken ungrateful swine! If dad really did give you another
chance--"
"Ah ah! Remember the oxygen! He did. And I was such a fatheaded idiot
I thought it was on the level. I even reformed." He laughed again,
briefly. "Overcome with gratitude, I did exactly what I was supposed
not to do. I sobered up and held my tongue."
"I don't understand at all."
"I was supposed to talk, Susan. I was given a message, and I was
supposed to babble it all over The Hub. I don't know exactly what that
message was intended to trigger off when it got into circulation.
Probably a war. But I'll bet I know what I triggered off by not
talking. Trouble for your old man."
"I don't believe a word of it."
Durham shrugged. It was very little effort to reach out and lift a
bottle from a nearby cupboard. He opened it and took a long pull. Then
he looked at the bottle, shook his head, and passed it to Susan.
She made a derisive noise, and he shrugged again.
"That's right. Funny thing. First I was stricken with remorse and
determined to be worthy. Now I'm just mad. Before I get through, I'm
going to hang your father higher than Haman."
The audio signal, shrill and insistent and sounding somehow as unhuman
as the voices of the Senyans, came piercingly through the speaker.
Susan gasped. "Wherever they're taking us--they're not going to kill
us, are they?"
"I think they want to question us. I think some dirty work is going
on, one of those million-credit-swindle things you hear about once in
a while, and I think your father is right up to his neck in it. If I'm
right, that's the chief reason you were brought along."
"I think you're a dirty low down liar," she said, in a voice he could
hardly hear.
The signal continued to squeal. Durham moved to the bunk.
"Slide over."
"No."
But she did not fight him when he pushed himself in beside her and took
her in his arms.
"The haughty Miss Hawtree," he said, and smiled. "You're a mess. Hair
in your eyes. Make-up all smeared. Tears dripping off the end of your
nose."
The light dimmed, became strange and eerie.
"They could have made this damned bunk a little wider."
"It doesn't matter. After a trip like this, I won't have any reputation
left, anyway. Nobody would believe me on oath."
The fabric of the ship shifted, strained, slipped, moved. The fabric of
Durham's body did likewise. He set his teeth and said,
"Don't worry, dear. I can always ask the captain to marry us."
By the time the audio-signal shrilled again, heralding a return to
solar system speeds and space, it seemed that ages had passed.
* * * * *
They did not talk about marriage now, even in jest. They hated each
other. "Cabin fever," they had said politely for a while, making
excuses. But they did not bother with excuses any more. They just had
simply and quietly loathed each other, as the long, timeless time went
by.
Pity, too, thought Durham, looking at Susan where she lay in the bunk.
She's really a handsome wench, even without all the makeup and the
hairdo and those incredible undergarments that women use, as though
they were semi-liquescent. Just lying there in her slip now, she looks
younger, gentler, nice and soft, as though she'd be pleasant to hold
in your arms again if you had the strength and the oxygen and if you
didn't hate her so.
"Lloyd?"
"Huh?"
"How long before we land?"
"How should I know?"
"Well, you could find out."
"You find out. You can yell as loud as I can. Louder."
"I'll yell," said Susan ominously. "The second I get out of here, I'll
yell so loud the whole galaxy will hear me."
"I should think they've already heard you clear out to Andromeda."
The lights dimmed. The peculiar noises and wrenchings that went with
coming out of overdrive began. Durham braced himself.
"It's too bad you reformed," said Susan. "You used to be amusing
company, at least. Now you're sour and bad tempered. You're also--"
What he was also Durham never heard. There was a crashing, roaring,
rending impact. The chair went out from under him so that he fell face
up into the ceiling. The lights went out entirely. He heard a thin
faint sound that might have been Susan screaming. Then the ceiling slid
away from him and spilled him down a wall. As he went scrabbling past
the window he looked out and saw that there were now long vertical
rents in the outer hull through which the stars were shining.
The pumps had stopped.
A long settling groan and then silence. The antigrav field was dead.
Durham floated, along with everything else that was not bolted down.
"Susan," he said. "Susan?"
"Here."
They met and clung together in mid air while the hull began a slow
axial rotation around them.
"What happened?"
"We hit something."
"The Senyans--"
"They must all be done for. The hull is split open. Head-on ram, I
think, just as we came out of overdrive. They wouldn't have had time to
get space armor."
"Then are we--"
"Hush. Don't talk. Just wait and see."
They clung together, silent. The hull turned without sound, and the
stars shone in through the long slits, into the empty vacuum of the
hold.
"Lloyd, I can't breathe."
"Yes you can. We still have as much air as ever. It just isn't
circulating now."
"I don't know if I can stand this, Lloyd. It's such an awful way."
"There isn't any way that's good. It won't be so bad, really. You'll
just go off to sleep."
"Hold onto me?"
"Sure."
"Lloyd."
"What?"
"I'm sorry."
"So am I."
The hull turned and the stars glittered. The vitiated air grew foul,
grew thick and leaden. The man and woman floated in the closed space,
their arms tight around each other, their faces close together.
Something jarred against the hull.
"Lloyd! I see a light!"
"It's only a star."
"No. Look through the window. Moving--"
Men, humans, wearing pressure suits, had come into the hull. Two of
them were dragging oxygen bottles. They came up to the box and flashed
their lights in through the windows. They knocked and made reassuring
signs. After a minute or two fresh oxygen hissed in under pressure
through the air duct. Susan laughed a little and then fainted. Durham
still held her in his arms. Everything got pleasantly dark and far
away, lost in the single simple joy of breathing.
There were sounds and motions but he did not pay much attention to
them, and he was mildly surprised when he happened to float past a
window and noticed that now there was only space outside, very large
and full of hot and splendid lights. When he passed the other window he
saw part of a ship, and he understood that the box was being hoisted
across the interval between it and the wreck. It seemed a remarkably
kind dispensation of fortune to have provided a ship at exactly the
right time and place, and not just any ship but one equipped with the
specialized tackle required for moving heavy loads in space.
A mighty cargo hatch swallowed the box. Susan came to, and they waited,
weakly hysterical, Durham not even noticing that a spiky shadow had
slipped in with the box. Suddenly again there was man-made light, and
then the sound of heavy air pumps reached them. The pumps stopped, and,
quite simply, men came in and opened the door of the box.
There was a considerable noise and confusion, everybody talking at
once. Durham lost track of Susan. He was only partly conscious of
what he was doing, but he felt that everybody was in a hurry to get
something done. Then there was a cabin with a port in it, and beyond
the port there was space, and in that space a great light flared
blindingly and was gone.