Marion Bradley - Survey Ship

Maybe abnormality is in the mind of the Beholder?

Even the feeling that I partake of God does not give me any delusions of omnipotence. I personally am a very small and helpless part; but I perceive myself as a very real part, partaking in the Whole. I do not feel dwarfed by the immensity of Space, but enlarged; I am part of the Whole, and the Whole is part of me.

And this religious consciousness does not make me less sane, but saner, if functioning is any criterion of sanity.

He even felt hungry, and said so.

“It’s dinner time fairly soon,” Peake said, yawning, Twenty minutes standard, more or less. Teague said he was going to begin synthesizing carbohydrate, fairly soon, I’ll probably miss having normal rice and wheat grains, won’t you?”

“I doubt if I’ll be able to tell the difference,” Ravi admitted. “Where I’m concerned, a carbohydrate is a carbohydrate, and the shape doesn’t matter. I never could understand the tribes who starved to death rather than eat wheat when rice was their preferred staple, or eat rice when wheat was scarce or unavailable.”

Peake’s smile was wry. “Maybe that’s why we survived instead of dying, man. I survived one famine year when I was about five, and as I remember, I ate anything I could cram into my mouth without worrying what it was. ! still get the nightmare about that, sometimes. Hungry, and no food anywhere. Then I remember being tested for the Academy, and at first all it meant to me was, never hungry no more. That’s what my uncle said to me when he took me there… hey, look, we’re not supposed to talk about the past, are we?”

“I don’t think it does any of us any harm,” Ravi said gently. “Come on, Peake, we’re finished here. Let’s go down to the main cabin…”

He broke off, for the intercom had leaped into sudden life.

“Peake, Peake,” it said, “Peake, Peake, anybody, anybody down here — Peake, Fontana, somebody, come quick, there’s been an accident, oh, come help, somebody—”

“Teague!” It was like an expletive; Peake was out of his seat within seconds. Ravi said urgently into the intercom, “Teague, where are you? Are you hurt?”

“In the gym. Damn DeMags…”

Peake cut him off. “I’m on my way. Ravi, go back to the main cabin and get my medical kit — I’ll go straight there, I could save some time—”

But in the entry to the free-fall corridor outside the gym he bumped into Fontana, and she had his medical bag in her hand, “I heard Teague on the intercom and I knew you’d need this,” she said. “Hurry, Peake!”

He pushed through the sphincter lock ahead of her: took in Teague, kneeling over Ghing; noted the limp dangle of one hand, dismissed it to fumble quickly for a pulse in Ching’s limp wrist. Yes, it was there, feeble but definite. There was a small blue bruise on her temple, bloodless.

“Fontana,” Peake said tersely, “you fix up Teague’s wrist, or hand, while I find out what’s wrong with Ching. Teague, tell me what happened? Did the gravity go off?” In his mind was a clear memory of the time when he had nearly crashed into a wall while running; luck and superb co-ordination had saved him at least a concussion, perhaps a skull fracture. Ching had not been so lucky.

“The gravity was off,” Teague said. “It went on.” He was sobbing, covering his face with his good hand. “She wanted to learn to handle herself in free-fall, I talked her into it, oh, God, it’s my fault — I promised I wouldn’t let her fall, I promised I wouldn’t let her get hurt, she trusted me, oh. she trusted me and I let her fall—”

He was clearly hysterical; Fontana snapped, “Shut up and let me get this wrist bandaged! You can’t do any good by blubbering!” She chose the word deliberately, and it shut him up with a gasp.

“Now try and tell us coherently,” she said, “exactly what happened.”

Teague took a deep breath; cried out in sharp pain as Fontana manipulated his wrist.

“Broken finger here,” she said to Peake, “fourth finger, left hand. Probably need a splint. Possible damaged tendons or ligaments. Those damned, infernal DeMags!” She set her mouth tightly, and continued manipulating Teague’s hand. “Wriggle that ringer. Here, does that hurt? Good, that’s all right. What did you do, come down hard on it?”

“Ravi,” Peake said, “try and find ammonia in the bag. Small vial, glass ampoule — yes, that’s it.” He broke it under Ching’s nose, wondering if the glass fragments would scatter and be dangerous in the case of another DeMag failure. He wanted to get her out of there, but he didn’t dare to move her until he was certain there were no spinal injuries; and he couldn’t tell that until she was conscious.

Ching stirred fractionally and opened her eyes.

“Teague—” she whispered.

“I’m here, darling. Don’t move.”

“What happened? Teague, move out of the way, please—” Peake said, bothered by the intrusion, but watching Ching’s hands groping for him, he was relieved. No gross damage to the spinal cord, at least, if she could move her hands. He slipped off the thin fiber sandals she was wearing.

“Ching, can you wriggle your toes?” But she had shut her eyes again and drifted off into unconsciousness.

He had to know. Quickly he selected a probe from the bag, ran it quickly along the sole of her foot, was rewarded by a strong flinching and twitching of the toes. He felt immensely relieved; no paralysis. Concussion, certainly, and in view of her stuporous state, they could not even rule out a skull fracture; but there was no spinal cord damage and, at least, it was safe to move her. Not that there was any absolute safety anywhere. There had been DeMag failures in the main cabin and in the living quarters, which meant that the trouble with the DeMags was not confined to the unit in the gyro: it had to be in the computer tie-ins, or else some major design flaw in the units themselves, or the controls on the units.

In shock, Peake remembered: Ching was their only access to the computer! Damn the people at the Academy who had let them go out with only a single computer technician! Remembering his conversation with Ravi, he damned them further.

If Ching was badly hurt, or worse — he flinched away from remembering that head injuries were the most commonly fatal of all injuries — the computer might never be wholly trustworthy again.

In which case, they were probably all doomed….

Rising to his full height, he angrily brushed that thought aside. It was more than probable that Ching’s injury was only a minor concussion; most head injuries, after all, were no more. He said, “We’ve got to rig a stretcher. There’s no way we can get her through that free-fall corridor without one.”

“It’s not going to be any too easy even with one,” Fontana said. “Ravi, you’re able-bodied, go and find Moira and get her to help you rig something to carry Ching; she’s about the best mechanic aboard.”

Even with Ching’s unconscious body firmly strapped to a stretcher and a safety net stretched over her to immobilize her, it was not at all easy; Peake, weighing danger against danger — in head injuries any kind of depressant was dangerous — finally took out a pressure-spray hypo and gave her a shot. He explained tersely, to Fontana’s raised eyebrows — she had had a secondary specialization in medicine, enough to make her a competent technician or assistant — “If she vomits in free-fall while she’s unconscious, she could aspirate vomit, and you know as well as I do what that would do to her lungs. It would be safer not to move her at all. But I don’t trust the DeMags in here even as much as I trust the ones in the main cabin.”

But Ching did not stir or show the slightest sign of distress as the stretcher, guided by Peake at one end and Fontana at the other, was floated carefully down the corridor and maneuvered through the sphincter locks. They swept music hastily to one side and laid her on the table in the main cabin.