Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

He had barely brushed the stuff, but his hand was fire-burned. He shouted loud alarm. While he sniffed at the stinging odor, a slow liquid drop slipped to the floor. The friendly, familiar compartment was all at once invaded by death.

He snatched the blanket from the bunk and piled it over his head and shoulders, like a poncho without a head hole. With the same movement he grabbed at the metal stool and flailed the door.

The acid smell was strong. It dug into his nostrils until he had to stop to sneeze. Any minute the searing stuff would eat through the blanket fabric and attack his bare head. Maybe his heavy pounding was shaking acid out of the plants. Quick! he thought.

When interminably later his door opened outward, his wild effort struck a last blow against air. The stool’s weight jerked him ahead sharply against his ankle chain—tripped him flat, face against the hard deck.

“Whatthehell’s the matter with you, chum?” a rough voice lashed at him.

It was First Sergeant Peeney. “It drips acid. Get me out!”

The sergeant gave a startled look at the ceiling. “Jesus!” he said. The departure of his habitual methodism jarred the ascent to the final syllable.

With head and shoulders outside across the threshold Dane could afford to look too. The lichens had grown down halfway to the floor along the far wall. He had been lucky in their choice of a wall. Any of the others and they would have been on him where he had stood swinging the stool.

The sergeant wasted no more time. He charged down the passage with as close to a run as he could urge his square-shouldered bulk in gravity boots. “Gotta get the key to the irons,” he trailed behind him.

This big man was quick and effective. He was back at once. Without fuss he got the right key in the lock on the first try, and Dane rolled the rest of the way out on the riveted deck of the corridor.

Major Noel came up on the double, two airmen hurrying behind. He was rigged in bulky asbestos coveralls, a flamethrower tank strapped on his back.

“Whatinhell happened?” Dane demanded.

Noel took a quick look inside Dane’s room. “Sergeant,” he barked, “have this man strip and throw his clothes in there.” He fiddled with the nozzle of the flame gun. “Then get back through the bulkhead. All of you.”

“How about you or somebody telling me whatinhell’s going on!”

“Hurry it up. It’s bad.”

Like telling a child to wipe his nose. He tore at the offending coveralls.

Noel pulled the hood over his face. The nozzle spurted fire. He hosed the searing stream rapidly around the walls and floor of Dane’s room, then poured it full into the main lichen mass overhead. A dense white smoke came backing out into the corridor.

“Socks and shorts too,” Peeney rumbled. “You heard the major. Let’s get out of here.”

Bootless, Dane edged along the passage, skating each foot ahead in turn, trying to hurry and keep sliding contact with the deck. They retreated past the first meteor-tight division and dogged its door shut behind them.

“What about Noel? He breathes too.”

“He’s got a respirator in his hood,” Peeney said.

“I’ve got to get some boots and some fatigues,” Dane told him. “I feel goofy enough in this strip-tease costume, let alone feeling as if I’m going to beat my brains out against the roof every step.”

A clap of steely thunder slapped them. The deck quivered. Peeney looked at Dane with wide eyes. “That was a jolt. That did us some damage.” He grabbed the bulkhead phone and punched the command-post button.

Yes. It sounded as if it blew half the side out. It was a damnable time to be naked and bootless—muscles unfettered.

Peeney stood listening. Finally he said “Right” into the mouthpiece and hung up. “There’s been a helluvan explosion on 2-high deck. Dr. Wertz’s lab went up.”

“What’s the bad news?” Dane tried to swallow the dryness.

“I gotta tell the major.”

“Tell him! You think he didn’t hear that bang?”

“He’s needed, and he ain’t here, is he? I gotta report to give him. And he ain’t going to like it.”

“What’s the damage?” Dane insisted.

“We issue a report when the commander says so.” Peeney started lifting the door latches.

“Hey! You can’t go in there,” Dane yelled at him. “Not without a respirator. It’s full of smoke by now. Maybe gas.” Peeney turned and looked at him. “Now where am I going to get a respirator? You got one in your pocket?”

“All the same, you’d better get one. Or wait till he comes out. It’s too risky without one.”

“Deck below,” Peeney said. “We stand here jawing, we could have one up here.” He looked at one of the airmen. “No. I’ll go. I can put my hands right on it. You two get back up to 2-high. Make yourselves useful.”

Dane started to prowl the adjacent quarters. Old Man Judah’s. Maybe he had an extra pair of boots in his locker. Coveralls, anyway. He wondered why a man felt vulnerable to injury without the negligible protection of a flimsy thickness of cloth.

Boots? No boots, but two or three sets of coveralls. Geologists work in the dirt, he thought. Maybe better luck on the boots next door. Suddenly he caught up short, thinking out the floor plan. Wertz’s lab? It would be right above his own quarters. The explosion had been right over Noel’s head. Right on top of an overhead deck already eaten out with lichen acids.

That did it. Noel was finished. He would have come out in a hurry if he had been able. Dane skated out into the passage and wrenched at the bulkhead latches. When he cracked the door, wisps of white smoke seeped in around the edge. Ahead the corridor was blind with fog.

The door swung open hard, catching him sharply on the forehead. A fire-suited figure stepped over the coaming and closed the opening quickly behind him.

Noel pulled off his hood. “Where’s Peeney? Where Beloit? How come you’re always underfoot?”

An airman hurried up the passage. He looked blankly at Noel.

Noel nodded at Dane. “He let me through right after I called you.”

Beloit arrived. Then Wertz carrying what looked like a bucket of milk.

“You okay, sir?”

“I was outside,” Noel told him. “It knocked me down, and I got up. What’s the damage, Major?” he demanded.

“The hull is intact, sir.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Yessir. Captain Spear is dead. Sergeant Gonzales is dead. Fritts and Lee got hurt. Not much.”

Noel shucked his gloves. One at a time he carefully handed them to the airman. Abruptly he exploded, “Spear and Gonzales! Goddamnitohell! Pretty expensive experiment,” he snapped at Wertz.

Wertz bristled. “I’m sorry about Spear and Gonzales. But the experiment was necessary. That why we came here to find out about things. You and I both.”

Noel wheeled away. “Bring Dane along,” he said. “I want to talk to him after I come back down.”

DANE WAITED at the command post. He was still in custody. That had been made clear by Sergeant Peeney, assisted by Airman First Class Merrick.

Both men ignored him. He was physically present and accounted for, and that, it was made obvious, was the extent of their concern. A flow of orders and requirements from the scene of the explosion on 2-high deck had to be entered in the action log. Dane sat back out of their way and listened to Noel come over the monitor speaker. Report and reply, decision and order, step by step he drove up the tempo of operations. Even over the wires he permeated the spacecraft with a definite presence, attending precisely to detail. It was a capable performance, Dane acknowledged.

Peeney and Merrick were steadily engaged by their duties, he also admitted, but not so much engaged that they couldn’t have included him in their byplay of remarks upon what was going on. From their manner it was not hard to imagine a heightening of the corps feeling among the crew. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to imagine their traditional, half-contemptuous, half-proud appraisal: “They make the trouble, and we have to settle it. We pick up the pieces.”