Orbit 2

“There you go, Kruger!” Fay had husked bitterly. “Up to now that fat carcass of yours had one chance in eight.” Kinross remembered his own twinge of regret.

Kinross felt the rising sun sucking at his dry eyeballs and thirst flamed three-dimensional]y through him, consuming sense and reason. He knew that today would be the day and that he wanted it so. He glanced forward again and the Mexican was really looking at him out of red-rimmed eyes.

“I know what you’re thinking, Kinross,” he called aft. His voice roused the others. They began sitting up.

Little Fay led off, head bobbing and jerking, red eyes demanding agreement. “Draw lots,” he said. “No more palaver. Right now or none of us will see sunset.”

Kruger agreed. He clinked several shillings in his hand and passed them around to be looked at. Only one was a George V. Blindfold Bo Bo, the stupidest one, he proposed, and let him pick coins out of the bailing bucket one by one. Fay would sit back to back with him and as soon as Bo Bo had a coin up, but before anyone had seen it, Fay would call the name of the man who was to get it. Whoever got the beard would be the victim.

It was agreed. Silva asked for time to pray and Fay mocked at him. The little man perched on the engine housing, his back against Bo Bo, and looked around calculatingly. Kinross could feel the malice in his glance.

“Law of averages,” Kinross was thinking. “Tn the middle of the series. Number three or four. Nonsense, of course.”

Apparently Fay thought so too. When the Negro fumbled up the first coin and asked, “Who get this one?” Fay answered “I’ll take it.” It was a queen, and Kinross hated Fay.

The next one Fay awarded to Bo Bo and the giant black was safe. For the next, while Kinross held his breath, Fay named Kerbeck. Also safe. Each time a sigh went through the boat.

Then the fourth trial and Fay called out “Kinross.” The engineer blinked his dry eyes and strained to see the coin in the thick black fingers. He knew first from the relief on Silva’s face «and then he saw it plainly himself. It was the beard.

No one would meet his eyes but Fay and Bo Bo. Kinross hardly knew what he felt. The thought came “an end of torment” and then “I’ll die clean.” But he still dully resented Fay’s nasty air of triumph.

Fay opened his clasp knife and slid the bailing bucket next to the engine. “Hold him across the engine housing, Bo Bo,” he ordered. “We can’t afford to lose any of the blood.”

“Damn you, Fay, I’m still alive,” Kinross said. His gaunt features worked painfully and his Adam’s apple twitched in a futile attempt at swallowing.

“Knock me in the head first, mates,” he pleaded. “You, Kerbeck, use the tiller.”

“Yah,” said the Swede, still not returning his glance. “Now yoost you wait a leedle, Fay.”

“All of you listen to me,” Kruger said. “I know a way we can get as much fresh water as we can drink, in just a few minutes, and nobody has to die.” His light voice was effortless, liquid, trickling the words into their startled ears.

All hands looked at Kruger, suspicious, half hating him for his cool voice and lack of obvious suffering. Kinross felt a thrill of hope.

“I mean it,” Kruger said earnestly. “Cold, fresh water is all around us, waiting for us, if we only knew one little thing that we can’t quite remember. You felt it all day yesterday. You feel it now.”

They stared. Fay ran his thumb back and forth along the edge of the clasp knife. Then Garcia said angrily, “You’re nuts, Kruger. Your gyro’s tumbled.”

“No, Garcia,” Kruger said, “I was never saner. I knew this all the time, before the ship blew even, but I had to wait for the right moment. Sleep, not talk, not move, nothing to waste body water, so I could talk when the time came. Now it’s here. Now is the time. You feel it, don’t you? Listen to me now.” Kruger’s clear, light voice babbled like water running over stones. He stepped up on the stern grating and looked down at the six men frozen into a tableau around the engine. Kinross noted that his sparse white hair lay smooth and saw a hint of set muscles under the fat face.

“I’ll tell you a true story so you can understand easy,” Kruger continued. “Long time ago, long ago, in the Tibesti highlands of Africa, some soldiers were lost and dying of thirst, like us now. They went up a valley, a dry wash with bones on the ground, to two big rocks like pillars side by side. They did something there, and when they went between the two big rocks they were in a different world with green trees and running water. All of them lived and afterward some of them came back.”

“I heard that story before, somewhere,” Kinross said.

Fay jerked toward him. “A lie, Kinross! You’re welshing! Kruger, it’s a stall!”

“I didn’t believe the story,” Kinross said mildly. “I don’t believe it now.”

“I do believe it,” Kruger said sharply. “I know it’s true. I’ve been there. I’ve looked into that world. We can do just what those soldiers did.”

“Bilge, Kruger!” Garcia growled. “How could there be such a world? How could you get in it?”

“I didn’t get in, Garcia. I could see and hear, but when I walked into it everything faded around me.”

“Then what good—”

“Wait. Let me finish. I lacked something we have here. I was alone, not half dead with thirst, and I couldn’t all the way believe what I saw and heard.”

“So what does—”

“Wait. Hear me out. Believe me, Garcia, all of you. There are seven of us here and no other humans in a thousand miles. Our need is more than we can stand. We can believe. We must believe or die. Trust me. I know.”

The Mexican scratched the black stubble along his heavy jaw. “Kruger, I think you’re crazy as Whelan,” he said slowly.

“Whelan wasn’t crazy,” Kruger said. “He was just a kid and couldn’t wait. He saw a green meadow. Believe me now, all of you, if we all had seen that meadow at the same time Whelan saw it we would be walking in it right this minute!”

“Yah, like Whelan now is walking,” Kerbeck put in.

“We killed Whelan, do you understand? We killed him because we couldn’t believe what he saw and so it wasn’t true.” The light, bubbling voice splashed with vehemence.

“I think I get you, Kruger,” Garcia said slowly.

“I don’t,” Kinross said, “unless you want us all to die in a mass hallucination.”

“I want us to live in a mass hallucination. We can. We must or die. Believe me. I know this.”

“Then you mean go out in a happy dream, not knowing when the end comes?”

“Damn you, Kinross, you’ve got a little education. That’s why it’s so hard for you to understand. But let me tell you, this world, this Indian Ocean, is a hallucination too. The whole human race has been a million years building it up, training itself to see and believe, making the world strong enough to stand any kind of shock. It’s like a dream we can’t wake up from. But believe me, Kinross, you can wake up from this nightmare. Trust me. I know the way.”

Kinross thought, “I’m a fool to argue. It’s a delay for me, in any case. But maybe. . maybe. .” Aloud he said, “What you say. . Yes, I know the thought. . but all anyone can do is talk about it. There’s no way to act on it.”

“The more word-juggling the less action, that’s why! But we can act, like the soldiers of Tibesti.”

“A myth. A romantic legend.”

“A true story. I’ve been there, seen, heard. I know. It was long ago, before the Romans, when the web of the world was not so closely woven as now. There were fewer men like you in the world then, Kinross.”