Norton, Andre - Anthology (8 page)

 
          
 
"That means recharging the tanks."
Hardman slapped the arm of his chair violently.

 
          
 
Infected chlorophyl!
The
spaceman's one great dread.
It wasn't the danger of asphyxiation that
worried Nord. They had plenty of fresh media to recharge the tanks. But, until
the new stuff grew sufficiently to handle the vitiated air, they would have to
live from stored oxygen. That meant curtailment of recreational activity, and
with limited exercise,
came
deterioration of morale.
His mind leaped to the crew.

 
          
 
They would be forced to lie in their bunks for
hours on end looking at the curving overhead. Corrosion of the spirit from such
confinement was the one exciting cause for that most dreaded of all spatial
afflictions: Spaceneuroses; the overmastering, unreasoning anxiety syndrome.
The claustrophobia that destroyed the very fabric of the mind and that could
easily—if long continued—wreck the ship.

 
          
 
And Bickford did it.

 
          
 
Didn't the fool realize his life, too,
depended on air? He looked down at the open log on his desk. He closed the book
with a snap that strained its metal hinges and wrinkled the sheets of its
plastic pages.

 
          
 
He forced his voice to be steady. "Where
is Bickford now?"

 
          
 
"He's outside waiting to see you,"
Hardman answered. "The doctor sobered him up."

 
          
 
Bickford's almost colorless, pale-blue eyes
darted a quick apprehensive glance at Dr. Stacker before he turned to stare
insolently at the captain. His slack mouth looked as if nature had painted it
on his thin, immature face. He jerked his head at the scribespeech on the
captain's desk, aimlessly wiped flecks of saliva from his narrow, pointed chin
with a pink silk handkerchief, which he quickly thrust into his uniform pocket.

 
          
 
"Mr. Bickford," Nord's voice was
ominously calm, "did you check air this morning?"

 
          
 
"Why, of course I did," he snapped
irritably. He tilted his head, sniffed loudly through his narrow nose.
"Seems O.K. to me."

 
          
 
"Did you go to air treatment after the
game last night?"

 
          
 
Bickford jerked the handkerchief from his
pocket, nervously wiped foamy saliva from his twitching mouth. "I think I
did. I turned down the temp five or six degrees, thought the ship too
hot."

 
          
 
"A little while later, the medical
officer went to your cabin and found that you had been drinking. Do you deny
this?" Nord's voice trembled from manifest control.

 
          
 
Bickford forced a weak smile to his lips. He
blew a short, explosive whistle of self-congratulation. "I was really drunk
in my cabin last night. I was just really flooded."

 
          
 
"This is no time for humor, Mr. Bickford.
When we planet, I shall charge you with being drunk on duty, carelessness, and
incompetence and recommend your dismissal from the civilian branch of the Spatial
Service."

 
          
 
Bickford shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"So what," he answered truculently. His voice became edged with
triumph. "My cousin is general manager of Synthetic Air. That's the
company who installed the conditioner aboard this ship. He got me assigned to
this job over you academy boys. You're jealous of me. I'll tell him what you've
done to me, and he'll have the Bureau of Personnel really burn you up. You all
thought I was dumb. Told me last night I was crazy. I'll show you how smart I
was last night." He started to laugh: a harsh, treble, nerve-chilling
laugh. "This is a good joke on you, Corbett. When the green goo goes sour,
what're you going to do?"

 
          
 
Nord felt an icy vortex swirl around his
hear*. He leaned forward, damp palms clasping the arms of his chair. He knew
already what the man was going to say.

 
          
 
Bickford wiped tears of exultant laughter from
his pale eyes, stared derisively at the officers. "What're you going to do
now? We don't have any extra stock or media aboard. We don't have any more of
anything to recharge your tanks."

 
          
 
"What!" Hardman leaped to his feet.
Nord placed a restraining hand on his executive officer's arm.

 
          
 
Bickford sneered at his startled expression.
"I thought that would get you." He looked down at the captain.
"While you were checking the ship at Lunar Quarantine, I traded all our
reserve stock of chlorophyl powder and nutrient media for a set of bench tools.
I made the deal with the captain of Mr. Brockway's yacht. Do you know who Mr.
Brockway is? He's one of the richest men on the inner planets. You see, I
intended to go into business on Lan-vin—"

 
          
 
"You?"
Hardman gurgled.
"In business?"

 
          
 
"I was going to make beautiful doll
furniture. But now I'm going to be one of the richest men on Lanvin," he
said triumphantly. "When I learned how much money we had aboard the ship,
I decided then to show you how brilliant I really was." He looked at them
patronizingly. "I'm going to take the money designed for the base."

 
          
 
"How will you do that?" Corbett's
voice was so calm it was unreal.

 
          
 
Bickford laughed unpleasantly. "I'm going
to make a chlorine generator. It's easy to make, just electrolysis of salt
water. I'm going to put that into the air system. While you are all being
finished, I'll live in space armor. Then I will land the ship on Dynia, that's
Planet II, and take the shuttle across to Lanvin."

 
          
 
"But now we know all about it, and we're
going to lock you up," Nord said slowly. "Didn't you realize we would
know almost instantly when the air went bad?"

 
          
 
The realization of what he had said revealed
itself in his widened eyes. His head shook from side to side as he started to
whimper. "I never thought of that when I spit into the banks last
night."

 
          
 
Hardman came forward, cold deadly purpose
etched in the lines about his grim mouth and bitter eyes. Nord knew what he was
about to do, knew it would have to be done. Hard-man was half a meter from
Bickford before he spoke. "This is for the crew," he said, and his
fist came up like a rocket.

 
          
 
Bickford took the blow, rocked under it,
caught the second on his mouth, and then Corbett and the doctor were between
them, shoving them apart.

 
          
 
"The idiot should be chucked in
space," Hardman roared.

 
          
 
Stacker was wiping Bickford's crimson mouth.
Corbett released Hardman's arm. "He's a sick man," he said heavily.
"Go back to your duty. I'll have Dr. Stacker act as air officer. We'll
keep Bickford under armed guard in the sick bay for the remaining seven months
of the voyage."

 
          
 
"Seven months!
Without
air!"
Hardman's voice became high with the tension of
near-hysteria. Then noticing Nord's level cold eyes he apologized. "I'm
sorry, sir. I must have lost my temper."

 
          
 
"I understand. We'll forget what
happened. Now let's see what we can do about the air." He turned to the doctor.
"Take care of the patient. I'll meet you down in air control." He
looked at the chronometer. It was 0640. It seemed like hours. "
Ill
be
there in
fifteen minutes," he finished abruptly.

 
          
 
This is what came from having a psychopath
aboard. Incidents like this were never discussed at the academy. Departments
were always handled smoothly by brisk, efficient men always alert to serve the
ship. Not even in fiction were there problems like this unwelcome thing. There,
the personalities were always good, pure men at war against mythical creatures,
invidious planets, self-centered, unpredictable novas, or militant
civilizations; never at war against their own personal environment because of
the stupidity of politicians who insisted that unexamined, potentially insane
men be made a part of the ship's company.

 
          
 
Stacker was sitting, feet propped on the air
officer's desk, studying the "Handbook of Air Management" when Nord
walked in. He stood up at once. "I've got Bickford in the brig ward. He's
perfectly safe now.
Can't harm himself or anyone else."
He touched buttons on the desk top and, as the drawers slid out, pointed at
their contents. "Looks like a rat's nest. He's collected everything in
this ship that wasn't welded."

 
          
 
"Never mind Bickford.
What can we do about the air?"

 
          
 
"Not very much," Stacker said
diagnostically. "You know how this ship handles air?"

 
          
 
"Vaguely.
I
don't know too much about it. Air management is so vital it's always handled by
an officer or civilian specializing in clinical industry." There was no
apology for his ignorance. It wasn't his job to know air any more than he was
required to know how to practice planetary epidemiology.

 
          
 
"The air system in this ship was
designed, installed, and maintained by Synthetic Air, Incorporated, of Great
Kansas. The system uses a modified form of rebreather technic; that is, the
unused oxygen is returned to the ship.

 
          
 
"Starting from the venous ducts located
in all compartments, the air is pulled over a precipitron, which removes all
dust, oil, and water droplets and other curd. It then goes into the separator
where the excess oxygen is removed; this passes directly back into the ship's
arterial system.

 
          
 
"The remaining atmosphere, containing
nitrogen and carbon dioxide, is then sterilized by passage over plates heated
to five hundred
degrees,
the gases are then cooled,
and sucked into the ship's lungs.

 
          
 
"These lungs are chlorophyl banks. They
are large glassite cylinders filled with synthetic chlorophyl. This is a very
delicate substance with no immune property at all and becomes infected readily.
Just look at the stuff crosseyed and it starts to decay. Nature protects her
chlorophyl by means of the cell membrane, but here we use it in its pure
protoplasmic state.

 
          
 
"In each tank are actinic generators. As
the carbon dioxide trickles up from below, photosynthesis converts the carbon
dioxide into carbohydrates. Oxygen is a by-product. It's sucked into the
negatron, humidified, and pushed by blowers through the arterial system."

 
          
 
"Very concise, doctor," Nord said.
"Let's go in and check your new detail."

 
          
 
Air treatment was located on the third deck,
just aft the crew's galley in the central section of the ship. The mechanical
part of the system was a miracle of chromium and gleaming surgical white. Air
sucked through snaking ducts sounded shrilly defiant; the whirring screams of
the blowers were the overtones of thin-edged menace. The ducts were shiny with
beady sweat, and the compartment's cold, dry air was icily chilly.

 
          
 
The air crew stood around with tight, strained
faces. Above all the many activities of the ship, they knew how much the thin
thread of life depended on their proper performance of duty. When the captain
and the doctor walked in, worry lifted from their strong faces, and they turned
to hide the relief from fear.