Norton, Andre - Anthology (9 page)

 
          
 
"Let's see the banks." Nord shouted
above the keening scream of air. He could not help but notice the shining
confidence they felt in him.

 
          
 
The chlorophyl banks were normally guarded by
locked doors, which opened from the alcohol showers. A ten-minute alcohol
shower on the impervious lightweight armor lessened considerably any danger of
infecting the chloro-phyl banks. Sterile precautions were now unnecessary
because the two doors were already partly open.

 
          
 
The space surgeon pointed to a cup by the sump
in the deck of the shower. Nord nodded. "Maybe we're lucky he did get
drunk, or perhaps we wouldn't have caught him before he started putting
chlorine into the air system."

 
          
 
Stacker shook his head. "He was too resentful
of authority. Long before he would have gotten to that point, he would have
told you about it in one way or another. He would have had to brag about his
mind. The chances are, though, he would have knocked you out some night, taken
the keys to the bleeder valves, and released all the air in space."

 
          
 
"Nice guy to have around the house."
Nord forced a smile. He gestured toward the inner door. "Shall we go
in?"

 
          
 
Normally the four meter vats were glistening
green cylinders. Where vitiated air entered from below—because of higher carbon
dioxide content—the thick media was a brilliant, leafy green, which shaded to a
faint glaucous yellow at the top. The compartment should have had the sharp,
earthy fragrance of jungle vegetation.

 
          
 
A spasm of despair made Nord wince as he
walked into the compartment. The bottom of the cylinders was covered with
a thick
sediment of sepia-colored muck; ocherous splotches
and shafts of putrid yellow matter filled the vats. The surface was a jaundiced
froth, which bubbled over the top and lay on the metal deck like careless,
yolky splotches of sickly yellow paint. The warm, humid air was stifling, and
the odor of decay was a nauseating stench.

 
          
 
"Whew." Stacker wrinkled his nose in
disgust.

 
          
 
Corbett nodded silently, wiped his sweaty
brow. He turned to the air chief who walked into the compartment.

 
          
 
"Did you find any?" Stacker asked
eagerly.

 
          
 
"There isn't so much as a can of spare
stuff left anywhere," the chief said.

 
          
 
Dr. Stacker turned away, and Nord sensed he
did not care to discuss a patient's illness with a crew member. "We didn't
expect to find any spare media. While Mr. Bickford is ill, the space surgeon
will be acting air officer." He turned to the physician, waved toward the
sick-looking drums. "Can we do anything with this stuff? Resterilize it or
something?"

 
          
 
The doctor shook his head sadly. "Dump it
in space," he suggested with a wan smile.

 
          
 
"Not yet." Corbett hesitated to dump
anything in space except as a last resort. "It's still converting some
air." He led the way into Bickford's former office, prowled about the
office nervously, studied the air instruments, walked slowly back to the desk,
leaned on the corner.

 
          
 
"C0 2 content has gone up a tenth of a
point in the last hour. Hadn't you better start using the chemical
removers?"

 
          
 
"We won't use those until the per cent
gets much higher. Not until it reaches two point five or even three."

 
          
 
"I just noticed we have five thousand
kilos of oxygen stored in the bulkheads." A shade of bitterness crept into
his voice. "At least he left us that."

 
          
 
Dr. Stacker started figuring with stylus and
pad. "The average man," he calculated, "uses an average of five
kilos of oxygen in twenty-four hours. We have fifty men. That means twenty days
of normal oxygen supply."

 
          
 
"Which is what the bureau says will be
normal for all ships."

 
          
 
"Why not try and make it back to Earth.
We're only one hundred and three days out."

 
          
 
"I've thought of it," Corbett
admitted. "I refused to chart a cloud just a few hours ago because it
would take so long to reach terminal velocity once we went back to extropic
drive. At our present velocity we couldn't divert at better than a hundred
angstroms of angular radius. It would take almost two months to complete our
turn, and then we'd have to start decelerating for Earth. If we slow and turn,
we couldn't reach terminal velocity before having to decelerate again. As far
as space time is concerned it's as far one way as it is the other."

 
          
 
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"Might as well keep on, then."
His level voice was
so
impersonal,
Nord could not help but feel admiration
for him.

 
          
 
"Do you have any idea how we might
augment our air supply? Maybe," he suggested, "changing the rate of
air flow, temp, or number of charged ions might help us. You know," the
captain admitted candidly, "I don't even know why we change the rate of
air flow or charge the air. I once did, but I've long since forgotten."

 
          
 
"In a general way," he said,
answering the question, it might be said that moist air is depressing and
enervating, while dry air is tonic and stimulating. Metabolism slows in warm
air, speeds up in cool air. It is also known that air motion is a factor of
tremendous importance in ventilation in that it contributes to our sense of
well-being and comfort. The pat of a current of air upon the skin stimulates
the cutaneous sensory fibers, acts directly on metabolism and the vasomotor
system.

 
          
 
"Air currents as low as
three-hundredths meter per second will give a perceptible stimulus to the
sensory nerves around the skin and mouth.
The variation of air flow and
temperature is stimulating and explains the preference of open windows over
mechanical systems of air conditioning. This variation is why there is no
sensation of stuffiness in modern ships.

 
          
 
"We treat the air here so that it has an
ionic content of ten to the sixth per cc of negative ions. Positive ions
increase the respiratory rate, B.M.R., and blood pressure. Negative ions
produce a feeling of exhilaration and sublime health. I'd recommend we increase
our temperature by five or six degrees, slow down air motion, and require all
men not actually needed to remain in their bunks. Of course all
exercise,
smoking, even loud talking will have to be
forbidden. I'll change the diet so we'll have a low specific dynamic action,
use less oxygen that way. Make the men
more groggy
,
too. We can string out our oxygen another ten days."

 
          
 
"And after that?"

 
          
 
" 'Good
spacemen
never die,' " he quoted a line from the song of the space corps softly,
" 'they just travel far.' "

 
          
 
"Will it be bad toward the end?"

 
          
 
The doctor looked down at his polished nails.
"Very," he whispered, "We'll gasp out our last breath hating the
day we were born. It'll not be easy because we'll have so long to know
it's
coming."

 
          
 
"In fifteen days I'll have the crew write
their final letters. I want to write one to my mother, and you'll want to write
one to your fiancee. You were going to marry when we earthed."

 
          
 
"Isn't there a chance we might cross
another ship?"

 
          
 
"There isn't a ship for another three
months at least."

 
          
 
"Well, we won't be around to see
it." Stacker forced a thin laugh. "When the end comes, Bickford will
really be happy. But he could have done a lot worse things if he'd had more
time to think about them. But this will be bad enough."

 
          
 
Nord looked at him steadily. "You'll
spare us a bad finale."

 
          
 
"You
mean,
you
actually want me to ... to . . ." He stopped talking abruptly, looking at
the captain with narrowed eyes.

           
 
Nord knew the doctor did not wish to make him
commit himself. He lifted his head, gaze steady, and his voice was like the
muffled roll of an organ. "Mercy," he said, "can only be the
gift of the strong."

 
          
 
Stacker stood up, held out his hand.
"Will you tell me when you've set the dead lights?"

 
          
 
Nord nodded. "I'll turn them on myself
and call you." Abruptly they shook hands.

 
          
 
"And the condemned, thanks to the
psychopath, ate a hearty meal."

 
          
 
Nord realized the inevitableness of their
situation. He had an evanescent desire to go to the brig ward and wreathe
Bickford in a flame pistol, but he realized, even as he thought it, how stupid
an act it would be. It would be like trying to take revenge on nature. The
psychopath was nothing more or less than an evolutionary attempt to make man
learn to use his brain for the benefit of others and not to live out a life of
selfish purpose.

 
          
 
Their situation was a result of Bickford, and
he was a result of man's groping attempts to use his mind. How little all that
philosophy would help them
now.
Nord projected his
mind ahead, saw himself at the last, coughing against the thin, lifeless air;
he saw his crew looking at him with sightless, staring eyes as they slumped
wearily down to die on the cold, metal deck.

 
          
 
He saw his ship, hurtling through space, taking
a course tangent to Lanvin. The grim dead lights would shine on her bow,
telling of their fate. The outer port would be open to make entrance by the
investigating party an easy matter.

 
          
 
Some distant day, months from now, they would
board the ship, study the log,
cremate
their remains.
They would cradle the ship, open the holds,
remove
the
freight. New tractors would till Lanvin's fresh, fallow soil, and earthly
vegetables would grow there.

           
 
Their names would be engraved on a bronze
plaque in company with thousands of other spacemen who had died that men might
see the stars and beyond. Even though they did die, they had made their little
contribution to the cause of man. New things would grow in new places: other
than that, man could have no object for his existence.
New
things to grow in new places.

 
          
 
Lanvin, Planet IV, Sun 3, Sirius System is a
terrestriallike planet. It has three large continents and well over a million
islands dot its shallow seas. It is a tourist's mecca, a farmer's paradise.

 
          
 
The Space Yard of the Force is located on
Centralia
, largest of the land masses. The commercial
lines land on Desdrexia; they claim the climate is better there. Actually it is
just as hot on either of the continents. But
Mount
Helithon
is on Desdrexia. The sight of that
seventy-five-thousand-meter mountain rising from the silky, sanded plain, its
pinnacle shimmering like a crimson diamond, made too beautiful a picture for
the teleposters. The commercial psychologists couldn't afford to pass it up.