The Death of Sleep (31 page)

"Why take chances?" demanded Grabone, leaning back defiantly on the floor and crossing his ankles. "You could poison yourself with unhygienically grown foodstuffs. You know the synth food is safe, and nourishing."

"Have you ever even tried naturally grown food?" Varian demanded.

"Can't tell the difference if I have. I've never been off the
ARCT-10
," Grabone admitted. "I'm a drives engineer. There's no reason for me to have to make planetfall on, I might point out, potentially hazardous missions. Risk your own neck. Leave mine alone."

"Life can be hazardous to your health," Lunzie said cheerfully to Varian beside her. She liked the lively, curly-haired girl who was unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. They did Discipline exercises together in the early shift. Lunzie could tell that Varian's training was of the most basic, though it would seem advanced to anyone who was not an Adept. "How are you chosen to go on planetside missions?" she asked Varian. "Do I have to put my name in the duty roster?"

"Oh, no," Varian replied. "Nothing that organized. Each mission requires such different skills that the first person off the queue might not be qualified. Details of a mission's personnel needs are posted days before the actual drop. If you're interested, you inform Comm Center and you're listed as available. A mission leader then picks the complement. Some missions are planned at FSP Center. Some develop out of circumstances. Let me explain. The
ARCT-10
's
job is to keep tabs on all the Exploration and Evaluation vessels in our sector and support them with ground teams when necessary. So you really never know what's or who's going to be needed. The
ARCT
also keeps checking in on message beacons previously set in this sector by initial EEC scouts. They strip off messages whenever we're in line of sight and send reports back to FSP Center. If a recon or an emergency team are needed,
ARCT
supplies it. So really," and Varian shrugged, "you can gain a lot of xeno experience in a three year stint."

"And that's what you're after?" Lunzie said.

"You bet! That's what'll get me a good dirtside job." Then her vivacious face changed and she lowered her voice. "There may be a very good one coming up. I've a friend in Com and he said for me to keep my ears open."

"Then you're not at all nervous about the scuttlebutt I've been hearing?"

"Which one?" asked Varian scornfully.

"The one about planting colonists without their permission?"

"That old one." Grabone was openly derisive. "Rumors sometimes start themselves, you know. I'll excuse you this time, Lunzie, since I know you're not long on board. You wouldn't know how many times that one's oozed through the deckplates."

"That's reassuring," Lunzie said. "It seems so unlike an official EEC position."

"It's a lot of space dust," Grabone went on. "You got that from the heavyworlders, didn't you? Their favorite paranoia. They think we'll strand them the first chance we get. Well, it isn't true."

"No, actually, it wasn't the heavyworlders," Lunzie said slowly; she'd kept well away from any of that group. ''It was one of the visiting scientists who wants only to finish his duty and go home on time. I gather he's expecting a grandchild."

"For one thing," Grabone went on to prove the rumor fallacious, "
ARCT-10
can't plant anyone. Colonies take years of planning. It's hard enough to find the right mix of people who want to settle on a certain world, and live together in peace, not to say cooperation. You wouldn't believe the filework that has to go out to EEC before a colony is approved."

"Well, planting would be a quicker, if illicit, way to get more colonies started," Varian suggested. "There are some found that don't meet minimum requirements but if people were planted, they'd learn to cope."

"Doesn't anyone planetside practice birth control?" Lunzie asked, with a vivid memory of the crowds on Alpha Centauri. "Having dozens of offspring without a thought for environment or a reasonable standard of living for future citizens."

"Even a mathematical expansion of the population, one child per adult," Varian pointed out, "would soon deplete currently available resources, let alone a geometric increase. Judicious planting could reduce some of the pressure. Not that I advocate it, mind you."

One of the lights of the duty panel flickered. Involuntarily everyone in the room glanced at the blue medical light. Lunzie clambered to her feet. "I can respond."

She flipped on the switch at the panel. "Lunzie."

"Accident at interface A-10. One crew member down, several others injured."

Lunzie mentally plotted the fastest path to the scene of the accident and hit the comswitch again.

"Acknowledged," she said. "I'm on my way." She waved farewell to Grabone and Varian.

The interfaces were one of the most sensitive and carefully watched parts of the multi-environmental system aboard the
ARCT-10.
Whereas normal bulkheads were accustomed to the pressure of a single atmosphere, the interfaces had to stand between two different atmospheric zones, sometimes of vastly different pressure levels which might also vary according to program. A-10 stood between the normal-weight human environment and the heavyworlders' gravity zone. Had this happened in her first few weeks aboard, she'd have become hopelessly lost. Now she knew the scheme which named decks and section by location and personnel, she knew she wasn't far from A-10 and found her way there without trouble.

Dozens of other crew members were on the move through the corridors in the A Section. At the point at which A-10 had been breached, frigid wind of the same temperature as the ambient on Diplo was pouring through into the warmer lightweight zone. Clutching her medical bag to her chest, Lunzie passed through a hastily erected baffle chamber that cut off the icy winds from the rest of the deck and would act as a temporary barrier while the heavy gravity was restored. Beyond the broken wall, heavyworlders who had been in their exercise room were picking up weights and bodybuilding equipment made suddenly light by the drop in gravity. Workers of every configuration hurried in and out of the chambers, clearing away debris, tying down torn circuits and redirecting pipes whose broken ends pumped sewage and water across the floor. Lunzie made a wide circle around two workers who were cutting out the ragged remains of the damaged panel with an arc torch.

"Doctor, quickly!" An officer in the black uniform of environmental sciences motioned urgently where she knelt by the far wall, "Orlig's twitching even if he is unconscious. He was checking the wall when it blew."

Lunzie hurried over, ignoring the stench of sewage and the odor of burned flesh. Stretched out on the deck at the woman's side was a gigantic heavy-worlder wearing a jumpsuit and protective goggles. He had been severely gashed by flying metal and a tremendous hematoma colored the side of his face. Though his eyes were closed, he was thrashing wildy and muttering. Lunzie's hands flew to her belt pouch for her bod bird.

"I don't dare give him a sedative until I know if there's neural damage, Truna," Lunzie explained.

"You do what you have to do. Other heavyworlders incurred only heavy bruises when the wall popped and they were blown against the bulkhead toward light gravity. They walked away. No one else was on this side of the wall. Orlig took the full blast. Poor beast." The environment tech got up and began shouting orders at the mob of workers, leaving Lunzie alone with her patient.

Orlig was one of the largest specimens of his sub-group that Lunzie had ever seen. Her outstretched hand covered only his palm and third phalange of his fingers. She had no idea what she would do if he went out of control.

"Fardling lightweights," he snarled, thrashing. Lunzie jumped back out of range as his swinging arm just missed her and smashed onto the deck. "Set me up to die! I'll kill them!" The arm swept up, fingers curved like claws, ripping at the air, and smashed down again, shaking the deck. "All of them!"

Nervous but equally determined not to let her fear of heavyworlders keep her from treating one in desperate need of her skills, Lunzie approached to take a bod bird reading. According to that, Orlig was bleeding internally. He had to be sedated and treated before he hemorrhaged to death.

She couldn't fix his arm while he was banging it around like that. The bod bird was inconclusive on the point of neural trauma. She would have to take her chances. She programmed a hefty dose of sedative and applied the hypogun to the nearest fleshy part of the thrashing man. Orlig levered himself up when he felt the injection hiss against his upper arm and snarled bare-toothed at Lunzie. The drug took speedy effect and his arms collapsed under him. He fell to the deck with a bang.

Still shaking, Lunzie began debriding his wounds and slapping patches of synthskin on them. Shards of metal had been driven into his flesh through the heavy fabric of the jumpsuit. The goggles had spared his eyes though the plasglas lens were cracked. What with flying debris and the force of the explosion, the man was lucky to be alive. She tried to think which ship's system could have blown like that.

Unbelievably, Orlig started moving again. How could he move? She'd given him enough sedative to sleep six shifts. Lunzie worked faster. She must unseal the upper half of his jumpsuit to repair his wounds. The fabric was so heavy she got mired in the folds of it. Then in a restless gesture, he jerked his arm and sent Lunzie stumbling across the room.

Lunzie crawled back to him and gathered her equipment together in her lap. She programmed the hypo for another massive dose of sedative and held it to the heavyworlder's arm. Just as she was about to push the button, Orlig's small eyes opened and focused on hers. His gigantic hand closed around her hand and wrist, immobilizing her but not hurting her.

He'll kill me! Lunzie thought nervously. She drew in a breath to yell for help from the struggling engineers at the broken wall.

"Who are you?" he demanded, bringing the other fist up under her face.

Lunzie kept her voice low out of fear. "My name is Lunzie. I'm a doctor."

Orlig's eyes narrowed, but the fist dropped. "Lunzie? Do you know a Thek?"

He's raving, Lunzie thought. "Orlig, please lie back. You were badly injured. I can't treat you if you keep thrashing about. Let go of my hand." Sometimes a firm no-nonsense voice reassured a nervous patient.

His fist grabbed her up by the neck of her tunic. "Do you know a Thek?"

"Yes. Tor."

Subtly the heavyworlder's attitude altered. He swiveled his head around to glare at the bustling crowd of workers and technicians, and wrinkled his nose at the sewage, now being mopped up.

"Then get me out of here. Someplace no one would expect to find me." With that he let her go and sagged to the floor.

Lunzie shouted for a gurney and waited by Orlig until it came. She sent an emergency crewman back for a grav lift so that she could manage the gurney herself in spite of Orlig's mass. He snarled when the crewman came a centimeter closer to him than necessary. He had to be in considerable pain with those wounds. She wondered just why he was braving it out. Without any help he somehow rolled his mangled body onto the gurney.

"Get me out of here," he muttered, eyes glittering with pain and an underlying fear that he permitted her to glimpse.

Operating the anti-grav lift, she guided the gurney out of the interface area through one hatch, running along beside her patient and up a freight turbovator.

"Anybody following?" he demanded urgently, gripping her hand in his huge fingers.

"No, no one. Not even a rat."

He grunted. "Hurry it up."

"This was all your idea." But then she saw what she was looking for, one of the small first-aid stations that were located on every deck and section, usually for routine medichecks, contagion isolation quarters, or treatments that didn't require stays in the main infirmary.

Once the door slid shut behind them, Orlig grinned up at her.

"Krims, but you lightweights are easy to scare." He surveyed the room with a searching glance as Lunzie positioned the gurney by the soft-topped examination table which doubled as a hospital bed when the sides were raised. He raised a hand as Lunzie started toward him with the hypo. "No, no more sedatives. I'm practically unconscious now."

Lunzie stared at him. "I thought you must be immune to it."

Orlig grimaced. "I had to use pain to stay awake. Someone rigged that wall to fall on me. They want me dead."

With a sigh, Lunzie recognized the classic symptoms of agoraphobic paranoia. She put away the hypospray and held up the flesh-knitter.

"Well, I'm a doctor and as I've never seen you before, I have no urge to kill you." Yet, she thought. "And since you heavyworlders are such big machismo types, I'll sew you into one piece again in front of your eyes. Does that relieve your mind?"

"Coromell didn't say you'd be so dumb, Doctor."

Lunzie nearly dropped the piece of equipment in her hands. "Coromell?" she repeated. "First you want to know my Thek acquaintances, now you're throwing the Admiralty at me. Just who are you?"

"I work for him, too. And I've got some information that he's got to have. This isn't the first attempt on my life. I've been trying to figure out a legitimate reason to contact you. But I had to be careful. Couldn't have suspicion fall on you . . ."

"Like a wall fell on you?" Lunzie put in.

"Yeah, but it's working out just right, isn't it? I can't risk this information getting lost." He groaned. "I tried to get in touch with Tor. I think that's where I blew it. Us heavyworlders don't generally seek out Theks." He winced. "All right, I think I'll accept a local anesthetic now you're playing tinkertoy with my ribs. It feels like meteors were shot through it. What's it look like?"

Lunzie peered at his chest and ran the bod bird over it. "Like you got meteors shot through it. I might be able to reach Tor without anyone suspecting me. I don't know why, but it likes me."

"Few are as lucky. But you've got to find the right Thek without asking for it by name. That's the hard part. They all look alike at the size they fit on the
ARCT.
Look . . ." Orlig's voice was weaker now as shock began to seep through his formidable physical stamina. He fumbled in his left ear, tilting his head. "Fardles. You got something like tweezers? That wall must've knocked it down inside."