"Well, now you've done it!" The hoarse shout came from
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Ediiin Brower. "Smartass know-it-all kid, don't know when to ease off, you blew the damn Drive!"
Lisele didn't want to get up, because if she did, everybody could see she was shaking. And she hadn't actually moved around much in zero-gee since she was nine years old, when the Deux did Turnover on the way to Shaarbant. But if she didn't go soon she was going to pee in her pants.
So she unbuckled and pushed free. Not far, and hanging onto things, in case the Drive came back on. It didn't, though, and she dared a floating leap from the last available handhold to the door of the small latrine just off Control.
Inside, she realized it wasn't going to be all that easy. Turnover never lasted very long, so the fixture wasn't built for zero-gee elimination. Like all the others, shipside, it had no free water in it except when in use; that was so nobody had to check all those things before Turnover.
But now what? All right, no problem. She held a big wad of tissues to herself, soaked it, and disposed of it. Then another. The third one was just to get good and dry.
Heading back into Control she saw the captain talking on intercom; closer, then, she heard, too. And scrambled to get her seat buckle latched, just as Darwin Pope's voice said, "Mark ten and counting; I hope everybody's strapped in."
On the count, Drive hum and accel resumed. "Congratulations, Chief," the captain said. "That's a load off everybody's mind."
"Not so much as you might think." A different voice; that would be deWayne Houk, the Drive Chief. Lisele knew him by sight, but that was about all. Now he said, "We have Drive, yes. But not all of it. The Hoyfarul circuits won't come
UP"
Looking calm enough, Delarov said, "Go on, Chief." The intercom muffled voice overtones. Lisele couldn't gauge the man's stress, as he said, "What we have working is STL, only. And the Nielson Cube, it barely supports that."
Having done all they could, the two men came up from Control; it was time for parley. Katmai Delarov asked all the questions Lisele had in mind, and a few more. The answers didn't change, though. March Hare was stuck with slower-
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than-light Drive, and the ship's supplies weren't geared for that rate of travel.
Blinking once, Delarov asked, "Moray? What's our course? I know there was no opportunity to choose one."
Embarrassed for not having checked the matter earlier, Lisele did so now, and read off the coordinates. "From a course toward Earth, we're about a right-angle off. Heading into unknown space. At least, Tinhead's log has no data in that direction."
The captain frowned. "Tinhead? You said that before." So Lisele explained that it was Tregare's term for any ship's computer.
"All right; it's as good a name as any." Now Delarov's gaze surveyed the group. "What's our next priority? Any ideas?"
Lisele thought. In a similar situation, with too little food to get Inconnu Deux back to Shaarbant with very many people alive, Ivan Marchant had put nearly everybody into freeze. All but the few needed to maintain the ship, and stretching that a little.
As she began to make that suggestion, Mei Lu-teng overrode her. "The very first item on our agenda: do you have any idea how much radiation we all took, back there?"
Lisele didn't, so she waited, until the First Hat said, "We need anti-radiation drugs; we need them immediately. I know they'll make us sicker than anyone's going to like, but-"
"But it beats hell out of dying," Lisele put in. Strangely, she heard herself saying it in Tregare's voice, not her own.
"Quite true," said Lu-teng. "I'll go fetch the stuff, and we can get it over with."
"Just a minute, First." Eduin Brower said it. "What about the ones in freeze? They get the same dosage? We need to wake everybody up and shoot the dope in, right now?"
Lu-teng looked puzzled; then she said, "No. Their life processes are vastly slowed. They took nearly the same damage, yes-but their medication can wait until they're revivified."
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She exited from Control; the rest were left sitting, looking at each other and saying very little. Someone made a throat-clearing sound; looking toward it, Lisele saw that deWayne Houk had something to say.
She'd seen Houk only a few times, spoken hardly at all; her impressions of the man were not favorable. Medium-tall, narrow in build and face, posture slightly hunched, he presented an image she didn't care for. His pale hair, clipped almost to stubble, barely showed against white scalp.
His voice, though, drew attention; it had resonance she wouldn't have expected from such a skimpy thorax. Now he said, "You've not yet heard, from Darwin Pope, all the Drive problems. I don't have the tech background he has, to give it full. What I do know-" Houk paused, mouth twisted as though trying to invent words he hadn't known. "The Nielson. Accel or decel, maybe half of redline max it's good for, just about."
He shook his head. "But land? Get down safe, groundside? Not to think about."
Questioned, Chief Engineer Pope wouldn't contradict his Drive Chief. "Tuning might help; I don't know yet. But if deWayne says we can't land, I have to trust his judgment."
Then Mei Lu-teng brought the radiation med-kit; what with pills and needles, glumly the seven people ingested their loads of future discomfort. Still, though, Lisele knew that Tregare had it right: no matter how bad it might be, this stuff beat hell out of dying.
An hour later, Arlen and Lisele sat in control with Captain Delarov; the other four had left for duty-watch or sleep. Mostly the latter, since just now there wasn't much need for any kind of alert surveillance. Pope and Houk would be down in Drive, either working on the tuning job or sleeping with all alarms set. Brower, after looking at the forward screen and growling to Lisele, "Check your upper left quadrant; seems might be something there," had dossed down in his usual corner.
So with nobody talking, and nothing else to do, Lisele checked the area Brower had suggested. And found something.
"Captain?" Delarov looked up. "I think the Comm Chief was right. Up there-" She pointed. "-the screen shows at
35
least one star we might be able to reach. Limping, the way we'll have to, I estimate four months. Six at the outside." "Six months? The lot of us? Eating what?" "Not the lot of us." Delarov didn't look as if she wanted to listen to any long stories, so Lisele skipped the part about her uncle Ivan. "The way it is, how many do we need awake? There's Control here, and there's Drive. Down there, already they've been doing it with the men sleeping alongside, and alarms on. Maybe you need two there, maybe only one. I know it's not the best way things should be done-"
"But perhaps it's the best we can do." The stretch of Katmai Delarov's lips across her teeth couldn't be called a smile. "All right, Moray; I get your point and I accept it." Now she shrugged. "So tell me. Who else do we freeze, now?"
That part, Lisele hadn't thought about. Now, she did. "Captain, those are your decisions to make, not mine. But you did ask, so-" And thought some more. "In case something else happens from outside, Control needs at least two people. Drive, maybe only one, now-so long as somebody's up who can revive others if they're needed."
"I could do that. And regardless of anything else, Moray, I will stay out of freeze and maintain command of this ship."
"Well, sure, captain."
"Then what are your other recommendations?"
Sidelong, Lisele looked at Arlen. He'd want to stay up-but did the ship need him? Or her, for that matter. Not sure of her own judgment, she said, "Along with you, to do Control, you could have the First Hat, or Arlen here, or even me. Comm Chief Brower, for that matter." She paused. "Down in Drive, I like Darwin Pope and don't like deWayne Houk. But you know them both, better than I do. So on that one I'd like to pass."
Delarov said, "In this mess I think Houk's my best choice. Now then-any suggestions from you, Limmer?" Looking baffled, Arlen shook his head. "Then first thing tomorrow, when Mei's awake to do the honors, you're for freeze."
Arlen didn't answer, so Lisele said, "That leaves, besides Houk down in Drive, just you and the First Hat, and Brower and me. How many more need to go? That is, how many can our supplies support for very long?"
36 \
Delarov's stare, continuing, made Lisele uncomfortable. Finally the woman said, "I'm torn. If we include the scoutship's stores, I could leave at least five of us awake until we reach that star. But what if-oh, it's the right color, but what if we get there and it's no good to us?" She shook her head. "And since we can't land, we're going to need that scout. We may even need it in fully-supplied condition." He hands clenched together. "So I'm going for the bare minimum; two up here and one in Drive. Chancy, but in clear space it's a reasonable chance." Abruptly, then, she said, "Moray-tomorrow you and Brower join Pope and Limmer, at the tanks."
