the Theradin’s belts and pressure equipment.” He gave me a hand to assist me up, but I shook it off so fiercely that I flung myself against the padding on the opposite side of the cabin. I caught apprehensively at a handhold, and looked down at the Theradin.
Haalvordhen lay flattened beneath the complex apparatus. His peaked pixie face was shrunken and ghastly, and his mouth looked badly bruised. I bent closer, then jerked upright with a violence that sent me cascading back across the cabin, almost into the arms of the crewman.
“You must have fixed those belts just now,” I said accusingly. “They were not fastened before blastoff! It’s malicious criminal negligence, and if Haalvordhen dies—” The crewman gave me a slow, contemptuous smile. “It’s my word against yours, sister,” he reminded me.
“In common decency, in common humanity—” I found that my voice was hoarse and shaking, and could not go on. The crewman said humorlessly, “I should think you’d be glad if the geek died in blastoff. You’re awfully concerned about the geek—and you know how that sounds?”
I caught the frame of the skyhook and anchored myself against it. I was almost too faint to speak. “What were you trying to do?” I brought out at last. “Murder the Theradin?”
The crewman’s baleful gaze did not shift from my face. “Suppose you close your mouth,” he said, without malice, but with an even inflection that was far more frightening. “If you don’t, we may have to close it for you. I don’t think much of humans who fraternize with geeks.”
I opened and shut my mouth several times before I could force myself to reply. All I finally said was, “You know, of course, that I intend to speak to the captain?”
“Suit yourself.” He turned and strode contemptuously toward the door. “We’d have been doing you a favor if the geek had died in blastoff. But, as I say, suit yourself. I think your geek’s alive, anyhow. They’re hard to kill.”
I clutched the skyhook, unable to move, while he dragged his body through the sphincter lock and it contracted behind him.
Well, I thought bleakly, I had known what I would be letting myself in for when I’d made the arrangement. And since I was already committed, I might as well see if Haalvordhen were alive or dead. Resolutely I bent over his skyhook, angling sharply to brace myself in free—fall.
He wasn’t dead. While I looked I saw the bruised and bleeding “hands” flutter spasmodically. Then, abruptly, the alien made a queer, rasping noise. I felt helpless and for some reason I was stirred to compassion.
I bent and laid a hesitant hand on the Garensen apparatus which was now neatly and expertly fastened. I was bitter about the fact that for the first time hi my life I had lost consciousness! Had I not done so the crewman could not have so adroitly covered his negligence. But it was important to remember that the circumstance would not have helped Haalvordhen much either.
“Your feelings do you nothing but credit!” The reedy flat voice was almost a whisper. “If I may trespass once more on your kindness—can you unfasten these instruments again?”
I bent to comply, asking helplessly as I did so, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Very far from all right,” the alien mouthed, slowly and without expression.
I had the feeling that he resented being compelled to speak aloud, but I didn’t think I could stand that telepath touch again. The alien’s flat, slitted eyes watched me while I carefully unfastened the suction tubes and cushioning devices.
At this distance I could see that the eyes had lost their color, and that the raw “hands” were flaccid and limp. There were also heavily discolored patches about the alien’s throat and head. He pronounced, with a terribly thick effort: “I should have—been drugged. Now it’s too late. Argha mad—” the words trailed off into blurred Samarran, but the discolored patch in his neck still throbbed sharply, and the hands twitched in an agony which, being dumb, seemed the more fearful.
I clung to the skyhook, dismayed at the intensity of my own emotion. I thought that Haalvordhen had spoken again when the sharp jolt of command sounded, clear and imperative, in my brain.
“Procalamine!” For an instant the shock was all I could feel—the shock, and the overwhelming revulsion at the telepathic touch. There was no hesitation or apology in it now, for the Theradin was fighting for his life. Again the sharp, furious command came: “Give me procalamine!”
And with a start of dismay I realized that most nonhumans needed the drug, which was kept on all spaceships to enable them to live in free—fall.
Few nonhuman races have the stubbornly persistent heart of the Terrans, which beats by muscular contraction alone. The circulation of the Theradin, and similar races, is dependent on gravity to keep the vital fluid pulsing. Procalamine gives their main blood organ just enough artificial muscular spasm to keep the blood moving and working.
Hastily I propelled myself into the “bathroom”—wiggled hastily through the diaphragm, and unscrewed the top of the bin marked FIRST AID. Neatly pigeonholed beneath transparent plastic were sterile bandages, antiseptics clearly marked HUMAN and—separately, for the three main types of nonhuman races, in one deep bin—the small plastic globules of vital stimulants.
I sorted out two purple fluorescent ones—little globes marked procalamine— and looked at the warning, in raised characters on the globule. It read: FOR ADMINISTRATION BY QUALIFIED SPACE PERSONNEL ONLY. A touch of panic made my diaphragm catch. Should I call the Vesta’s captain, or one of the crew?
Then a cold certainty grew in me. If I did, Haalvordhen wouldn’t get the stimulant he needed. I sorted out a fluorescent needle for nonhuman integument, pricked the globule and sucked the dose into the needle. Then, with its tip still enclosed in the plastic globe, I wriggled myself back to where the alien still lay loosely confined by one of the inner straps.
Panic touched me again, with the almost humorous knowledge that I didn’t know where to inject the stimulant, and that a hypodermic injection in space presents problems which only space—trained men are able to cope with. But I reached out notwithstanding and gingerly picked up one of the unmittened “hands.” I didn’t stop to think how I knew that this was the proper site for the injection. I was too overcome with strong physical loathing.
Instinct from man’s remote past on Earth told me to drop the nonhuman flesh and cower, gibbering and howling as my simian antecedents would have done. The raw membrane was feverishly hot and unpleasantly slimy to touch. I fought rising queasiness as I tried to think how to steady him for the injection.
In free—fall there is no steadiness, no direction. The hypodermic needle, of course, worked by suction, but piercing the skin would be the big problem. Also, I was myself succumbing to the dizziness of no—gravity flight, and realized coldly that if I couldn’t make the injection in the next few minutes I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it at all. For a minute I didn’t care, a primitive part of myself reminding me that if the alien died I’d be rid of a detestable cabin mate, and have a decent trip between planets.
Then, stubbornly, I threw off the temptation. I steadied the needle in my hand, trying to conquer the disorientation which convinced me that I was looking both up and down at the Theradin.
My own center of gravity seemed to be located in the pit of my stomach, and I fought the familiar space voyaging instinct to curl up in the foetal position and float. I moved slightly closer to the Theradin. I knew that if I could get close
