The Lani People Page 20

  CHAPTER XVIII

  "I'm frightened," Copper said, twisting uncomfortably in the shock chairbeside Kennon's.

  "After you have been so brave?" Kennon asked. "That's nonsense. It'sjust nervous reaction. Now web in like I showed you. It's time forblast-off. We don't dare wait much longer."

  "All right--but I have a feeling that this isn't right. Something isgoing to go wrong."

  "I hope you don't have precognition." Kennon smiled. "I've checkedeverything. The ship is as good as she'll ever be. There's nothing morethat we can do."

  "There's one consolation," Copper said wanly. "At we'll die together."

  "There's a better chance that we'll live together."

  "I hope so."

  "Ready?" Kennon asked.

  She nodded.

  He flipped the switches that would send the fuel rods into the reactor.Below them a soft, barely audible whine ascended the sonic scale toa point of irritating inaudibility. Kennon smiled. The spindizzy wasfunctioning properly. He flipped a second bank of switches and a dullroar came from the buried stem. Ashes and pumice heated to incandescencewere blown through the air. Molten drops of radioactive lava skitteredacross the durilium hull as Kennon advanced the power. The whole stemof the ship was immersed in a seething lake of bolling rock as the Egglifted slowly with ponderous dignity into the night sky.

  "Hang on!" Kennon said. "I'm going to hyper." His hand moved a red leverand the Egg shimmered and vanished with a peculiar wrenching motioninto an impossible direction that the mind could not grasp. And theinterceptor missile from Otpen One nosed through the space the Egg hadoccupied.

  * * *

  "We made it!" Kennon said, looking across the writhing semifluid controlboard, shifting oddly in the harsh yellow monochromatic light thatpervaded the cabin. The screens were leaking like sieves, but they wereholding well enough to keep Cth yellow from being anything more than anannoyance. He glanced over at Copper, a fantastically elongated Copperwho looked like a madman's dream of chaos.

  And Copper screamed! The sound echoed and re-echoed, dying away with alingering discordant reverberation that made his skin tingle.

  "Copper! It's all right! It's all right! Stop it!"

  Copper screamed again and her elongated figure suddenly foreshortenedand collapsed into a small writhing ball from which two small pink handsemerged clutching at a gelid mass of air that flowed sluggishly aroundthem.

  And Kennon knew what he had forgotten! Hyperspace with leaky screens wasnothing to inflict upon an unprepared mind. It is one thing to endurepartial exposure after months of training, with experienced medicsstanding by to help you through the shock phase, but quite another tobe thrust from a safe and sheltered existence into the mind shatteringdistortions of the Cth continuum.

  The Egg was old. Her screens, never good at best, were hardly more thanfilters. Through the hull, through the drive lattice, the viciouslydistorted Cth environment seeped into the ship turning prosaic shapesof controls and instruments into writhing masses of obscene horror thatsent extensions wiggling off into nothingness at eye-aching angles. Aspaceman could take this--knowing it wasn't real--but a tyro could not.

  Copper collapsed. Her mind, assaulted by sensations no untrained personshould experience, went into shock. But she wasn't granted the mercyof unconsciousness. Terrified by a pseudo reality that surpassed herwildest nightmares, she stared wide-eyed at the control room and thething that had been Kennon. She screamed until her throat was raw,until the monster beside her touched her with Kennon's hands. Then,mercifully, she felt a stinging in her arm and all sensation ceased.

  Kennon stared glumly at the controls. Fleming alone knew how manyobjective years were passing outside as they hurtled through four-space.Subjectively it would only be hours aboard the Egg, but a decade--ormaybe a century--might pass outside this mad universe where neither timenor speed had meaning. The old ships didn't have temporal compensators,nor could they travel through upper bands of Cth where subjectiveand objective time were more nearly equal. They were trapped ina semi-stasis of time as the ship fled on through the distortedmonochromatic regions that bypassed normal space.

  The Egg slipped smoothly out of the hyper jump, back into the normaluniverse. Beta floated above them, the blue shield of her atmosphereshining softly in the light of Beta's sun.

  "Couldn't hit it that good again in a hundred tries," Kennon gloated."Halfway across the galaxy--and right on the nose." He looked at theshock chair beside him. Copper was curled into a tight ball inside theconfining safety web, knees drawn up, back bent, head down--arms wrappedprotectingly around her legs--the fetal position of catatonic shock.

  He shook her shoulder--no response. Her pulse was thready and irregular.Her breathing was shallow. Her lips were blue. Her condition wasobvious--space shock--extreme grade. She'd need medical attention if shewas going to live. And she'd need it fast!

  "Just why, you educated nitwit," he snarled at himself, "didn't you havesense enough to give her that injection of Sonmol before we hypered! Youhaven't the sense of a decerebrate Capellan grackle!"

  He turned on the radio. "Emergency!" he said. "Any station! Space-shockcase aboard. Extreme urgency."

  "Identify yourself--give your license. Over."

  "What port are you?"

  "Hunterstown--will you please identify? Over."

  "Your co-ordinates," Kennon snapped. "Over."

  "280.45--67.29 plus. Repeat--request your identification."

  "Pilot Kennon, Jac, Beta 47M 26429. I have no I.D. for the ship--andyou'll see why when I land. Over."

  "Hunterstown Port to Kennon. You are not--repeat not--cleared to land.Go into orbit and report your position. Over."

  "Sorry, Hunterstown. You wouldn't have checked in if you didn't haveroom, and a hospital. This is an emergency. I'm setting down. Out."

  "But--" The words got no farther. Kennon was already spinning the ship.

  "All right--we have you on the scope. But this is a class one violation.You may come in on Landing Beam One."

  "Sorry. I have no GCA."

  "What?--what sort of ship are you flying?" The voice was curious.

  "I'm matching intrinsics over your port. Talk me in when I break throughthe overcast."

  "Talk you in?"

  "That's right. My instruments are obsolete."

  "Great Halstead! What else?"

  "I have an Ion drive. Plus two radioactive."

  "Oh no!--And you still want to come in?"

  "I have to. My passenger's in shock. She's going to have a baby."

  "All right--I'll try to get you down in one piece."

  "Have an ambulance ready," Kennon said.

  Kennon lowered the Egg through the overcast. Ground control picked himup smoothly and took him down as though it had been rehearsed. The Eggtouched down in the radioactive area of the port. Decontamination jetshissed, sluicing the ship to remove surface contamination.

  "Ochsner! what sort of a ship is that?" Ground Control's startled voicecame over the annunciator.

  "It's an old one," Kennon said.

  "That's a gross understatement. Stand by for boarders. Ambulance comingup."

  Kennon opened the airlock and two radiation-suited men entered. "Atleast you had sense enough to wear protective clothing in this hotbox,"one said as they carefully unwebbed Copper and carried her out of thelock. "You wait here. The Port Captain wants to see you."

  "Where are you taking her? What Center?" Kennon asked.

  "What should you care? You've nearly killed her. The idea of takinga pregnant woman up in this death trap! What in Fleming's name's thematter with your brain?"

  "I had to," Kennon said. "I had to. It was a matter of life and death."For once, he thought wryly, the cliche was true.

  The Betan's face behind the transparent helmet was disgusted andunbelieving. "I hear that sort of thing every day," he said. "Am Isupposed to believe it?"

  "You'd believe it if you'd have been where I was," Kennon muttered."Now--whe're are y
ou taking her?" he demanded.

  The man arched blond eyebrows. "To the local Medical Center--where else?There's only one in this area."

  "Thanks," Kennon said.

  He watched the ambulance flit off as he waited for the Spaceport Patrol.There was no further need for the protection suit, so he peeled it offand hung it in the control-room locker. Copper was right, he mused. Itdid itch.

  The Port Captain's men were late as usual--moving gingerly through theradiation area. A noncom gestured for him to enter their carryall. "PortCaptain wants to see you," he said.

  "I know," Kennon replied.

  "You should have waited upstairs."

  "I couldn't. It was a matter of medicine," Kennon said.

  The noncom's face sobered. "Why didn't you say so? All you said was thatit was an emergency."

  "I've been away. I forgot."

  "You shouldn't have done that. You're a Betan, aren't you?"

  Kennon nodded.

  They drove to the Port Office, where Kennon expected--and got--a badtime from the port officials. He filled out numerous forms, signedaffidavits, explained his unauthorized landing, showed his spaceman'sticket, defended his act of piloting without an up-to-date license,signed more forms, entered a claim for salvage rights to the Egg, andfinally when the Legal Division, the Traffic Control Division, theSpaceport Safety Office, Customs, Immigration, and Travelers Aid hadfinished with him, he was ushered into the presence of the Port Captain.

  The red-faced chunky officer eyed him with a cold stare. "You'll belucky, young man, if you get out of this with a year in Correction. Yourstory doesn't hang together."

  It didn't, Kennon thought. But there was no sense telling all of it toa Port Captain. Under no circumstances could the man be any help to him.He had neither the power nor the prestige to request a Brotherhood Boardof Inquiry. In rank, he was hardly more than a glorified Traffic Controlofficer. It would do no good to tell him an improbable tale of slaveryon a distant planet. The only thing to do was wait out the storm andhope it would pass. If worst came to worst he'd use his rank, but he'dmade enough stir already. He doubted if the Captain had authority toorder him into Detention--but he was certain to get a lecture. Theseminor officials loved to tell someone off. He gritted his teeth. He'dendure it for Copper's sake--and to get out of here quietly. Alexanderwould undoubtedly have agents posted by now, and his only chance fortemporary freedom of action was to get out of here with as little fussas possible.

  He sat quietly, his flushed face and tight jaw muscles betraying hisimpatience as the Captain paced up and down and talked on and on. Theman sounded like he could go for hours. With increasing impatienceKennon listened to the cadenced flow of complaint and condemnation,occasionally inserting a "Yes, sir" or "Sorry, sir" or "No, sir" as thewords flowed around him.

  However, there had to be a breaking point somewhere, and the monotonywas beginning to wear his temper thin. Another five minutes, hereflected, was about all he could take.

  The door chime rang softly.

  "Come in," the Port Captain said, breaking off in mid-tirade. The changein his manner was so abrupt that Kennon couldn't help smiling.

  A young blond man in an interne's gray uniform entered the room.

  "Yes, Doctor," the Port Captain said. "What can I do for you?"

  "Do you have a Jac Kennon here? Dr. Jac Kennon?"

  "Did you say doctor?" the Port Captain said in a half-strangled voice.

  "You never let me tell you," Kennon said mildly, "that my landing herewas a matter of medicine. Technically you have contributed to a delay intreatment."

  The Port Captain's face paled. "Why didn't you say something?" he said.

  "Against your gale of wind I would be but a faint breeze," Kennon saidcoldly. He turned to the interne. "I'm Dr. Kennon." They bowed formallyto each other.

  "I'm Smalley, sir, from the medical center. Dr. Brainard sends hiscompliments and requests that you join him for consultation."

  "The Port Captain--" Kennon began.

  "Don't worry about it, Doctor. I'll relinquish responsibility to Dr.Brainard," the Captain said.

  "I have placed a formal written request with your office," Smalley saidstiffly. "You are relieved of further charge. Dr. Kennon is urgentlyneeded. It is a matter of medicine."

  The Captain looked relieved. On Beta it was poor policy to interferewith the doings of doctors and engineers--or even doctors of philosophy.

  "Very well. He's yours--and I'm glad to be rid of him." The Port Captainbowed to Kennon and Smalley and stalked out of the office.

  "Pompous little man," Kennon observed, "but he certainly can talk."

  "Oh--you know these Administrative people," the interne saiddepreciatingly. "One mustn't mind them. They're necessary nuisances."He eyed Kennon curiously. "How is it that you didn't stand on yourprofessional rights?"

  "I have my reasons--but they have nothing to do with medicine."

  "Oh--I see. Ethical." The interne's voice was faintly sarcastic.

  "Manners, Doctor--manners." Kennon's voice was gentle but the interneflushed a dull red.

  "Sorry, sir."

  "Don't mention it. It's normal for a graduate to confuse liberty withlicense." Kennon smiled. "Don't worry. I shan't report you."

  "That's good of you, sir." Smalley's face registered relief. Demeritswere difficult to erase--particularly ones of courtesy.

  Kennon wondered if the young man would report himself. He doubted it.The interne didn't look the type--probably he was dated for some obscurejob, like a general practitioner. He shrugged. It took all kinds to makea profession. Even the Smalleys had their place.

  "That girl you brought in," Smalley said as they entered a whitecar emblazoned with the three crosses, red, blue, and green, thatrepresented the three fields of medicine. "She's an interesting case.I've never seen space shock before. And the patient herself--one wouldhardly believe she was a Betan."

  "She isn't," Kennon said.

  "So?" Blond eyebrows rose in inverted U's of surprise. "But that'shardly possible. Our tests indicate-"

  "Don't you think that this is a matter for Dr. Brainard?" Kennon saidicily. "Protocol--"

  "Of course. Stupid of me--but the case is so interesting. Half thecenter staff have seen her already. I wasn't proposing to discuss thecase. It wouldn't be proper. Even though you are only a veterinarian."

  "Only?" Kennon's voice was hard. "I shouldn't have to remind you ofthis, Mr. Smalley--but I have been for the past two years on a world ofbad manners. I expected better here at home."

  Smalley flushed to the roots of his straw-colored hair. "Sorry, Doctor,"he muttered. "I don't know what's the matter with me."

  "I can tell you," Kennon said. "You've just graduated."

  "How did you know?" Smalley said.

  "I was a graduate once, myself--not too long ago."

  "How long, sir?"

  "Class of Eighty-seven."

  "That's twelve years ago," Smalley said.

  Kennon nodded. Ten years lost. Not bad--not bad at all. But Alexandercould have done a lot in ten years.

  "I meant no disrespect," Smalley said worriedly.

  "I know it. But if you intend to practice on Beta, you'd betterpolish your professional manner. Now where I was, it didn't make muchdifference. Laymen often called me 'Doc.'"

  Smalley was properly shocked. "I hope you didn't encourage them, sir."

  "It was impossible to discourage them," Kennon said. "After all, whenthe man who hires you--"

  "Oh--entrepreneurs," Smalley said in a tone that explained everything.

  * * *

  The car stopped in front of the Medical Center's staff entrance. "Thisway, sir," Smalley said. He led the way down a green-tiled corridorto an elevator--then down another corridor past a pair of soft-footednurses who eyed them curiously--looking at Kennon's tunic and sandalswith mild disapproval in their eyes. Smalley stopped and knocked softlyon a closed door.

  "Enter," said a pleasant baritone voice from the
annunciator.

  "Dr. Brainard--Dr. Kennon," Smalley said.

  Kennon liked the man instantly. A plump, pink-cheeked man of middleage, with prematurely white hair, Dr. Will Brainard combined a fatherlyappearance with an impression of quick intelligence. The fat thatsheathed his stocky body had obviously not touched his mind. Brainardrose from the deep chair near the window where he had been sitting,knocked the ashes from his pipe, and bowed stiffly. His eyes--sharppoints of blue in the smooth pinkness of his face--surveyed Kennoncuriously.

  "So you're the young man who takes untrained pregnant women for rides inold-fashioned spacers," he said. "Didn't you know what would happen?"

  "I was in a hurry, Doctor," Kennon said.

  "Obviously. Now tell me about it." Brainard looked at the eager-facedinterne standing behind Kennon. "That will be all, Smalley," he said.

  Kennon waited until the door closed. "Ordinarily," he said, "I'd neverhave done a thing like that, but there were some very pressing reasons.However, I should have given her an injection of Somnol before westarted. I'm criminally liable. If anything happens to her--" His voicewas tight with worry.

  "You'd give her an injection?" Brainard said. "I hope you didn't meanthat."

  "But I did, sir. I've given thousands of Lani injections."

  "What's a Lani?"

  "She is, sir. The impression has been that her race isn't human."

  "Nonsense--it's obvious she is."

  "A Brotherhood Court of Inquiry didn't think so."

  "Hmm. Is that so?"

  "Yes, sir.--But before I go on, tell me, how is she?"

  "Oh, she'll be fine. A little mental therapy and plenty of rest are allshe needs. She's a remarkably healthy young woman. But this is besidethe point. There are a number of unusual features about this case thatneed investigation." Brainard took a standard hospital form from hisdesk. "Mind if I ask you some questions, Doctor?"

  "Not at all but you are due for some unpleasant shocks as you go throughthat form."

  "I believe I can survive them," Brainard said dryly.

  "This is professional confidence--" Kennon began.

  "Of course, of course," Brainard said impatiently. "Now let's get onwith it."

  * * *

  "This is the most amazing tale I've ever heard," Brainard said slowly."Are you certain you are telling the truth?"

  Kennon grinned. "I don't blame you for not believing me--but theevidence is conclusive, and there is enough documentary evidence inthe space ship--and in the fact of the ship itself to prove what I amsaying. Laboratory tests here will establish the fact that Copper'schild is also mine. And as for Flora, a Brotherhood Investigation Teamcan prove that part."

  "That will be attended to," Brainard said grimly.

  "But how did you deduce she wasn't from a Betan colony?" Kennon asked.

  Brainard smiled. "That wasn't hard. Her sun tan and the condition of herfeet proved she was a practicing nudist. No Betan girl ever practicesnudism to my knowledge. Besides, the I.D. tattoo under her left arm andthe V on her hip are no marks of our culture. Then there was anotherthing--the serological analysis revealed no gerontal antibodies. Shehad never received an injection of longevity compound in her life. Thismight occur, but it's highly improbable. The evidence indicates thatshe's extra-Betan."

  Kennon nodded.

  "But this business of her being fifteen years old! That's impossible.She has the development of a woman of twenty-five."

  "Remember the Alpha V colony?" Kennon said.