Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  “Yes,” Spock said, “and we appear powerless to stop it.”

  “What’s going to happen?” McCoy asked.

  Spock looked at him. “I do not know, Doctor,” he said. Then he peered across the compartment to one of the secondary stations. “Lieutenant Palmer,” he said, “raise the shuttlecraft.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  When the pilots of the two shuttles appeared onscreen, Spock warned them away from the Guardian.

  Lieutenant Jimmy Clayton held the shuttlecraft Kepler at high altitude, as ordered. He checked the sensor readout on the main panel, verifying the position of the second shuttle, the Herschel, which he saw currently kept station at a safe distance. Then he looked to the small viewscreen located in the bulkhead to his left. Behind him, the security contingent Commander Spock had ordered down to the planet surface had already crowded around so that they could see.

  The display had been split into two images. On the left, at maximum magnification, sat the peculiar alien artifact, looking to Clayton more than anything else like a large, misshapen doughnut standing on end. He had no doubt of its interest to xeno-archeologists—it even intrigued him—but that seemed right now like a moot point. The right side of the display showed the object’s imminent demise.

  As the Gr’oth streaked through the atmosphere of the planet, its outer hull began to heat, but the duranium-tritanium composite easily withstood the rigors of reentry. As it plunged toward the planet, it became abundantly clear that, as Commander Spock had suspected, it targeted the artifact. The officers aboard the Kepler watched in silence.

  The body of the Klingon battle cruiser blocked a direct view of the impact, but as best Clayton could tell, the D7 warship slammed into the artifact dead on. The display aboard the shuttle dimmed automatically as the resulting fireball grew more luminescent than the planet’s star at midday. Temperatures at the point of impact soared to millions of degrees. Within ten seconds, the hot, luminous cloud had widened to two kilometers, mushrooming into the air at a hundred meters per second.

  With the Klingon ship obliterated and the impact confirmed, Clayton reached forward to his flight-control panel. Per Commander Spock’s instructions, he headed the shuttle back to the Enterprise. On his sensor readout, he saw that the Herschel had also set course for the ship.

  As he piloted the Kepler, Clayton continued to scan the planet surface. Where once there had stretched a flat, barren plain, a crater two hundred meters deep and a kilometer in diameter had now been opened. Nowhere in all of that violent destruction was there any sign whatsoever of either the Klingon battle cruiser or the alien artifact. Both had been vaporized instantly.

  “DeSalle to sickbay.”

  What now? McCoy thought as he finished studying the readings on the diagnostic panel above his patient. After the Klingon ship had destroyed the Guardian, he’d left auxiliary control, worn out and thinking that he should try to get some sleep. Instead, he’d returned to sickbay to check on the wounded.

  Now, he made a notation on the data slate he carried, gave Lieutenant Rahda the best smile he could muster, and then crossed the compartment to the intercom. “Sickbay, McCoy here,” he said. “What can I do for you, DeSalle?”

  “Doc,” DeSalle said, the excitement in his voice apparent, “we need a medical team on deck three immediately. We’ve found the bridge crew.”

  “What?” McCoy said. The bridge crew? Did he mean Jim and the others? “Where?”

  “They’re in a turbolift,” DeSalle said. “They were leaving the bridge when the explosion hit. The concussion damaged the car they were in and wedged it sideways in the tube. They’ve been unconscious and trapped between decks.”

  “Are they all right?” McCoy asked breathlessly, almost not wanting to pose the question for fear of what news the answer might bring.

  “They’re a little banged up, and the captain and Lieutenant Sulu are unconscious,” DeSalle said, “but all six of them are alive.”

  All six! McCoy thought. “Where are you exactly, DeSalle?” he asked.

  “Deck three, central turboshaft,” DeSalle said. “We’ve turned off the gravity in the tube and we’re floating them out right now.”

  “All right,” McCoy said. “I’ll be right there.” He closed the intercom channel, then looked over at Lieutenant Rahda, who had a wide smile on her face. So did the other two patients in the compartment. As quickly as he could, McCoy retrieved a tricorder and a medical pouch, then left sickbay.

  As fatigued as he was, he found the energy to run.

  Twenty-Five

  1932

  As Phil drove through the November morning chill, he waved to the folks he saw walking along the commons. As usual, half a dozen men climbed onto the rear platform of his truck as he passed them. When he reached Main Street, he saw Len McCoy just heading down from Mrs. Hartwell’s. Phil called out to him, and his friend hurried forward and jumped aboard as well.

  Len had been living at the boarding house for a few months at this point, though Phil often joshed with him that he and Lynn saw him more often now than ever. In September and October, he’d spent mornings out at their farm picking cotton before trundling off in the afternoons to his job at the Seed and Feed. He’d also started attending church with them from time to time. Though he didn’t participate much, he did sit and listen respectfully, and Phil knew that it made Lynn happy to have him there; he figured Len knew that too.

  As Phil followed Mill Road along the curve that dipped down to the left, he thought about how he and Lynn had become such good friends with Len in so short a time. Honestly, Phil felt closer to Len than to his own brother—and probably trusted him more too. They spent a great deal of time together, with Len often coming out to the house after work, spending many an evening with them in the parlor spinning stories. Though the conversations frequently turned to Phil or Lynn or the folks in town, they’d also learned a few details about Len. He’d once spoken briefly about his childhood in Atlanta, and he’d revealed that he had no family left—other than his “cousin” Phil, of course. They’d all laughed about that. And late one night, when Lynn had been missing her parents fiercely, Len had shared with them that his ma had passed on while bringing him into the world, and that his pa had gone too after a long and painful illness.

  The truck topped the last hill along Mill Road, and Phil pulled off and parked beside the other vehicles already there. After grabbing his lunch pail from the seat, he climbed out of the truck. Len stood near the back, waiting for him, while the other men had already started toward the mill. “Morning, Phil,” Len said. His southern drawl had thickened since he’d first arrived in Hayden.

  “Morning, Len,” Phil said, walking over. “Still begging Mister Duncan for a job, huh?” After months of visiting the superintendent in the hopes of securing work, Len still came out to the mill at least a couple of mornings a week. So far, Mr. Duncan hadn’t been able to hire him on—though with all the cotton coming in recently, the mill had taken on a few new men, but those jobs had gone to folks who’d lived in town a far sight longer than Len had. Len understood, though, and he came out anyway.

  “Hey, one of these days Mister Duncan’s going to get tired of seeing me in his office and he’s going to give me some work,” Len said.

  “Sure, sure,” Phil said as they began walking down to the mill. “I know I’d give you a job if it meant not having to see your face first thing in the morning.”

  “My good man,” Len said, “you don’t deserve to see my face every morning.”

  “Dang right,” Phil said, and he gave Len a playful shove in the shoulder. “You coming out to the house tonight?”

  “That depends,” Len said. “My pride has been wounded, and there might be just one thing that can help it recover.”

  “It wouldn’t be peach cobbler, now, would it?” Phil asked. “Probably not. Guess I’ll just have to eat the pie Lynn’s making today by myself.”

  “If you insist on my presence,” Len
said, “I suppose I’ll just have to be there.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Phil said with a laugh.

  When they reached the bottom of the hill, Len headed off to Mr. Duncan’s office and Phil went inside the mill. Even though the whistle hadn’t blown yet, Phil heard some of the machines had already been started up in the back. He crossed the width of the large, open floor, past a row of carders, and then along the back wall toward his own machine. Near the corner, he saw that a number of men had gathered round, and as Phil approached them, Danny Johnson stumbled forward and out of the group. Some of the men laughed, but two or three looked concerned. Danny threw his hands high against the wall and bent forward.

  “Danny, y’all okay?” Phil asked as he reached him. Danny shook his head, then slapped at his chest. “What’s the matter, you hurt yourself or something?” Phil asked as the other men walked over. Danny still said nothing, but now he reached up and motioned to his throat. His eyes had grown wide. “You choking?” Phil asked. Danny nodded frantically, and Phil quickly reached up and started pounding him on the back, attempting to help him clear whatever had gotten lodged in his windpipe.

  It didn’t work.

  “I’m going to get Doc Lyles,” he told Danny. “Somebody keep helping him,” he added, addressing the other men and indicating his patting motion on Danny’s back. As Rufus Dooley stepped up to take over, Phil raced back across the mill floor, then ran outside and over to Mr. Duncan’s office. There, he reached up beside the door and pulled on the whistle, once, twice, three times, the town’s signal for a medical emergency at the mill. If Doc Lyles was home—and where else would he be so early in the morning? Phil thought—he would reach the mill in just a few minutes.

  The door of the office swung all the way open and Mr. Duncan stepped outside. “What’s wrong?” he asked, obviously concerned.

  Phil pulled on the whistle three more times, then said, “Danny Johnson’s choking.”

  “Where is he?” Len asked appearing in the doorway.

  “Inside,” Phil said, pointing toward the mill’s main entrance. “In the back.”

  “Show me,” Len said. His voice carried an authority that Phil had never before heard from his friend, and he responded to it. He sprinted back toward the mill entrance and through the wide opening. He felt Len’s presence directly behind him the entire way.

  On the far side of the mill floor, the men had circled around, some of them talking excitedly. Phil could not see Danny past them. “Where is he?” Len yelled over the combined din of the men and the machines, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He hurried by Phil and pushed his way into the group. “Let me through,” he said, and the men parted to allow him past.

  Phil saw Danny then. He’d collapsed to his hands and knees, and now rocked back and forth. Buddy McPhilamy crouched beside him, slapping him on the back, just as Phil had done. Len reached in and took hold of Buddy’s arm. “Stop it,” he said, then dropped to his knees next to Danny. “Are you choking?” he asked, but Danny did not respond. “Can you talk?” Still nothing. Looking around at the men, Len said, “Was he eating something?” Buddy said that he had been.

  Len moved behind Danny and put his arms around his midsection, just below his ribs. “What’re you doing?” Buddy asked. Len didn’t reply, but instead pulled his hands in quickly, jerking Danny’s torso backward. It looked peculiar, but Phil thought he understood Len’s intention; his actions resembled somebody squeezing a hot-water bottle in order to pop out the stopper.

  But nothing popped out of Danny’s throat.

  Len tried again a second time, a third, a fourth. Finally, he stood up and reached down beneath Danny’s arms. “Here, help me get him up,” he said to no one in particular. Buddy stepped forward on one side and Rufus on the other. They both reached down, took hold of Danny by an arm, and hauled him to his feet. Again, Len reached around his middle and pulled his hands into Danny’s stomach. He did it over and over, and still nothing happened.

  And then Danny’s body went limp. Buddy and Rufus helped lower him to the floor. “On his back,” Len said, and the men did so without question. Phil saw that Danny’s eyes had closed. Len leaned over his now-motionless form and put the heel of his hand up by the bottom of Danny’s ribs, then placed his other hand over it and pressed down hard half a dozen times.

  When nothing happened, Len leaned in over Danny’s head, opened his mouth, and reached inside with two fingers. Phil heard one of the men ask what he was doing, but nobody answered. When Len pulled his fingers free, Phil saw that Danny’s lips had begun to turn blue.

  Len felt along Danny’s neck, examining him almost like a doctor would. After a few seconds, he peered up at the men crowding around him. “I need a knife,” he said. “A sharp knife.” Phil felt his mouth drop open, unsure just what Len planned to do. Did he want to slice open Danny’s throat and pull out whatever blocked his airway?

  Nobody said anything, and nobody moved. “This man is choking to death,” Len cried out, his voice loud and serious. “I can save him but I need your help.”

  Some of the men stirred then, as though waking up. They reached into their pockets, and then somebody—Phil couldn’t see who—held out a red pocketknife. Len took it and unfolded the blade, then looked back up. “All right, listen,” he said. “I need these things: matches, some clean rags, and a tube of some sort.” He pronounced his words crisply, Phil noticed, his accent diminished. “I need something at least eighty millim—at least this long.” Len held his thumb and forefinger three or four inches apart. “About this round,” he said, curling his forefinger into a circle maybe half an inch through the center. “And alcohol,” he added. “Does anybody have any alcohol around here?”

  “I do,” Mr. Duncan said. Phil hadn’t even realized that he’d come inside the mill. As somebody handed a book of matches to Len, the burly superintendent said, “I’ll get it,” and he turned to go.

  “Let me, I’m faster,” Billy Fuster spoke up, and Phil knew that the lean young man must be right about that. “Where is it?”

  “The bottom drawer of my desk,” Mr. Duncan said. Billy took off running at once, but Phil saw that nobody else had moved from around Danny.

  “I need those other things now!” Len yelled, his tone commanding. Finally, several of the men turned and rushed away.

  Len pulled a match from the book he’d been given and struck it. Mr. Duncan started to say something—as he and his ever-present unlighted cigar could attest, even a single small flame could endanger a cotton mill—but then he held his tongue. Len placed the match under the blade of the pocketknife, drawing it slowly back and forth along one side, then the other. When he finished and extinguished the flame with a wave of his hand, Mr. Duncan stepped forward and reached out to take it from him.

  Certain now that Len meant to cut into Danny, Phil walked over and leaned down beside him. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked.

  “Danny’s choking,” Len said. “If he doesn’t get air soon, it’s going to cripple his brain and then he’s going to die.” He turned his head and looked Phil directly in the eyes. “Yes, I know what I’m doing.” Phil nodded, realizing that he had no other choice but to trust his friend.

  Suddenly, rapid footsteps beat through the mill, signaling the return of Billy Fuster. In one hand, he carried an almost-full bottle of whiskey, and in the other a clutch of white rags. He pulled the stopper out of the bottle and handed it to Len, who poured some of the amber liquid onto Danny’s neck and then onto his own hands. Then he set the whiskey down on the floor and waited.

  A moment later, Jake Dinsmore ran up with a length of pipe in his hands, far thicker and longer than what Len had requested. He waved it away. Ray Peavey rushed over and held out something much closer in size. Made of metal, it looked like something Ray might have pulled out of one of the carding machines. Len took it and said, “All right, this will have to do.” But then Al Ward ran up and offered what he’d found. About six inche
s long and slightly curved, the flexible black tube appeared to be made out of rubber. Len examined it, then handed it up to Buddy and told him to pour some of the whiskey over it, inside and out.

  As Len set down the tube Ray had brought and then stripped off his jacket, he gazed over at Phil. “I’m going to need some help,” he said. “Can you do it?”

  “What?” Phil said. “I…” He didn’t know what to say.

  “Phil, I need your help,” Len insisted. “Danny needs your help.”

  “All right,” Phil sputtered. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get down here,” Len said, pointing to the floor on the other side of Danny. While Len rolled up his jacket and placed it beneath Danny’s shoulder blades, Phil went over and dropped to his knees. “Take the rags,” he told Phil. “Cover a few of them in alcohol.” Buddy handed over the whiskey and Phil picked up some of the cloths to do as Len had asked. “I’m going to make an incision in his neck,” Len continued, tilting Danny’s head back, exposing his throat. “I’m going to provide him an airway so that he can breathe. What I need you to do is to gently wipe away the blood when I ask you to.”

  Blood! Phil thought, but he forced himself to keep listening.

  “Do it quickly and gently,” Len said.

  “All right,” Phil said, and then he watched in disbelief as Len leaned forward and pressed the pocketknife to the lower part of Danny’s neck. The blade penetrated the flesh and blood spilled from the wound and down onto the floor.

  “Now,” Len said, pulling his hands away. Phil reached in and gingerly dabbed at the blood. “A little faster,” Len said, and he guided Phil’s hand, obviously demonstrating how he wanted him to do it. Then Len pushed his hand away and brought the knife once more to Danny’s throat.

  In all, only a minute or two passed before Len asked Buddy for the tube, but it felt like hours to Phil. Len pushed the tube into the hole in Danny’s flesh with what seemed like a great deal of skill at something Phil had never even imagined. Len then collected one of the clean rags and used it to clean up around the area where the tube extended out from Danny’s neck.