Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  Visiting "hours" were over. Morgan couldn't take much wakefulness. Communication with him would be limited to minutes until he was stronger. Helen shooed them out of ICU, then stayed to chat for a while in the V.I.P. lounge before she went back to work.

  "Did you hear?" Todd Saunder crowed. "Saturday! They're going to transfer Morgan planetside on Saturday. That's wonderful! I'll call Quol-Bez and let him know so he can make the arrangements."

  "Quol-Bez?" Brenna asked, bewildered. "What does he have to do with it?"

  "Oh, didn't I tell you? He's lending me his personal vehicle for Morgan's ambulance ride. He practically insisted. I can't refuse. It might be grounds for a diplomatic incident if I offend the Vahnaj Ambassador," Todd said with a chuckle.

  "That's nice, Dad," Brenna murmured absently. Derek added his praise of the Ambassador's kind and unusual gesture.

  The Ambassador's personal vehicle. That was the one Terran Worlds Council Space Fleet provided for Quol-Bez's exclusive use. It was staffed royally. Capable of tremendous speed-so the Vahnaj Ambassador wouldn't be late to any meetings with anxious Terran leaders! The spacecraft was a luxury model of Space Fleet's finest. Of course, it was a "loaner," supplied for the convenience of humanity's first full-time alien visitor. The real Vahnaj ship remained parked semi-permanently in space. Yet, for a heart-stopping instant, Brenna had thought her father was referring to that spaceship. Her mouth had watered at the hope of coming in close contact with that famous faster-than-light vehicle. Just an hour's worth of examination time could tell her so much! Including where Prototype II's design had erred, perhaps. Then common sense took hold. No, Quol-Bez couldn't break his diplomatic instructions, not even for personal friendship with Todd Saunder and his kin. And it was apparent the Vahnaj government did not want humans roaming around in that alien ship.

  "The very best," her father was saying. "Quol-Bez has already spoken to Morgan's doctors, too. He never misses a detail. Talk about his putting himself out for others..."

  "Well, Dad, after all, he's known you longer than he has any other Homo sapiens," Brenna said with a smile. "You and Dian were talking to the Vahnaj long before Quol-Bez was assigned to our planets. He's at ease with you, even when he's reserved with every other human."

  "Not reserved, just polite," Todd said, leading the way to the elevators for the visitors' quarters. "He's really a very warm being. You know that. Come on. I've got a megaton of calls to make."

  The pace became hectic. Schedules changed hourly. Media demands for info declined only slightly, Evanow's PR staff reported. The Saunders were still very much in the minds of Earthmen and the colonists throughout the Solar System. Evanow set up a few brief in-person interviews on the vid with Brenna and her father, to satisfy the public's craving for news. In a way, that continued interest was gratifying. Evanow was SE, asking all the right questions. Exactly the sort of media exposure Brenna approved of—not the grasping and needling of the outsider newshunters.

  On Monday, the regular ambulance shuttle transferred Tumaini Beno to Mars. Derek and Brenna went down to see him off, with his escort of medics. But Tumaini was barely aware of their presence. Pre-flight medications made him groggy. Brenna and Derek went to the observation port to watch the ambulance drop away on its journey to the planet. "Below," on Mars, they could see the terminator marking a new dawn over Syrtis Major. In orbit, the Sun never set. Eternal sunlight here wasn't as bright as it was near Earth, yet bright enough so that Brenna was glad the port window was tinted. The ambulance shuttle was a glimmering needle, appearing to fall, not using much thrust at all in order to give the injured passengers a gentle ride. Tumaini wasn't the only patient being transferred today. Three others were taking the ride with him—a Deimos warehouse worker who had been hurt in an industrial accident, and two United Asteroid miners who had been ferrying an ore cargo Sunward when their drive went out of control and piled them into an unmanned beacon station a scant million kilometers from Mars orbit.

  During the week, surgeons performed a series of small, delicate operations on Morgan. Drs. Dybas and Ives tried to explain these procedures, in rather more detail than laymen cared to hear. It was necessary, the physicians said, to get these surgical repairs out of the way while Morgan was still in the free-fall burn unit. They were paving the way for the eventual laryngeal and optic implants as well as lessening scar tissue formations. By doing these things now, they could complete them with minimal discomfort for the patient and without resorting to overly dangerous anesthetics.

  "Minimal discomfort." A cute medical term. Softer than "pain." The medics kept saying Morgan wasn't in great pain. But Brenna didn't believe it. She imagined her own body subjected to cutting, scraping, and laser-seaming, and she winced in sympathy.

  Dian beat her predicted ETA to the hospital by more than twelve hours. More heavy fuel expenditures for Saunder Enterprises' accounts! When Brenna commented on that, Dian muttered that ComLink would simply have to raise its advertising rates a trifle to foot the bill. Brenna was touched by the warmth of her parents' reunion. Dian's arrival lifted Todd Saunder from hope to growing confidence, chasing away most of his depression. Brenna watched her mother admiringly. There were legends about Dian, not about this still-active black woman in her sixties, but about a skinny kid helping her grandmother care for the wounded and the dying, and about a young linguist who had cracked the Vahnaj code and taught mankind how to talk to the stars. Her earlier experiences had made Dian Foix Saunder a tough customer. She didn't even blink when she saw Morgan. She spoke calmly and encouragingly to him, when he was in Recovery after surgery. And she drew Brenna, Derek, and her husband into the shelter of her assurance, too. Everyone felt more at ease now that she was there.

  Quol-Bez didn't deliver his personal spacecraft to the hospital himself. Her crew of Space Fleet troopers did that, well in advance of the planned departure time, so the hospital's vehicle mechanics could convert part of the ship's cabin into a mini-ambulance. Brenna was being swept along in the arrangements, more than willing to let others handle the job. The only moment she resented came when they were boarding. Morgan had already been moved, with infinite tenderness, into the converted ambulance area of the ship, with Helen Ives and her experts caring for him. Derek and the Saunders and their aides were ushered into the main passenger compartment. Passengers, not pilots. Supercargo, in fact. Brenna wanted to go up front. So did Derek. But Derek knew better. Space Fleet kept the cockpit off-limits—no non-military personnel allowed.

  The Ambassador's ship eased out of the hospital's dock so slowly Brenna double-checked to be sure they were moving. Terrific ship! Masterful pilots! She would love to recruit them for Breakthrough Unlimited. Then she decided that, in effect, she already had—Yuri, Tumaini, and Hector were all former Space Fleet pilots. Little wonder when they had joined the FTL project that so much expertise showed in everything they did at a ship's controls.

  The orbital descent was incredibly smooth, dropping through a rigidly graduated spiral, the ship prodigal with its fuel. Space Fleet could be even more spendthrift than Saunder Enterprises. Terran Worlds Council was drawing on taxes and funds not even a Saunder could tap. Steady burns. Balanced vernier thrust. No bumps. No sudden deceleration. Amazonis Planitia Spaceport was bypassed. They were going to put her down at the restricted V.I.P. strip just outside Pavonis City. Diplomatic privilege, extended to Quol-Bez's human friend Todd Saunder.

  Coming back to Mars in style ... supercargo of a crippled man, his family and best friend, and assorted employees.

  A private sub-surface train was waiting at the strip. Boarding was very slow. Dr. Ives insisted on moving Morgan a centimeter at a time, constantly monitoring his condition. The trip down to gravity had caused him stress. Brenna and the others had taken gravity compensation medications, but Morgan was severely limited in what drugs he could handle right now.

  Once aboard, it was a short ride to the W.L.F. Mars Hospital. Again they would roll into the V.I.P. area. It occurred to Brenna
that she hadn't seen the surface of Mars since the night before her departure for FTL Station. She hadn't walked on Mars' rocky soil since the holiday she and Derek had spent at Eos Chasma. Had that really been only three weeks ago? She had an aberrant desire to stop the train and take an elevator to open air. Or to Mars' nearest equivalent of air. Even roaming the surface in a spacesuit would satisfy. She was suddenly sick and tired of confining walls—space stations, spaceship cockpits, the whole thing. Why? Claustrophobia? That was a death sentence for a space pilot! Then she glanced at the rear of the train car, at Morgan's Pod Carrier. Morgan was asleep now, unaware of his surroundings. But every time he awoke, for days without end, he would find himself trapped, pent up inside walls of one sort or another, including a skin that wasn't his own. Maybe Brenna's emotion had been empathy, sharing what Morgan was going to feel.

  They had to walk from the V.I.P. platform into the hospital. At one point the newshunters spotted them. Saunder Enterprises Security cordoned their bosses, but they couldn't stop the shouting, the rude queries, hammering at the patient's loved ones.

  "Todd! Hey, Todd Saunder! Did the Vahnaj Ambassador let you use the fancy ship because your sister-in-law's Prez Emeritus of P.O.E.?"

  "Did Councilman Ames twist his arm? Didn't your daughter and McKelvey and Whitcomb save his life during the Colony Days gala?"

  "Hey! Whitcomb! You quitting Hiber-Ship and joining those FTL crazies?"

  "Saunder! How about the Terran Worlds Council franchise? Won't you lose your right to experiment up there in space now?"

  "Let us see McKelvey! Is that him in that plastic coffin?"

  Mercifully, the doors shut between the hall and Receiving. Brenna couldn't hear those vultures, in here. She shook with fury. Those ghouls! They would like Morgan to be dead! That would make a juicier story! One of the famous Saunder clan, killed trying to break the light-speed barrier. They could make all manner of allusions to rich people getting too bold and thinking they could buy their way into or out of anything. That would be good for weeks of "we told you so" on their sleazy vid programs. Like father, like son. Like mother, like son, too!

  The one small consolation Brenna had was that one of those screeching ghouls out in the hall was Charlie Dahl. She had caught a glimpse of his hateful face when she was rushing past the line. Charlie had come down a big notch. Evanow had carried out her orders to the letter, apparently. Instead of sitting in the driver's seat and ranking with the top newscasters, Charlie was now hopping up and down with the gypsies and the third-rate stringers, trying to yell his way into a story. Good enough for him!

  Derek put his arm around her, drawing Brenna farther away from the doors lest she hear some of the ghouls' nasty questions even in here. Receiving was a haven. All the faces here were friendly and concerned. Morgan had been whisked off to ICU. For a few minutes, his relatives and other caring people were at a loss. They wandered into the nearby lounge. "Why can't we see him?" Todd asked plaintively. "They said he was going to be all right."

  "He will be," Dian assured him. She threaded her arm through his. "They're monitoring him. It's the shift to gravity. Bound to be a shock. He'll get used to it, though. Huh! Haven't I had to nag you often enough to take your grav medications?"

  Quol-Bez was waiting there. He took Todd's hand, murmuring encouragement. Brenna recalled the Ambassador's frequent inquiries and expressions of sympathy—capped off by donating his private craft to be Morgan's ambulance. Her longstanding envy of Vahnaj superiority in FTL mingled with affection for this dependable friend of the family. And now he was here, at just the right time, to greet her father and say the right things.

  "... so ver-y strong. You must not be dis-mayed, my friend." The alien's head bobbed on that snaky neck. The child's voice no longer seemed as odd as it sometimes had. Vahnaj or human, it was the reaching out, the caring, that made all the difference between intelligent, sensitive beings. In that regard, Quol-Bez was far more "human" than those ghoulish newshunters. "Yes. The phy-si-cians informed me of the ter-ri-ble nature of Morgan's injuries. No, please, my friend. I understand. Blind-ness seems very cruel to your species. But the phy-si-cians can remedy this. And you must realize that there are many methods of seeing." Brenna and the others were all listening intently. Quol-Bez was the sage, the giver of wisdom, a creature out of mythology they suddenly trusted completely. He would help them penetrate the veil covering the future, somehow. Quol-Bez nodded again, speaking softly. "Perhaps the method they will give Morgan will open doors formerly closed to him, and to the rest of your species."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Partnership

  Dr. Ives traced the holo-mode CAT visualization, pointing out improvements in Morgan's condition. Brenna listened patiently. What she was learning might someday be applicable in the field. She had never expected emergency burn-aid techniques to be useful, either, but that course had helped save Morgan's and Tumaini's lives. Helen was a good teacher. If she hadn't made a career of space medicine, she would have had no trouble winning a chair at a top university on Earth or on Mars. Instead, she had become Saunder Enterprises' ultimate medical specialist, with her own five-person staff, the latest equipment, and one patient.

  May had disappeared. June was gone, too. Brenna remembered those months dimly. A few important events interwoven with long days of worry and tedium.

  One red-letter day had been Tumaini's release from the hospital in mid-June. He was now an outpatient, undergoing rehabilitation therapy. However, the Rift Affiliation native spent far more time visiting Morgan and hanging around Breakthrough Unlimited's HQ at Amazonis Spaceport than he did in following doctors' orders. Aluna Beno's relationship with her husband's co-workers was still strained, despite Carmelita Obregon's efforts at peacemaking. Brenna hadn't seen Aluna for nearly a month, and she was content to leave it at that. Whatever was going on between the Benos wasn't any of her business. She just hoped it wouldn't interfere with Tumaini's recovery. Tumaini walked with a bad limp and was going to need extensive further surgery on his back. But in general, he was getting along well.

  On the monitor screens Brenna saw med aides, wearing infection-proof clothing, helping Morgan off the exercise equipment in his room. That was a painful process to watch, always. Yet it was one of the few times when Morgan seemed fairly alert. Brenna wondered if his reaction had anything to do with the presence of the aides. Once a day, they suited up and entered his sterile living quarters, the only people who did so. No direct touch, of course. But maybe just being that close to other people made a difference in his morale.

  Morgan was no longer at W.L.F. Hospital. Since the end of June he had been here at Saunder Estates, in a private clinic, in effect, built entirely for his comfort. Brenna and her parents had arranged for the addition, a fully equipped mini-hospital, with residential sections to house Helen Ives and her people. The theory was: Morgan would feel more "at home" in his home, and that would help his mental state, and, maybe, his physical condition as well.

  Brenna visited him as often as she could, daily, when she was on Mars. Some family member was always at the Estates now. The peripatetic Martian Colony branch of the Saunders was more home-based than it had been in years because of Morgan's accident.

  Other members of the Breakthrough Unlimited group dropped in regularly, too. But their visits were restricted, on Dr. Ives's orders. Morgan wasn't yet able to cope with much activity at all.

  When Brenna and Yuri had taken trips out to FTL Station in May and several times in June, Tumaini Beno had been their "stand-in" during visiting times. The trips were necessary, if Breakthrough Unlimited was to continue. Lingering radiation in Prototype II had hampered salvage efforts badly. After a lot of nail biting and cursing and hasty conferences at the Station, Shoje Nagata had come up with the idea of pulling the hot core and leaving that in high ecliptic orbit, for the time being. The rest of the wreckage—including most of the graviton spin resonance power pack—could then be towed to Mars. Brenna congratulated the junior pilot o
n that idea, and Nagata had, with surprising modesty, credited Adele Zyto and Joe Habich for thinking up the plan. Whoever was responsible, it had worked. Since early July, Brenna and the team had been poring over the collected pieces of the once-beautiful FTL spacecraft, trying to figure out what had caused the barrier field to collapse so disastrously. The job was turning into a rotten mess, as they had known it would.

  Dr. Ives had excused herself to answer a call on an adjacent com screen. Brenna leaned back, staring out the window at the magnificent view. Morgan's estate perched on the north rim of Valles Marineris, and the early morning sunlight was casting stark shadows into the gorges.

  Brenna reviewed her own status, as she and Helen had been reviewing Morgan's. She was still handling sympathy messages, some with a new element. The media were tending to romanticize Morgan McKelvey as a "tragic hero," and a lot of women who had never known him before the accident were now interested in him, in a way Brenna considered abnormal. There were women who yearned to bear Morgan's children, via artificial insemination with his preserved sperm. Women who wanted to "give" him their eyes or skin or other organs—too uneducated to realize the donations weren't needed and wouldn't do Morgan any good, anyway. Women begging for personally inscribed holo-mode images of Morgan Saunder McKelvey the way he used to look. Brenna hadn't troubled Morgan with any of this strange correspondence. She hadn't troubled herself with it, either, anymore than she could help, leaving that mail for a tolerant secretary to handle.

  Friends and acquaintances had kept up polite inquiries and had visited Morgan, at first. That hadn't been easy for them. Even the bravest ones couldn't cope at all well with what they saw when they came face to face with the patient. And Morgan had been very unresponsive, either because of his terrible injuries or because of their reactions to him. Eventually, they didn't come anymore, or most of them didn't. Ambassador Quol-Bez and his translator were among the exceptions. They were quite familiar faces at Saunder Estates now. Quol-Bez seemed to be manufacturing reasons to spend time at his embassy on Mars, near the Saunder family complex, apparently so that he could continue to express kindness and concern for his kin-friend's invalid nephew. Brenna had seen more of Quol-Bez and Chin Jui-Sao in the past weeks than she had in the entire previous half year. Brenna was actually discovering a great many shared attitudes with Sao, though she had never known the Chinese woman well at all before Morgan's accident.