Blood and Fire

by David Gerrold

  Leen wagged his head. “The odds are fifty-fifty.”

  “Can we increase the odds a little bit more?” Parsons asked.

  “We don’t have the power for more than seven repulsor fields.”

  “Shut down all nonessentials. Go to battery power—fuel cells?”

  “We already have.”

  Parsons felt exasperated. “Mr. Leen—go work a miracle.”

  Leen met her gaze. “That’s ... that was Hodel’s department. Hodel was our warlock.” Then, embarrassed, he ducked his head and said, “Sorry.”

  Parsons looked from Leen to Williger, frustrated. She was looking for a reason to say yes. This wasn’t it. She and Williger stared at each other, each one helpless in her own side of the dilemma.

  “Captain?”

  “I know.”

  “We’re running out of time,” said Leen.

  “They’re running out of time,” corrected Williger.

  Another long look between them. Parsons sighed. To Williger, she said, “I’ll expect you to testify at my court-martial.”

  Without missing a beat, Williger asked, “For which side?”

  “All right, Doctor. You win. Go make history.” Parsons waved her forward. Brik looked to Parsons, a questioning expression on his broad features. Parsons nodded to him; Brik stepped over to the airlock control station and popped the hatch open. Williger spoke to her headset, giving the go-ahead command to the robot-gurney. The wheeled table rolled forward into the airlock; unfolding its arms and grabbing handholds along the way to steady itself against the insistent push of the repulsor fields. The air crawled across their skins.

  “Captain?” Molly Williger called. “I want all nonessential personnel to evacuate this area now.” This means you.

  “Mr. Brik—” Parsons said. “Let’s monitor this from the Bridge. They stepped back through the same series of hatches. As they moved aftward through the keel, back toward the Bridge, Parsons felt herself alone with her terribly complex feelings. She glanced sideways—and up—at Brik. Yes? You have something to say?

  As if reading her mind, Brik said, “You should have killed her for insubordination . . .”

  “We don’t do that in this fleet.”

  “Stupid policy. Capital punishment slows down repeat offenders.”

  Parsons wasn’t sure if Brik was joking or not. Morthans weren’t famous for their sense of humor.

  The last hatch popped open and Reynolds was waiting there. “Captain?”

  Parsons was expecting him to step out of the way, but when he didn’t, she looked at him annoyed. “Yes, Reynolds, what is it?”

  “As you know, I’m the union representative.”

  “Is this official business?”

  “I’m afraid so. I have to ask you ... to not proceed with the rescue operation. I call your attention to Article Seven of the contract, the safety of the crew. I’ve been asked to ... That is, the crew is concerned—”

  “Afraid, you mean?”

  “Whatever.” Reynolds was unembarrassed. “Some of the crew are afraid that the Star Wolf will be infected. After all, if the Norway, with all of its precautions, could be infected, what protection do we have?

  Parsons allowed her annoyance to show. “This isn’t a democracy, Reynolds. The crew doesn’t get a vote. We’re not abandoning our shipmates. Now go back to your station. Besides, I’ve already told the doctor to proceed.”

  Reynolds didn’t answer immediately. Without taking his eyes from the captain’s, he nodded knowingly, as if this was exactly what he’d expected. “I understand your position, Captain. I’ll be logging a formal protest.”

  Parsons shook her head in wry amazement. A formal protest? “I’ll help you fill out the paperwork,” she replied. “Dismissed.”

  Unchastened, Reynolds stepped out of her way and she and Brik continued aft. As soon as she felt they were out of earshot, she said—to herself as much as to Brik—“A formal protest? Give me a break. If we survive, I’m going before a court-martial.”

  She glanced over, but the big Morthan’s face was carefully blank.

  “Y’know, you may have a point,” she added. Brik raised an eyebrow in a question mark expression. “About policy.”

  “Oh,” said Brik. “Would you like me to—?”

  The captain sighed. “We’re not Morthans. And we’re not going to be. Not as long as I have anything to say about it.”

  Bedside Manner

  A blue-white dwarf and a red giant circled each other off-center, a stately gavotte—but the dwarf was feeding off the giant, pulling long strands of fire out of its partner, wrapping them around itself in a spiral veil of flame. Distorted by its smaller partner’s gravity, the crimson monster had flattened into an oblate spheroid, pulled outward in a teardrop shape.

  Much smaller—much harder to find, were two tiny starships also linked together. Plunging toward the tongues of flame, they echoed the partnership of the stars—one of the vessels was trying to pull the fire out of the other—

  Closer now—inside the Cargo Bay of the Norway, everything was suffused with the multiple deep tones of the repulsor fields—the uneven low warble of the Norway’s failing barriers and the darker chords of the Star Wolf’s multiple barriers.

  Two robot-gurneys had come rolling across the link between the two ships, hatches slamming open before them, slamming shut behind them every meter of the way. They rolled into the Star Wolf airlock, into the transfer tube, through the repulsor fields, into the Norway’s airlock and finally into the Norway’s Cargo Bay.

  Berryman knew what to do; Easton moved to help him. He ran a quick readiness-check on the gurney, just to satisfy himself that the trip through the repulsors hadn’t altered any of its parameters. By then, the second gurney had come through the hatch, and he moved to check that one too. Before he had completed his status checks, Yonah Jarell was already climbing onto the first cart. Blintze stood, waiting uncomfortably by the second.

  Berryman kept his feelings to himself. He patted the cushioned surface and said, “All right—get on.” He turned back to the first medtable. The display there showed the level of Jarell’s infection. Not as bad as it could have been. The man must have been in a protected area longer than the others. Berryman didn’t wait for permission. He pulled open Jarell’s tunic and began slapping monitors onto his chest, arms, neck and forehead. He picked up a surgical scissors and—ignoring Jarell’s protests—methodically cut slits in the arms and legs of his jumpsuit. “You should have taken this off,” he said as he worked. His expression was deadpan. Behind him, Easton was quietly helping Blintze undress and echoing Berryman’s application of monitors. Additional sensors went on each man’s belly, groin, legs and ankles.

  “All right,” said Berryman, blandly. He began strapping pressure clamps around Jarell’s arms and legs and a brace around his head and neck as well. “Let’s see if this works. This particular process has never been tested on human beings before. Thanks for volunteering to be the guinea pigs.”

  “The process works,” said Jarell insistently but without total certainty.

  “Whatever,” Berryman replied, smiling and maintaining a courteous demeanor throughout. He unclipped a set of flexible hoses from beneath the table; each terminated in a pressure injector. “If it doesn’t, we’ll know soon enough.” Berryman connected two pressure injectors to each of the clamps, then checked to make sure that all the tubes were free of kinks. “There are plasmacyte detectors mounted in the transfer tube. You’ll be scanned. If we get a positive reaction, you’ll get held in limbo, or bounced right back here—or dumped into space. Depending on the circumstance. The Wolf is prepared to sever the link at the first sign of discordancy.”

  “You’re joking—” Jarell’s eyes were wide.

  “Nope. You can look at the design schematic—” Berryman pressed buttons on the table’s display panel “—as soon as you get to the other side.” The table began to hum with a note of its own, a suppressive resonance field.
The wavicles in the air danced around it, flickering in and out of existence as if being tickled, teased and frustrated. Berryman noted the change in their behavior, then turned his attention back to the display. He watched calmly while the field stabilized. HARLIE whispered in his ear. Everything was fine. So far.

  “Star Wolf?” Berryman asked. “Everybody ready?”

  “It’s a go,” said Williger.

  Berryman tapped buttons on the panel. “All right, here goes—one large pizza, with Martian anchovies.” To Jarell, he said. “Sorry we can’t sedate you. Too much risk. But this shouldn’t hurt. Not too much anyway. We’re pumping you full of plasmacyte goo. This will give the nasty old worms a very bad tummy ache. But because of the resonance field, they’re not going to be able to turn into wavicles. So they’ll disintegrate.”

  He backed away from the table so he could focus on the chart displays. “Son of a bitch! I’ll be damned—it works. You should start feeling it any second now, kind of a tingly sensation, like pins and needles all over, only on the inside? And now it’s getting worse, like a burning sensation all over—?”

  Jarell’s face was ashen. He was definitely feeling it.

  “That should pass. Just when you think you’re getting used to it, you should start feeling tired and out of breath—is that where you are now? Good. Beyond fatigue, right? Exhaustion? Like you’re dying, except you don’t have the strength to die? That’s the bloodworms dying. See, this panel shows what the scanners are doing—that’s the plasmacyte energy spike, right there. See how it’s dropping? That’s the good news. The bloodworms are disintegrating into toxic residue. That’s the bad news. They’re taking your red blood cells down with them. So your body isn’t getting enough oxygen. That’s why you’re feeling out of breath. It’s going to get worse—you’ll probably start having CO2 hallucinations too.”

  Berryman checked the monitors, then turned back to Jarell. “Relax, Commander. Everything is going fine. We have another seventy seconds to go. I’ll be right back, don’t go away.” He turned crisply around to the other table, where Blintze lay waiting. Methodically, he doublechecked Easton’s handiwork, clucking in satisfaction. “We’ll start you as soon as we get a green light from the Wolf. They’re going to want to make sure that Commander Jarell survives before they risk anyone else.” He said this just loud enough for Jarell to hear. “Don’t worry, if this procedure doesn’t work, we have a backup plan. Besides, the first pancake is always for practice. That’s the one you give to the dog.”

  He checked his watch. “Whoops, here we go.” He turned back to Jarell. The commander looked like he was about to pass out. “You should be feeling really bad right about now—mm, yes I see. Are you still conscious? Good. I wouldn’t want you to miss the best part. Another twenty seconds. No, don’t talk. Would you like me to count them down for you? No?” Berryman turned away from Jarell’s eloquently terrified expression and studied the control panel on the gurney, clucking softly to himself. “Star Wolf, are you copying?”

  “Ay-firmative.”

  “Do you think we should give this fellow an extra thirty seconds—just to be sure?”

  “It’s your call—just remember to leave us some time on the other end. We can hyperoxygenate, but there are limits.”

  “Did you hear that?” Berryman said to Jarell. “Nothing to worry about. They’re working in a hyperoxygenated environment already—and in a minute, they’ll be pumping fresh blood substitute into you. You’ll be feeling almost back to normal within ... I dunno, a week or two. Panel says you’re clean, Commander. No more plasmacytes. All that’s left is to push you through. Oops. Dropped my clipboard, just a minute—” He bent to retrieve his notepad, catching Korie’s eye as he did so. The look of glee on his face was unmistakable.

  “Ensign,” Korie said quietly. “That’s enough.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Berryman straightened, his manner abruptly crisp and efficient. Jarell had passed out anyway, so any further performance would have been wasted. Berryman punched a control code into the panel; the medtable beeped and rolled aft toward the Airlock Reception Bay. The hatch popped open and the gurney slid smoothly in. “Star Wolf, you’ve got a package in the pipeline.”

  “We’ve got it.”

  The airlock hatch snapped shut. The gurney was on its way. Berryman glanced to Korie.

  Korie’s expression was bland. “Your bedside manner could use a little work.”

  “Dr. Williger says the same thing, sir.”

  “Well, she’s right.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “See that it doesn’t.”

  A Tide of Fireflies

  The gurney wasn’t sentient. When it needed sentience, it borrowed HARLIE’s—or rather, it asked HARLIE to be sentient for it. Now was one of those moments, when the robot asked for the judgment of the starship’s intelligence engine.

  HARLIE guided the table into the airlock, sealed the airlock, monitored the conditions on both sides of the hatch to the transfer tube, then opened the next hatch and guided the table forward. A swirl of flickering wavicles came with it. As the repulsors throbbed, the wavicles ebbed and flowed—like a tide of fireflies.

  The gurney unfolded its arms and grabbed the handholds set into the railings of the transfer tube. It pulled itself steadily forward. The wavicles tried to roll with it, but the pressure of the repulsor fields pushed more and more of them backward. They swirled in the air, piling up against the walls of thickened air, then bounced away, swirling back into the Norway’s still-open hatch.

  The table moved slowly through the repulsor fields, one after the other. Each time, fewer and fewer wavicles came with it. By the time it had passed through the fourth field, there were no visible wavicles left. HARLIE told the table to keep pulling itself forward. No detectable wavicles, the table reported. No detectable wavicles, reported the monitors at the Star Wolf end of the transfer tube.

  HARLIE paused the gurney at the hatch of the Star Wolf’s forward airlock. He studied the information flowing in to him. There was no statistical possibility that there were any live bloodworms in Yonah Jarell’s body. There was no statistical possibility that there could be any active wavicles at the Star Wolf end of the tube. But statistical possibility was a theoretical construct. It was a model of the physical universe. The accuracy of the model was only a statistical possibility itself ...

  “Dr. Williger?” he reported. “This is the last go/no-go point.”

  Williger said, “Captain Parsons? We have no detectable error-states. We are in the center of the probability channel. Go or no go?”

  A pause. Then, “We’ve come this far.” The sound of a breath. “All right, HARLIE. Open the hatch.”

  The gurney rolled into the airlock of the Star Wolf. A moment later, it arrived in the FARB. Immediately, Dr. Williger, Brian Armstrong and a team of Quillas swarmed around the now-silent form of Yonah Jarell.

  “All right, let’s transfuse this bastard,” Williger snapped, already unclipping the hypo-injectors from the clamps on his arms and legs and neck and tossing them off the gurney. The table’s arms gathered the hose ends to reconnect them below. “Disconnecting the table connections,” she said for the log.

  Then she reached up—Armstrong had to jump in and reach for her; she was too short to get it herself—and pulled down an overhead unit to within centimeters of Jarell’s body. She started unclipping hoses and injectors, clamping them quickly into place. Quillas Delta and Omega did likewise. As fast as each injector was locked into place, it activated itself and its collar blinked green. “Connecting transfusors.”

  The suppressive-resonance field continued—in case any of the plasmacytes still survived in Jarell’s blood. Everything was enveloped in a throaty, warbling sensation. The gurney’s arms started pulling empty bottles from its under-carriage, handing them to Armstrong as fast as he could receive them, and taking full bottles from Quilla Omega and restocking them below.

  HARLIE
was blandly reciting blood pressure, body temperature, heart-rate, oxygenation and other readings. The important one, however, was, “No detectable plasmacyte spikes in the radiation spectrum.”

  “My God, I think we’ve done it—” Armstrong breathed.

  “Not yet, Brian. We still have to get the toxic residue out of his bloodstream.” She checked the display on the overhead unit, then looked across the table at Armstrong. “The biggest problem in any injury is system shock. Whether you’re pumping saline or blood-substitute, you need to get fluid into the body as fast as you can. That’s why we use the pumps. A thousand years ago, they used drip-IV lines and their patients died on the way to the hospital, or they suffered needless damage.” She glanced to the display and frowned. “We’re using too much artificial blood here. Go get another rack from Med Bay.”

  “On my way—”

  On the table, Jarell groaned. Williger glanced at the overhead display. “He’s going to live. We did it! Pat yourselves on the backs, people! You just made medical history!” She put her face close to Jarell’s and said, “How are you feeling?”

  Jarell moaned again.

  “He’s having a reaction to the process—HARLIE, we need to sedate here; has he got any allergies?”

  “Sensitivity to Alternate-R series. Suggest you use Gee-Vin 12, one gram per fifty kilos.”

  “Ready two grams—” Williger held a hand out without looking to see who would put what into it. Quilla Delta slapped a pressure injector into her palm with medical precision. Williger took it, checked it and applied it to Jarell’s left arm. Jarell groaned and passed out again. “Move him to Med Bay. We need the gurney. Someone go to Cargo Bay and get that extra table uncrated. Now! This is going to take longer per patient than we thought. HARLIE, what’s the time-projection?”

  “It’s still doable, Doctor. I am projecting that succeeding procedures will go faster—”

  “Don’t forget, we’re going to get tired awfully fast here.”

  “I’m factoring that into the equation too.”