John Rackhan

by Ipomoea

  He knew, now, that he was surrounded by hard vacuum. That knowledge froze him absolutely rigid for a long moment, then he began edging back and away from that yawning hole. It was black, and there were stars out there, but he had no desire to get closer and look. Common sense tried to tell him that there was no further danger of being dragged out, that all the air had gone in that one swoop, but instinct insisted on fear, and he felt it sickly in his mouth. He wanted the door to open, to get through and be among people again. He reached it, wrenched at the handle. It was solid. Panic swelled in him and he wrenched again, grunting with the effort, but he might as well have tried to pull the entire door away from the bulkhead. Nothing!,

  Sweating profusely, he screwed down on his panic, made himself see reason. Of course the door wouldn't open. There was full atmospheric pressure on that side, vacuum on this. And even if he could open it, he would by that action release that r.tmosphere out through this ruptured cabin, and most probably be swept out himself in the draft, to say nothing of what it might do to the rest of the ship!

  But he had to get out somehow! Panic bubbled up again, and this time he had no argument against it. What made it more dreadful was the utter lack of sound, the silence. He was totally cut off. No one would know. How could they? Rationality snatched at that one, fast. That panel, whatever it was for, was designed to do that. Presumably it would register somewhere in the form of an alarm. Most likely in the control room. They would see it, would immediately think—he abandoned that line of thought hastily, went back to something else. Communicate! How? And he remembered the chin-switch, moved it urgently. An angrily tense voice spoke right by his ear.

  "Hey, Ramon? Up off your duff and get up here fast. Some cluck has just blown an M-X. Cabin P. thirty-eight."

  "On my way. Hell, Skipper, you suppose he's still in there?"

  "Act your age! Does it matter now? Point is, you're going to have to suit up and go out; there's no other way. And hurry it up, before somebody gets curious and starts an alarm."

  "Right. Me for the starboard air lock. Out." "Corinne? You hear that?"

  "I heard, Skipper." This a crisp but feminine voice. "Check P. thirty-eight, will you? On the list, I mean. . . * "Hey!" Sam Hutten found his voice with an effort. "Can you hear me? Is that the captain?" "Who the hell is that?"

  "The passenger in P. thirty-eight. I never touched that M-X thing at all. It just blew; I was watching it!"

  There was a long and roaring silence, then the first voice demanded unsteadily, "Where are you speaking from, mister?"

  I m m a suit.

  "A suit?"

  "That's right. I was just trying it on when that panel blew out. I'm all right. I think."

  "You think? Mister, when it comes my turn I should hope to be so lucky. Wait. Stay there. Ramon, you read me?"

  "Right, Skipper, just buttoning up."

  "Hold it and Listen. Mister—what did you say your name was?"

  "I didn't. I'm Sam Hutten."

  "That checks, Skipper." Corinne's voice again.

  "All right, Mr. Hutten, listen close. You can't get out of that cabin, and we can't get in, until the door is closed. It's an emergency exit, what I've been calling M-X. Right?

  Nothing can be done until it is shut again. And you can do that. I'll tell you how. It's easy. Go over to the opening."

  "Do I have to?" Sam stared uneasily at the blackness and sighed. "All right, I'm going."

  He shuffled across the cabin to the bunk, edged around it with the backs of his knees pressing against its far edge. The black rectangle loomed enormously. He got his left shoulder solidly against the firmness of the bulkhead and tried not to look down.

  "Now what?"

  "Look out. You will see the panel standing out at right-angles to the hull. In the middle of it is a black box bearing a knob. See it?"

  Sam gulped, looked and mumbled, "I see it."

  "Right. Reach out and get hold, turn that knob clockwise. That's all you have to do. At its present setting that door is designed to open outward at zero pressure. When you turn that knob—clockwise, remember—it will cycle shut by itself. Right? Go ahead, now."

  Sam stared, felt dry and wobbly, shifted delicately until he could get a rubber-fingered grip on the edge of the bunk, and then leaned nauseatingly out, reaching for the knob. He almost forgot which way was clockwise. He turned, and the panel started smoothly and slowly back toward him. He edged back from it. The gaping blackness and stars went away. He sat.

  "What now?" he mumbled. "The red light is still on."

  "That's all right. That's the pressure-drop alarm. I will start air-inflow manually from here. The light will go out as soon as your pressure is back up to normal. You'll be all right, but keep that suit on until I say. Be about ten minutes. By that time one of us will be along with the proper equipment to fix that door."

  Sam sagged on his bunk. He felt wet now, and shivery. And sick. He could hardly breathe. "I don't like this suit," he said uneasily. "It stinks, and it's giving me a thick head."

  "That's mostly imagination, Mr. Hutten. You'll be all right."

  Imagination or not, Sam grew sicker. His face-plate fogged up until he couldn't see the red light. Bands grew around his chest. There came a sizzling sound in his ears. And then everything seemed to go blurred and dreamy.

  Hutten came back to consciousness in the most pleasant way possible, opening his eyes to the concerned gaze of a very pretty girl, her bright blue eyes lighting in a smile as he blinked at her.

  "Very good," she said, as if he had done something clever. "Are you feeling better now, Dr. Hutten?"

  "I think so." He tried to sit up but she put a flat hand on his chest and pressed him back.

  "Not just yet. You've had a hard time. Better let the doctor talk to you first. Dr. Yoshawi?"

  A brown-faced Japanese came, calm and quiet, his hands and movements deft and sure. Hutten frowned, then remembered.

  "You're a passenger, Doctor, aren't you? I'm sorry to have intruded my business into your leisure."

  "Quite all right. And, happy to say, so are you. For a while you had symptoms of acute cyanosis, but all gone now. Rest for a while, but you can get up when you feel good enough."

  "Cyanosis?"

  "Shortage of oxygen for breathing. Similar to suffocation. Possibly you did something wrong in your space suit. All right now. Happy to have been of service."

  He went away and the blue eyes came back, still smiling. Hutten dug back into his memory, recalling the oppressive smell, the tight-band sensation around his chest and head. He had a dream-like memory of someone lifting him up, unscrewing his helmet, of muttering "Good grief, what a stench!" But he was certain he had done everything just so, in that suit. Blue-eyes had said something and he had missed it.

  "Sorry, what was that?"

  "I said you can sit up. I'll get some coffee along. But you mustn't try anything ambitious yet. Anyway, Captain Bates wants to talk to you, so you'd better stay here for a while."

  Hutten sat up, swung his legs over the side of the cot, and was aware of lightness, a pleasant insubstantiality. He took in the room, the white walls, the other three trim beds, the cabinet of bottles and instruments.

  "Sick bay?" he queried.

  "We don't get to use it much, except as a place to hide in when the wolves howl too hard." She widened her smile as if to assure him that he was excluded from the class of undesirables. "We get the odd passenger feeling nauseous from low G, but that's about all. How do you feel now?"

  "Great. I'm getting the feel of the quarter-G. You said something about coffee?"

  "I'll order it up right away, and call Captain Bates, too. You just sit still now."

  She went across the room to a wall-phone and he had his first chance to really look at her. She was well worth it. Her gossamer-sheer skin-suit in silver shimmer clung to her shape with electro-static intimacy, the currently fashionable way for avoiding the feminine bugbears of wrinkles and sags, and her micro-skirt
and bolero jacket were token garments only, not intended to conceal anything. Her curves may not have been sensational on Earth, but they certainly were now, freed from three-fourths of the downward drag of gravity. Fascinated, he watched the lazy flutter of her hair, the syrupy flow of folds around the hem of her brief skirt, and the engrossing way in which resilient curves surged and bounced, rippling and contra-rotating—and he began to feel light-headed. He had heard it said by others that the first experience of low-G was like a glorious binge • but without the visual blur, and he could now appreciate what the speaker had meant.

  Finishing her message, she turned and came undulating back to him, to halt and stare a little as she caught the look on his face.

  "Captain Bates will be right down. Are you all right, Mr. Hutten?"

  "Apart from a slight case of blood-pressure, I'm fine. Miss . . . ?"

  "Vandy. Norma Vandy." She came closer, put the back of a cool hand to his brow, and it felt like ice.

  "Don't come too near," he warned. "I think I have been confined to the cloisters far too long. Tell me"—he sought hurriedly for something safe to think about—"I was given to understand that I would be liable to medical examination at any time, possibly during the journey, so how come you had to rope in a civilian doctor just now? Don't you carry one?"

  "We're all trained, all the staff, up to the specified limits. We called Dr. Yoshawi because he happened to be handy and because we wanted a second opinion, just in case. Nobody should suffocate in a space suit!" She stood back a pace or two and he averted his eyes firmly. "Do you have a powerful imagination, Mr. Hutten?"

  The click of the door announced Bates, just in time to rescue Sam from a hopeless situation. The senior pilot looked grim as he came across and sat on a low stool by the bunk.

  "If you're fit for it, Mr. Hutten, I'd like a full explanation. How the hell—you'll excuse me—did you gimmick that M-X?"

  "Don't you know what happened?"

  "We've examined the pressure-switch, yes, but I'd like to hear your account first. Go ahead."

  "Very well." Sam thought carefully, repeated all he could remember, and Bates looked grimmer with every word, made him repeat the moment where he had seen the brief puff of vapor. "At a guess I'd say it was some kind of explosive charge, wouldn't you?"

  "I like this less the more I think of it," Bates growled, twisting his cap in his hands. Miss Vandy interrupted them with coffee and then sat herself at the end of the bunk to listen.

  "There is no explosive content of any kind to that door switch, as designed, Mr. Hutten. It's part of our job to know all that side of the ship like a book. I've checked out that lock along with a co-pilot, and it has both of us baffled. The nearest we can guess is that some ham-fisted technician left a bit of loose wire sculling, and it just happened to shift and drop in such a way as to short out the whole works."

  "I'd be prepared to accept that, Captain."

  "You might, but I wouldn't. Our technical staff doesn't do things like that. Everything is double-checked before we leave ground. And that switch-gear is designed as near as possible to be absolutely foolproof."

  "Lucky I happened to be wearing that suit, then."

  "Lucky isn't the word for it. That's what made me curious, Mr. Hutten. Look, without being too technical, let me explain this much. For a ship to get holed enough to lose atmosphere is itself a rarity. Most impacts are absorbed by the outer skin. If a chunk of something is big enough too get all the way into a cabin our detectors would show it anyway. And it would make a small hole, and a slow leak. That switch-gear is designed to handle just that. Any drop in pressure triggers off the alarm, in your cabin and on my bridge, and there's time enough to warn you to suit up and stay put. Because the cabin door automatically seals, and isolates the holed region from the rest of the ship. Then, when the pressure is at zero, the emergency-exit circuit flips the door open and either you come out or we come in and get you—and the rest of the ship stays safe. But there is no sudden decompression, no whoosh out like you describe. The thing just can't work like that. But it did. And I have to believe you, Mr. Hutten, after examining the interior of that switch-gear."

  "All right, so it was an accident."

  Bates twisted his cap more. "We've checked back on you, Mr. Hutten. You can't be too careful, these days. But you're a big man. You could buy and sell this spaceline with your small change. One wrong word from you and we would all be out of a job."

  "Me?" Sam frowned, and then slowly realized that the captain was right, in his way. The only son of Rex Hutten would be regarded as a power figure. He didn't feel it, but that was his own side of it. Other people felt it strongly. "I'm quite prepared to accept that it was an accident."

  "Yeah. Well, all right. But a sub-etheric will go back to the spaceport, and it will crackle, believe me. There will be an inquisition. Whoever serviced this flight had better have his walking-boots ready. No spaceline can afford a name for accidents like that."

  "That's your business." Sam shrugged uncomfortably. "I have no desire to make trouble, I assure you. I was extremely lucky. But there is just one more thing I ought to mention."

  ^What?"

  "The suit. The way I reacted in there might give somebody the idea that I'm not fit, space-wise. And it is important that I get to Tau-Ceti. So I maintain that it was not nerves or imagination on my part, that there is something wrong with that suit, too."

  Bates showed by his face that he didn't care for the suggestion, but he nodded. Then Miss Vandy murmured her bit of additional evidence, reporting what the doctor had said about suffocation.

  "All right," the captain growled. "Come to think of it, Ramon did say something about a stink when he opened you up. And you weren't in there any more than fifteen minutes. All right, it will be checked. Don't you worry, Mr. Hutten, I personally will check every damned nut and bolt on this ship. And headquarters is going to hear about this, you can believe mel"

  He went away angrily. Miss Vandy stood, put on a resolute smile.

  "Lunch is being served right now, Mr. Hutten, if you feel up to it. Out of here you turn shaip right and follow the corridor. Or I can have something sent in, if you'd prefer that?"

  Her words plunged Sam into a completely new kind of dilemma for him. On the one hand was this extremely attractive young woman, and the prospect of sharing lunch with her, talking to her, getting used to the overpowering proximity of devastating females, because he was acute enough to realize that this was merely a foretaste of what he could expect as the journey developed. It was experience that he badly needed, a distinct change from academic life. On the other hand he was also acute enough to give heed to his logical faculties. One accident could be just that. But two together smelled the same way the suit had. He had to await the official checkout, but he was certain in his own mind that the suit had been in some way defective. And that pointed to only one thing. No accident, but a deliberate attempt to kill him.

  And that thought was so utterly outrageous that his mind just couldn't wear it for a long while. He had to assemble evidence to convince himself. First the enigmatic ethergram from his father. Then Bates pointing out that he, Sam Hutten, was a big man in the eyes of the outside world. The old man must be well-off for enemies, but that aspect had never before occurred to him. It did now, with such force that he put it to Miss Vandy.

  "Why would anyone want to kill me?"

  Her smile faltered, enough to assure him that the same thought had already struck her. "You mustn't think that," she cautioned.

  "Why not? Miss Vandy, I'm not the kind of stuff they use to make heroes, nor am I designed for intrigue, but I can think. I can add up the obvious. And this is obvious: somebody tried to kill me. What. I do not understand is why. Can you suggest anything?"

  "I suggest you stay right here and I'll have your lunch sent in." Miss Vandy firmed up her smile and started to move away to the communicator. "After all, if someone is trying to kill you, you'll be safer in here."

&n
bsp; "Doesn't necessarily follow," he disagreed. "Whatever technician fixed the gadgetry did it on Earth and is not here now. That danger is past. I think I will go to lunch."

  It was a new experience, just walking in low-G, and he appreciated it, but he was pleased with himself more for having applied ruthless logic to a personal problem. It would have been easy, and pleasant, to hide in the sick bay with delectable company. But he had overcome that temptation, and his fear, by simple reasoning. And he felt strengthened thereby as he made his way to the dining room space. He even managed to look tolerantly on the antics of the younger people who were making spectacular fun out of the diminished gravity. Walking was difficult. To get from one place to another in slow-flying leaps was easier, if not so decorous. And it provided ample excuse for squealing collisions and clutchings, and the ideal excuse for maximum exposure. The travelers were making the most of it. Sam settled himself at a side-table, punched the dispenser for something simple and light, and watched his fellow passengers making spectacles of themselves. Just across from him a party of four was becoming hilarious over a wine game. In one-fourth-G it was possible, with care, to pour and drink wine. They thought it a lot more fun to throw it, a small glassful at a time, at each other, the trick being to catch the slow-forming, wobbling globe of liquid on the end of a straw and drink it before it escaped.