J
ordan caught up before Docchi reached the cargo hold. In the lesser gravity of the ship Jordan was truly at home.
Docchi turned and waited for him. Jordan still carried the weapon he had taken from the pilot. It was clipped to the sacklike garment he wore, dangling from his midsection, which, for him was just below his shoulders. Down the corridor he flew, swinging from the guide rails lightly, though gravity on the ship was as erratic as on the asteroid.
Docchi braced himself. Locomotion was not so easy for him.
Jordan halted beside him and dangled from one hand. "We have another passenger."
Docchi stiffened. "Who?"
"I could describe her," said Jordan. "But why, when a name will do at least as well?"
"Nona!" said Docchi. He slumped in sudden relief against the wall. "How did she get in the ship?"
"A good question," said Jordan. "Remind me to ask her that sometime when she's able to answer. But since I don't know, I'll have to use my imagination. My guess is that, after she jammed the lights and scanners in the rocket dome, she walked to the ship and tapped the passenger lock three times in the right places, or something just as improbable. The lock opened for her whether it was supposed to or not."
"As good a guess as any," agreed Docchi.
"We may as well make our assumptions complete. Once inside, she felt tired. She found a comfortable cabin and fell asleep in it. She remained asleep throughout our skirmish with the geepees."
"She deserves a rest," said Docchi.
"She does. But if she had waited a few minutes to take it, she'd have saved you the trouble of crawling through the tubes."
"She did her part and more," Docchi argued. "We depend too much on her. Next we'll expect her to escort us personally to the stars." He straightened up. "Let's go. Anti is waiting for us."
The cargo hold was sizable. It had to be to contain the tank, battered and twisted though it was. Equipment had been jarred from storage racks and lay in tangled heaps on the floor.
"Anti!" called Docchi.
"Here."
"Are you hurt?"
"Never felt a thing," came the cheerful reply.
J
ordan scaled the side of the tank. He reached the top and peered over. "She seems all right," he called down. "Part of the acid's gone. Otherwise no damage."
Damage enough, however. Acid was a matter of life for Anti. It had been splashed from the tank and, where it had spilled, metal was corroding rapidly. The wall against which the tank had crashed was bent and partly eaten through. That was no reason for alarm; the scavenging system of the ship would handle acid. The real question was what to do for Anti.
"I've stewed in this soup for years," said Anti. "Get me out of here."
"How?"
"If you weren't as stupid as doctors pretend to be, you'd know how. No gravity, of course. I've got muscles, more than you think. I can walk as long as my bones don't break from the weight."
No gravity would be rough on Docchi; having no arms, he would be virtually helpless. The prospect of floating free without being able to grasp something was terrifying.
"As soon as we can manage it," he said, forcing down his fear. "First we've got to drain and store the acid."
Jordan had anticipated that. He'd swung off the tank and was busy expelling the water from an auxiliary compartment into space. As soon as the compartment was empty, he led a hose from it to the tank.
The pumps sucked and the acid level fell slowly.
Docchi felt the ship lurch familiarly. "Hurry," he called out to Jordan.
The gravital unit was acting up. Presumably it was getting ready to cut out. If it did—well, a free-floating globe of acid would be as destructive to the ship and those in it as a high velocity meteor cluster.
Jordan jammed the lever as far as it would go and held it there. "All out," said Jordan presently, and let the hose roll back into the wall. Done in plenty of time. The gravital unit remained in operation for a full minute.
As soon as she was weightless, Anti rose out of the tank.
In all the time Docchi had known her, he had seen no more than a face framed in blue acid. Periodic surgery, where it was necessary, had trimmed the flesh from her face. For the rest, she lived submerged in a corrosive liquid that destroyed the wild tissue as fast as it grew. Or nearly as fast.
Docchi averted his eyes.
"Well, junkman, look at a real monster," snapped Anti.
H
umans were not meant to grow that large. But it was not obscene to Docchi, merely unbelievable. Jupiter is not repulsive because it is the bulging giant of planets; it is overwhelming, and so was Anti.
"How will you live out of the acid?" he stammered.
"How really unobservant some men are," said Anti loftily. "I anticipated our little journey and prepared for it. If you look closely, you will notice I have on a special surgery robe. It's the only thing in the Solar System that will fit me. It's fabricated from a spongelike substance and holds enough acid to last me about thirty-six hours."
She grasped a rail and propelled herself toward the corridor. Normally that was a spacious passageway. For her it was a close fit.
Satellites, one glowing and the other swinging in an eccentric orbit, followed after her.
N
ona was standing before the instrument panel when they came back. There was an impressive array of dials, lights and levers in front of her, but she wasn't interested in these. A single small dial, separate from the rest, held her complete attention. She seemed disturbed by what she saw or didn't see. Disturbed or excited, it was difficult to say which.
Anti stopped. "Look at her. If I didn't know she's a freak like the rest of us, the only one, in fact, who was born that way, it would be easy to hate her—she's so disgustingly normal."
Normal? True and yet not true. Surgical techniques that could take a body apart and put it back together again with a skill once reserved for the repair of machines had made beauty commonplace. No more sagging muscles, wrinkles; even the aged were attractive and youthful-seeming until the day they died. No more ill-formed limbs, misshapen bodies. Everyone was handsome or beautiful. No exceptions.
None to speak of, at least.
The accidentals didn't belong, of course. In another day most of them would have been candidates for a waxworks or the formaldehyde of a specimen bottle.
Nona fitted neither category; she wasn't a repair job. Looking at her closely—and why not?—she was an original work as far from the normal in one direction as Anti, for example, was in the other.
"Why is she staring at the little dial?" asked Anti as the others slipped past her and came into the compartment. "Is there something wrong with it?" She shrugged. "I would be interested in the big dials. The ones with colored lights."
"That's Nona." Docchi smiled. "I'm sure she's never been in the control room of a rocket before, and yet she went straight to the most curious thing in it. She's looking at the gravital indicator. Directly behind it is the gravital unit."
"How do you know? Does it say so?"
"It doesn't. You have to be trained to recognize it, or else be Nona."
Anti dismissed that intellectual feat. "What are you waiting for? You know she can't hear us. Go stand in front of her."
"How do I get there?" Docchi had risen a few inches from the floor, now that Jordan had released him from his grip.
"A good engineer would have enough sense to put on magneslippers. Nona did." Anti grasped his jacket. How she was able to move was uncertain. The tissues that surrounded the woman were too vast to permit the perception of individual motions. Nevertheless, she proceeded to the center of the compartment, and with her came Docchi.
Nona turned before they reached her.
"My poor boy," sighed Anti. "You do a very bad job of concealing your emotions, if that's what you're trying to do. Anyway, stop glowing like a rainbow and say something."
"Hello," said Docchi.
Nona smiled at him, though it was Anti that she came to.
"No, not too close, child. Don't touch the surgery robe unless you want your pretty face to peel off like a plastiwrapper."
Nona stopped; she said nothing.
Anti shook her head hopelessly. "I wish you would learn to read lips or at least recognize written words. It's so difficult to communicate with you."
"She knows facial expressions and actions, I think," said Docchi. "She's good at emotions. Words are a foreign concept to her."
"What other concepts does anyone think with?" asked Anti dubiously.
"Maybe mathematical relationships," answered Docchi. "Though she doesn't. They've tested her for that." He frowned. "I don't know what concepts she does think with. I wish I did."
"Save some of that worry and apply it to our present situation," said Anti. "The object of your concern doesn't seem to be interested in it."
That was true. Nona had wandered back and was staring at the gravital indicator again. What she saw to hold her attention was a puzzle.
In some ways she seemed irresponsible and childlike. That was an elusive thought, though: whose child? Not really, of course. Her parents were obscure technicians and mechanics, descendants of a long line of mechanics and technicians. The question he had asked himself was this: where and how does she belong? He couldn't answer.
With an effort Docchi came back to reality. "We appealed to the Medicouncil," he said. "We asked for a ship to go to the nearest star. It would have to be a rocket, naturally. Even allowing for a better design than any we now have, the journey would take a long time, forty or fifty years going and the same length of time back. That's entirely too long for a normal, but it wouldn't matter to a biocompensator."
"Why a rocket?" interrupted Jordan. "Why not some form of gravity drive?"
"An attractive idea," admitted Docchi. "Theoretically, there's no limit to gravity drive except light speed, and even that's not certain. If it would work, the time element could be cut to a fraction. But the last twenty years have proved that gravity drives won't work at all outside the Solar System. They function very poorly even when the ship is as far out as Jupiter's orbit."
"I thought the gravity drive on a ship was nearly the same as the gravital unit on the asteroid," said Jordan. "Why won't they function?"
"I don't know why," answered Docchi impatiently. "If I did, I wouldn't be marooned on Handicap Haven. Arms or no arms, biocompensator or not, I'd be the most important scientist on Earth."
"With a multitude of pretty women competing for your affections," added Anti.
"I think he'd settle for one. A certain one," suggested Jordan.
"Poor, unimaginative boy," said Anti. "In my youth...."
"We've heard about your youth," said Jordan.
"Youth and love are long since past, for both of you. Talk about them privately if you want, but not now." Docchi glowered at them. "Anyway," he resumed, "gravity drive is out. One time they had hopes for it, but no longer. It should be able to drive this ship. Actually, its sole function is to provide an artificial gravityinsidethe ship, for passenger comfort. So rocket ship it is. That's what we asked for. The Medicouncil refused. Therefore we're going to appeal to a higher authority."
"Fine," said Anti. "How?"
"We've discussed it," answered Docchi. "Ultimately the Medicouncil is responsible to the Solar Government. And in turn—"
"All right, I'm in favor of it," said Anti. "I just wanted to know."
"Mars is closer," continued Docchi. "But Earth is the seat of government. As soon as we get there...." He stopped suddenly and listened.
Anti listened with him and waited until she could stand it no longer. "What's the matter?" she asked. "I don't hear anything."
Jordan leaned forward in his seat and looked at the instrument panel. "That's the trouble, Anti. You're not supposed to hear anything. But you should be able tofeelthe vibration from the rocket exhaust, as long as it's on."
"I don't feel anything, either."
"Yeah," said Jordan. He looked at Docchi. "There's plenty of fuel."
M
omentum of the ship didn't cease when the rockets stopped, of course. They were still moving, but not very fast and not in the direction they wanted to go. Gingerly Docchi tried out the magneslippers; he was clumsy, but no longer helpless in the gravityless ship. He stared futilely at the instruments as if he could wring more secrets than the panel had electronic access to.
"It's mechanical trouble of some sort," he said uneasily. "There's one way of finding out."
Before he could move, Anti was in the corridor that led away from the control compartment.
"Stay here, Anti," he said. "I'll see what's wrong."
She reached nearly from the floor to the ceiling. She missed by scant inches the sides of the passageway. Locomotion was easy enough for her; turning around wasn't. Anti didn't turn.
"Look, honey," her voice floated back. "You brought me along for the ride. That's fine, but I'm not satisfied with it. I want to earn my fare. You stay and run the ship because you know how and I don't. I'll find out what's wrong."
"But you won't know what to do, Anti." There was no answer. "All right," he said in defeat. "Both of us ought to go. Jordan, you stay at the controls."
Anti led the way because Docchi couldn't get around her. Determinedly he shuffled along. There was a trick to magneslippers that he had nearly forgotten. Slowly it was coming back to him—shuffle instead of striding.
It was a dingy, poorly lighted passageway in an older ship. Handicap Haven definitely didn't rate the best equipment that was produced. On one side was the hull of the ship; on the other, a few small cabins. None were occupied. Anti stopped. The passageway ended in a cross corridor that led to the other side of the ship.
"We'd better check the stern rocket tubes," he said, still unable to see around her. "Open it up and we'll take a look."
"I can't," said Anti. "There are handles, but the thing won't open. There's a red light, too. Does that mean anything?"
His heart sank. "It does. Don't try to open it. With your strength, you might be unlucky enough to do it."
"That's a man for you," said Anti sharply. "First he wants me to open it, and then he tells me not to."
"There's a vacuum in there. The combustion cap has been retracted. That's the only thing that will actuate the warning signal. You'd die in a few seconds if you somehow managed to open the lock to the rocket compartment."
"What are we waiting for? Let's get busy and fix it."
"Sure, fix it. You see, Anti, that didn't happen by itself. Someone, or something, was responsible."
"Who?"
"Did you see anyone when we were loading your tank in the ship?"
"Nothing. I heard Cameron shouting, a lot of noise. All I could see was what was directly overhead. What does that have to do with it?"
"I think it has to do with a geepee. I thought they all dropped outside. Maybe there was one that didn't."
"Why a geepee?" she asked blankly.
"In the first place, no man is strong enough to move the combustion cap. But if he should somehow manage to exert super-human effort, as soon as the cap cleared the tubes, rocket action would cease. The air in the compartment would exhaust into space and anyone in there would die."
"So we have a dead geepee in there."
"A geepee doesn't die. Not even become inactive; it doesn't need air." Docchi tried to think the thing through. "Not only that, a geepee might be able to escape from the compartment. The lock would close as soon as the pressure dropped. But a geepee...."
Anti settled down grimly. "Then there's a geepee on the loose, intent on sabotage?"
"I'm afraid so," he admitted worriedly.
"What are we standing here for? We'll go back to controls and pick up the robot on radio. What it damaged, it can repair." She was partly turned around now and saw Docchi's face. "Don't tell me," she said. "I suppose I should have thought of it. The signal doesn't work inside the ship."
Docchi nodded. "It doesn't. Robots are never used aboard, so the control is set in the bow antenna and the ship, of course, is insulated."
"Well," said Anti happily, "we've got a robot hunt ahead of us."
"We do. And our bare hands to hunt it with."
"Oh, come now! It's not as bad as all that. Look, the geepee was back here when the rockets stopped. Could it get by the control compartment without our seeing it?"
"It couldn't. There are two corridors leading through the compartment, one on each side of the ship."
"That's what I thought. We came down one corridor and no geepee was in it. It has to be in the other. If it goes into a cabin, a light will shine on the outside. It can't really hide from us."
"Sure, we'll find out where it is. But what are we going to do with it when we find it?"
"I was thinking," said Anti. "Can you get around me when I'm standing like this?"
"I can't."
"Neither can a geepee. All I need is a toaster, or something that looks like one, and I can drive the robot into the control compartment for Jordan to pick off." Determinedly, she began to move toward the opposite corridor. "Hurry back to Jordan and tell him what we're doing. There ought to be another toaster on the ship. Probably there's one somewhere in the control compartment. Bring it back to me."
Docchi bit his lip and stared at the back of the huge woman. "All right," he answered. "But stay where you are. Don't try anything until I get back."
Anti laughed. "I value my big, fat life," she said. There were other things she valued, but she didn't mention them.
Docchi went as fast as the magneslippers would allow, which wasn't very fast. The strategy was simple, but it didn't follow that it was sound—a toaster for Jordan and one for Anti, if another could be found.
Anti would block the corridor. A geepee might go through her, but it could never squeeze past her. The robot would have to run for it. If it came toward Anti, she might be able to burn it down. But she would be firing directly into the control room. If she missed even partially—
The instruments were delicate.
It wasn't better if Jordan got the chance to bring down the robot. Anti would be in the line of fire. No, that wasn't good, either. They'd have to think of something else.
"Jordan," called Docchi as he entered the control compartment. Jordan wasn't there. Nona was, still gazing serenely at the gravity indicator.
Lights were streaming from the corridor on the opposite side of the compartment. Docchi hurried over. Jordan was just inside the entrance, the toaster clutched grimly in his hand. He was hitching his truncated body slowly toward the stern.
Coming to meet him was Anti—unarmed, enormously fat Anti. She wasn't walking; somehow it seemed more like swimming, a bulbous, flabby sea animal moving through the air. She waved her fins against the wall and propelled herself forward.
"Melt him down!" she cried.
It was difficult to make out the vaguely human form of the geepee. The powerful, shining body blended into the structure of the ship itself—unintentional camouflage, though the robot wasn't aware of that. It was crouched at the threshold of a cabin, hesitating between the approaching dangers.
Jordan raised the weapon and as instantly lowered it. "Get out of the way," he told Anti.
There was no place for her to go. She was too big to enter a cabin, too massive to let the geepee squeeze by her even if she wanted it to.
"Never mind that. Get him," she answered.
A geepee was not a genius even by robot standards. It didn't need to be. Heat is deadly; a human body is a fragile thing. This it knew. It ran toward Anti. Unlike man, it didn't need magneslippers. It had magnetic metal feet which could move fast, and did.
Docchi couldn't close his eyes, though he wanted to. He had to watch. The geepee torpedoed into Anti. And it was the robot that was thrown back. Relative mass favored the monstrous woman.
The electronic brain obeyed its original instructions, whatever those were. It got to its feet and rushed toward Anti. Metal arms shot out with dazzling speed and crashed against the flesh of the fat woman. Docchi could hear the thud. No ordinary person could take that kind of punishment and live.
Anti wasn't ordinary; she was strange, even for an accidental, living far inside a deep armor of flesh. It was possible that she never felt the crushing force of those blows. Amazingly, she grasped the robot and drew it to her. And the geepee lost the advantage of leverage. The bright arms didn't flash so fast nor with such lethal power.
"Gravity!" cried Anti. "All you've got!"
She leaned against the struggling machine.
Gravity. That was something he could do. Docchi turned, took two steps before the surge of gravity hit him. It came in waves, the sequence of which he was never able to disentangle. The first wave staggered him; at the second his knees buckled and he sank to the floor. After that his eardrums hurt. He thought he could feel the ship quiver. He knew dazedly that an artificial gravity field of this magnitude was impossible, but that knowledge didn't help him move.
It vanished as suddenly as it had come. Painfully his lungs expanded. Each muscle ached. He rolled to his feet and lurched past Jordan.
He didn't find the mass of broken flesh he expected. Anti was already standing.
"Oof!" she grunted and gazed with satisfaction at the twisted grotesque shape at her feet. The electronic brain had been smashed, the body flattened.
"Are you hurt?" asked Docchi gently, awed.
She waggled the extremities of her body. "Nope, I can't feel anything broken," she said solemnly. She moved back to get a better view of the robot. "I'd call that throwing my weight around. At the right time, of course. The secret's timing. And I must say you picked up your cue with the gravity well." Her laughter rolled through the ship.
"It wasn't I," said Docchi.
"Jordan? No, he's just getting up. Then who?"
"Nona," said Docchi. "It had to be her. She saw what had to be done and did it. But how she got that amount of gravity—"
"Ask her," said Anti with fond irony.
Docchi grimaced and limped back into the control room, followed by Anti and Jordan. Nona was at the gravity panel, her face pleasant and childlike.
"Gravity can be turned on or off," said Docchi puzzledly, searching her face for some sign. "And regulated, within certain narrow limits. But somehow you doubled or tripled the normal amount. How?"
Nona smiled questioningly.
"Gravity engineers would like to know that too," said Jordan.
"Everybody would like to know," Anti interrupted irritably. "Except me. I'm too pragmatic, I suppose, but I want to know when we start the rockets and be on our way."
"It isn't that easy," sighed Jordan. "A retracted combustion cap in flight generally means at least one burned-out tube." He made his way to the instrument panel and looked at it glumly. "Three."
"A factor." Docchi nodded. "But I was thinking about the robot."
Anti was impatient. "An interesting subject, no doubt. What about it?"
"Where did it get instructions? Not radio; the hull of the ship cuts off all radiation. The last we knew, it was in our control."
"All right, how?"
"Voice," said Docchi. "Cameron's voice, to be exact."
"But he was in the rocket dome," Jordan objected.
"Think back to when we were loading the tank. We had to look through the telecom and the angle of vision was bad. We couldn't see much of the cargo lock. Anti couldn't see anything that wasn't directly overhead. Both Cameron and the geepee managed to get inside and we didn't know it."
Jordan hefted his weapon. "Looks like we've got another hunt on our hands. This time a nice normal doctor."
"Keep it handy," said Docchi, glancing at the toaster. "But be careful how you use it. One homicide and we can forget what we came for. I think he'll be ready to surrender. The ship's temporarily disabled; he'll consider that damage enough."
J
ordan found the doctor in the forward section of the ship. Cameron knew better than to argue with a toaster. In a matter of minutes he was in the control room.
"Now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?" he asked.
Docchi swiveled away from the instrument panel. "I don't expect active cooperation, of course, but I like to think you'll give your word not to hinder us hereafter."
Cameron glared. "I promise nothing of the kind."
"We can chain him to Anti," suggested Jordan. "That will keep him out of trouble."
"Like leading a poodle on a leash? Nope," said Anti indignantly. "A girl has to have some privacy."
"Don't wince, Cameron," objected Docchi. "She really was a girl once, an attractive one."
"We can put him in a spacesuit and lock his hands behind his back," said Jordan. "Something like an ancient straitjacket."
Cameron laughed.
"No, that's inhuman," said Docchi.
Jordan juggled the toaster. "I can weld with this. Let's put him in a cabin and weld the door closed. We can cut a slot to shove food in. A very narrow slot."
"Excellent. I think you have the solution. That is, unless Dr. Cameron will reconsider his decision."
Cameron shrugged. "They'll pick you up in a day or less anyway. I suppose I'm not compromising myself by agreeing to your terms."
"Good."
"A doctor's word is as good as his oath," observed Anti. "Hippocratic or hypocritic."
"Now, Anti, don't be cynical. Doctors have an economic sense as well as the next person," said Docchi gravely. He turned to Cameron. "You see, after Anti grew too massive for her skeletal structure, doctors reasoned she'd be most comfortable in the absence of gravity. That was in the early days, before successful ship gravital units were developed. They put her on an interplanetary ship and kept transferring her before each landing.
"But that grew troublesome and—expensive. They devised a new treatment; the asteroid and the tank of acid. Not being aquatic by nature, Anti resented the change. She still does."
"I knew nothing about that," Cameron pointed out defensively.
"It was before your time." Docchi frowned at the doctor. "Tell me, why did you laugh when Jordan mentioned a spacesuit?"
Cameron grinned. "That was my project while you were busy with the robot."
"To do what? Jordan—"
But Jordan was already on his way. He was gone for some time.
"Well?" asked Docchi on his return. It really wasn't necessary; Jordan's gloomy face told the story.
"Cut to ribbons."
"All of them?"
"Every one. Beyond repair."
"What's the excitement about?" rumbled Anti. "We don't need spacesuits unless something happens to the ship and we have to go outside."
"Exactly, Anti. How do you suppose we go about replacing the defective tubes? From the outside, of course. By destroying the spacesuits, Cameron made sure we can't."
Anti opened her mouth with surprise and closed it in anger. She glowered at the doctor.
"We're still in the asteroid zone," said Cameron. "In itself, that's not dangerous. Without power to avoid stray rocks, it is. I advise you to contact the Medicouncil. They'll send a ship to pick us up and tow us in."
"No, thanks. I don't like Handicap Haven as well as you do," Anti said brusquely. She turned to Docchi. "Maybe I'm stupid for asking, but exactly what is it that's deadly about being out in space without a spacesuit?"
"Cold. Lack of air pressure. Lack of oxygen."
"Is that all? Nothing else?"
His laugh was too loud. "Isn't that enough?"
"I wanted to be sure," she said.
She beckoned to Nona, who was standing near. Together they went forward, where the spacesuits were kept.
Cameron scowled puzzledly and started to follow. Jordan waved the toaster around.
"All right," said the doctor, stopping. He rubbed his chin. "What is she thinking about?"
"I wouldn't know," said Docchi. "She's not scientifically trained, if that's what you mean. But she has a good mind, as good as her body once was."
"And how good was that?"
"We don't talk about it," said Jordan shortly.
I
t was a long time before the women came back—if the weird creature that floated into the control compartment with NonawasAnti.
Cameron stared at her and saw shudderingly that it was. "You need a session with the psycho-computer," he said. "When we get back, that's the first thing we do. Can't you understand...."
"Be quiet," growled Jordan. "Now, Anti, explain what you've rigged up."
"Any kind of pressure is good enough as far as the outside of the body is concerned," answered Anti, flipping back the helmet. "Mechanical pressure will do as well as air pressure. I had Nona cut the spacesuits into strips and wind them around me—hard. Then I found a helmet that would fit over my head when the damaged part was cut away. It won't hold much air pressure, even taped very tight to my skin. But as long as it's pure oxygen—"
"It might be satisfactory," admitted Docchi. "But the temperature?"
"Do you think I'm going to worry about cold?" asked Anti. "Me? Way down below all this flesh?"
"Listen to me," said Cameron through his teeth. "You've already seriously threatened my career with all this childish nonsense. I won't permit you to ruin it altogether by a deliberate suicide."
"You and your stinking career," retorted Jordan tiredly. "We're not asking your permission to do anything." He turned away from the doctor. "You understand the risk, Anti? It's possible that it won't work at all."
"I've thought about it," Anti replied soberly. "On the other hand, I've thought about the asteroid."
"All right," said Jordan. Docchi nodded. Nona bobbed her head; it was doubtful that she knew what she was agreeing to.
"Let's have some telecom viewers outside," said Docchi. "One directly in back, one on each side. We've got to know what's happening."
Jordan went to the control panel and flipped levers. "They're out and working," he said, gazing at the screen. "Now, Anti, go to the freight lock. Close your helmet and wait. I'll let the air out slowly. The pressure change will be gradual. If anything seems wrong, let me know over the helmet radio and I'll yank you in immediately. Once you're outside I'll give you further instructions. Tools and equipment are in a compartment that opens into space."
Anti waddled away.
Jordan looked down at his legless body. "I suppose we have to be realistic about it—"
"We do," answered Docchi. "Anti is the only one of us who has a chance of doing the job and surviving."
Jordan adjusted a dial. "It was Cameron who was responsible for it. If Anti doesn't come back, you can be damn sure he'll join her."
"No threats, please," said Docchi. "When are you going to let her out?"
"She's out," said Jordan. Deliberately, he had diverted their attention while he had taken the burden of emotional strain.
Docchi glanced hastily at the telecom. Anti was hanging free in space, wrapped and strapped in strips torn from the useless spacesuits—that, and more flesh than any human had ever borne. The helmet sat jauntily on her head; the oxygen cylinder was strapped to her back. She was still intact.
"How is she?" he asked anxiously, unaware that the microphone was open.
"Fine," came Anti's reply, faint and ready. "The air's thin, but it's pure oxygen."
"Cold?" asked Docchi.
"It hasn't penetrated yet. No worse than the acid, at any rate. What do I do?"
Jordan gave her directions. The others watched. It was work to find the tools and examine the tubes for defectives, to loosen the tubes in the sockets and pull them out and push them spinning into space. It was still harder to replace them, though there was no gravity and Anti was held to the hull by magneslippers.
But it seemed more than work. To Cameron, who was watching, an odd thought occurred: In her remote past, of which he knew nothing, Anti had done something like this before. Ridiculous, of course. Yet there was a rhythm to her motions, this shapeless giant creature whose bones would break with her weight if she tried to stand at even only half Earth gravity. Rhythm, a sense of purpose, a strange pattern, an incredible gargantuan grace.
The whale plowing the waves is graceful; it cannot be otherwise in its natural habitat. The human race had produced, accidentally, one unlikely person to whom interplanetary space was not an alien thing. Anti was at last in her element.
"Now," said Jordan, keeping the tension out of his voice, "go back to the outside tool compartment. You'll find a lever. Pull. That will set the combustion cap in place."
"Done," said Anti, some minutes later.
"That's all. You can come in now."
"That's all? But I'm not cold. It hasn't reached any nerves yet."
"Come in," repeated Jordan, showing the anger of alarm.
She walked slowly over the hull to the cargo lock and, while she did, Jordan reeled in the telecom viewers. The lock was no sooner closed to the outside and the air hissing into the compartment than Jordan was there, opening the inner lock.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She flipped back the helmet. There was frost on her eyebrows and her nose was a bright red. "Of course. My hands aren't a bit cold." She stripped off the heated gloves and waggled her fingers.
"Itcan'tbe!" protested Cameron. "You should be frozen stiff!"
"Why?" asked Anti, laughing. "It's a matter of insulation and I have plenty of that."
Cameron turned to Docchi. "When I was a kid, I saw a film of a dancer. She did a ballet, Life of the Cold Planets, I believe it was called. For some cockeyed reason, I thought of it when Anti was out there. I hadn't thought of it in years."
He rubbed his hand fretfully over his forehead. "It fascinated me when I first saw it. I couldn't get it out of my mind. When I grew older, I found out a tragic thing happened to the dancer. She was on a tour of Venus and the ship she was in disappeared. They sent out searching parties, of course. They found her after she had spent a week on a fungus plain. You know what that meant. The great ballerina was a living spore culture medium."
"Shut up," growled Jordan.
Cameron didn't seem to hear. "Naturally, she died. I can't remember her name, but I've always remembered the ballet she did. And that's funny, because it reminded me of Anti out there—"
A fist exploded in his face. If there had been more behind the blow than shoulders and a fragment of a body, his jaw would have been broken. As it was he floated through the air and crashed against the wall.
Angrily, he got to his feet. "I gave my word I wouldn't cause any trouble. The agreement evidently doesn't work both ways." He glanced significantly at the weapon Jordan carried. "Maybe you'd better be sure to have that around at all times."
"I told you to shut up," said Jordan. After that he ignored the doctor. He didn't have a body with which to do it, but somehow Jordan managed a bow. "A flawless performance. One of your very best, Antoinette."
"Do you think so?" sighed Anti. The frost had melted from her eyebrows and was trickling down her cheek. She left with Jordan.
Cameron remained behind. He felt his jaw. It was too bad about his ambitions. He knew now that he was never going to be the spectacular success he had once imagined. Not after these accidentals had escaped from Handicap Haven. Still, he would always be able to practice medicine somewhere in the Solar System. He'd done his best on the asteroid and this ship, and he'd been a complete ass both times.
The ballerina hadn't really died, as he had been told. It would have been better for her if she had. He succeeded in recalling her name. It had been Antoinette.
Now it was Anti. He could have found that out by checking her case history—ifHandicap Haven had one on file. Probably not, he comforted himself. Why keep case histories of hopeless cases?
W
e'll stick to the regular lanes," said Docchi. "I think we'll get closer. They have no reason to suspect that we're heading toward Earth. Mars is more logical, or one of the moons of Jupiter, or another asteroid."
Jordan shifted uneasily. "I'm not in favor of it. They'll pick us up before we have a chance to say anything."
"But there's nothing to distinguish us from an ordinary Earth-to-Mars rocket. We have a ship's registry on board. Pick out a ship that's in our class. Hereafter, we're going to be that ship. If Traffic blips us, and they probably won't unless we try to land, have a recording ready. Something like this: 'ME 21 zip crackle 9 reporting. Our communication is acting up. We can't hear you, Traffic.' Don't overdo the static effects but repeat that with suitable variations and I don't think they will bother us."
Shaking his head dubiously, Jordan swung away toward the repair shops.
"You look worried," said Anti.
Docchi turned around. "Yeah."
"Won't it work?"
"Sure. We'll get close to Earth. They're not looking for us around here. They don't really know why we escaped in the rocket. That's why they can't figure out where we're going."
His face was taut and his eyes were tired. "It's not that. The entire Solar Police Force has been alerted for us."
"Which means?"
"Look. We planned to bypass the Medicouncil and take our case directly to the Solar Government. If they want us as much as the radio indicates, it's not likely they'll be very sympathetic. If the Solar Government doesn't support us all the way, we'll never get another chance."
"Well?" said Anti. She seemed trimmer, more vigorous. "What are we waiting for? Let's take the last step first."
He raised his head. "The Solar Government won't like it."
"They won't, but there's nothing they can do about it."
"I think there is—simply shoot us down. When we stole the ship, we automatically stepped into the criminal class."
"We knew that in advance."
"Is it worth it?"
"I think so," said Anti.
"In that event," he said, "I'll need time to get ready."
She scrutinized him carefully. "Maybe we can fix you up."
"With fake arms and grease-paint? No. They'll have to accept us as we are."
"A good idea. I hadn't thought of the sympathy angle."
"Not sympathy. Reality. I don't want them to approve of us as handsome accidentals and have them change their minds when they discover what we're really like."
Anti looked doubtful, but she kept her objections to herself as she waddled away.
Sitting in silence, he watched her go. She, at least, would derive some benefit. Dr. Cameron apparently hadn't noticed that exposure to extreme cold had done more to inhibit her unceasing growth than the acid bath. She'd never be normal again; that was obvious. But some day, if the cold treatment were properly investigated, she might be able to stand gravity.
He examined the telecom. They were getting closer. No longer a bright point of light, Earth was a perceptible disc. He could see the outline of oceans, shapes of land; he could imagine people.
Jordan came in. "The record is rigged up, though we haven't had to use it. But we have a friend behind us. An official friend."
"Has he blipped us?"
"Not yet. He keeps hanging on."
"Is he overtaking us?"
"He would like to."
"Don't let him."
"With this bag of bolts?"
"Shake it apart if you have to," Docchi impatiently said. "How soon can you break into a broadcasting orbit?"
"I thought that was our last resort."
"Right. As far as Anti and I are concerned, this is it. Any argument against?"
"None that I can think of," answered Jordan. "With a heavy cruiser behind us, no argument at all."