That was an allusion to their last encounter. Andrew had called for him—not come to his surgery, like the others—and insisted he had a migraine. Thorough, punctilious, Pavel had checked him out, and his instruments had confirmed what he had already started to suspect: the young man’s complaint wasn’t migraine at all, but a hangover which had lasted three days without an interlude which might have allowed the body’s own defences to flush it away. And he’d said so, adding that Andrew was on the verge of alcoholic poisoning, and Andrew had roared that he was a liar and unfit to practice his profession. He had gone so far as to report Pavel to the captain . . . not that that made much impression. Captain Magnusson, fundamentally, resented the regulation which compelled him to have a medical officer on board at all, and would have been happier with mere machines, since they were cheaper.
Roughly, Pavel said, “You have something a lot worse than a headache.”
Andrew’s forehead creased. “Why are you shining that light at me? Why is it dark in here?”
“Why the hell do you think? We crashed, of course!”
“Crashed?” Andrew almost sat up—but Pavel put a heavy hand on his shoulder to prevent him.
“Lie still! You have a broken back and probably a broken pelvis, and all kinds of internal injuries. I gave you a painkiller, but if you want to live you absolutely must not move.”
“What?” Fretfully; Andrew seemed not to have taken in what he’d been told. He made to lift the coverlet, and winced.
“Hell, that hurt! And you said you’d given me a painkiller! Can’t you even use the right drug to—”
“Now you listen to me!” Pavel rasped. He was picking among the gear he had brought, looking for the collapsible limb-tractor. “You’re about as badly broken as a man can be and still expect to survive. Have you got that?”
Andrew’s face crumpled like a wet paper mask as he realised: this is happening to me! He said, “We crashed?”
“Why the hell else do you imagine your bunk is on the wrong side of the cabin? What do you think threw all your belongings across the floor? If you hadn’t been in your bunk, but up and about like everybody else, you’d be under a thousand tons of sand!”
“None of your needling! I live the way I choose to live, and if other people don’t like it that’s their bad luck!”
“Oh, shut up!” Pavel was assembling the limb-tractor now. “Make the most of the painkiller I gave you. There isn’t much left, and the only other thing I can do to dull the pain you’d feel without it would be to give you a total block on the lower spinal cord—and I’m not sure it could be reversed. It might mean you being paralyzed. If you want to walk around again, a whole man, you listen to me and do as I say. Clear?”
The blurred oval of Andrew’s half-open mouth trembled. He was getting through.
“All right! Now I’m going to have to fix your left arm. It’s dislocated, but this will reseat the shoulder in its socket.” He hefted the limb-tractor. “So brace yourself. You probably haven’t suffered much pain in your life, but human beings used to put up with far worse than what you’ll feel. Now if I can get around this bunk to the other side. . . .” Moving as he talked, he found there was just enough room for him to stand.
“They also used to put up with head-lice and fleas and open sores!” Andrew snapped. “We’ve made progress since those days!”
Surprised to find that this spoiled young man had even heard of such things, Pavel lifted the desensitized arm and fitted the tractor around it, trying not to think about the nauseatingly wrong angle it made at the shoulder. He said, “There hasn’t been much progress here. We seem to be on the next planet out from Carteret. It hasn’t even evolved into the Pleistocene Age. Right, here we go!”
And he snapped the spring of the tractor, and the shoulder joint re-engaged with a thud. Perfect.
Detaching the device again, he heard Andrew saying, “Well, what about you, then?” The old acid burned in his tone, as though he were constitutionally incapable of talking to people without seeking ways of making them feel small. “Were you in your bunk too, like me?”
“No! I was thrown clear through the surgery bulkhead and into that compartment full of furs. By a miracle they were all out of their bales, and—”
“Well, hell!” Andrew crowed. “I saved your life!”
“What?” The next stage would be to cleanse and examine the injured man’s lower body; Pavel was already selecting the gear he required for the job. He paused and glanced up.
“Saved your life,” Andrew repeated with a harsh attempt at a laugh. “I was bored last night. I woke that man—what’s his name? The one from the fur dealers?”
“You mean—what was his name?” Pavel said glacially. “He’s dead.”
“I didn’t like him anyway,” Andrew said. “But I woke him and told him to show off his goods. Made him take them all out of their packing. Well, I’ll be damned! If I hadn’t done that, you’d have been—”
“Killed,” Pavel broke in. “But you would have been dying here in terrible pain.”
“The hell I would,” Andrew said. “That’s not my style. You should know that by now.”
Worriedly, Pavel stared at him. One of the side-effects of the drug he’d used, in certain susceptible types, was a kind of megalomaniac euphoria. It appeared that Andrew must be susceptible.
“No. Look just to your right,” Andrew went on. “See that black case?”
Pavel complied, and noticed a square dark case which he must narrowly have missed treading on when he went around the bunk to apply the limb-tractor. He picked it up. It was heavy for its size.
“There’s a combination lock. Press five, two, five, one,
