As though imposing a penance on himself for his surrender to anger and fear, he made a particularly thorough and careful job of the cleansing process, undertaking manually some of the most revolting parts which he could have used an instrument for, assuming the instrument was working after the crash. Eventually, however, he decided that the stimulant was wearing off completely, and he ought not to take a second dose before eating.
By then he had done absolutely all he had the resources to do: Andrew was in a spider’s web of medical devices, two or three of which he had had to return to the surgery to bring, which would minimize pain, extract fatigue poisons direct through the skin, cleanse him whenever his bowels and bladder leaked, and insure him against the vanishingly small risk of some degenerative infection such as gangrene. Provided rescue arrived within fifteen days, he should not merely survive, but survive in good enough health to endure the major operation on his spine necessary to restore his power of ambulation. It was an achievement to be proud of, especially since Pavel had been prevented from using so many of his regular tools owing to the risk of them suffering damage in the crash.
Now it was high time he thought about himself. . . as clearly as the air would allow him to.
He was thirsty, he realized, not just dry from the arid air of this planet but actually dehydrated from his hard work. He had a number of phials of distilled water in the surgery, including several of litre capacity which had been so well-packaged they remained intact, and he had a fair supply of glucose solution and other instant-energy concentrates, various stimulants which rapidly invoked the “second wind” process in muscle tissue, many different tablets and capsules which, although intended exclusively for metabolic tests, could be used as nutriment in emergency, and even a range of chemicals that generated free oxygen which he could use if the sparse natural air and the pressure of excess CO2 were handicapping him for some really urgent task.
But so long as he could manage without drawing on those supplies, the better his chances would be of lasting until rescue arrived. He would rather starve until a ship came down to collect him, and leave with a store of unused supplies behind him, than . . .
Or—would he?
He sat down, only half-intending to, on a stool which had surprisingly remained upright in the tangle of the surgery, and remembered to shut off the torch he was carrying. A little light, now very red because the sun was setting, showed his surroundings to him. He faced, at long last, the fundamental reason for his . . . his attack on Andrew.
He didn’t believe with his whole being that he was going to be rescued. He didn’t believe that anything would be done to organize search parties until the Pennyroyal was so much more overdue than the normal range of variation in her schedule that somebody on Carteret grew angry. He hadn’t made many trips with Magnusson’s ship, but he was well aware that a difference of a week or two one way or the other in their time of docking on any given planet which the ship serviced didn’t seem to worry the captain. Unless he could improvise a beacon, preferably a powerful radio beacon. . . .
And he was trained in medicine, not engineering or electronics. If he was reluctant to use his own professional aids because he feared they might have been rendered unreliable, how could he trust a radio or subspace signaller even if he managed to rout one out from the mass of sand engulfing the after part of the ship and connect it to a power supply? How would he know whether it was crying for help, or simply lighting up the state-of-circuit lamps?
He thought of the daunting process of shovelling sand away, encountering corpses, being frustrated because food capsules had smashed open and the contents were uneatable, which he had to undergo if he was really determined to survive.
And then thought of the Easy Way Out.
Yes, that was what was frightening him, more than the risk of dying here, forgotten, on an uninhabited world.
If he had not known that the EWO existed, if he had been able to occupy himself solely with problems of survival, he might have made it. As things stood, knowing that the choice lay between an agonizing death and a delightful one, he— “NO!”
It astonished him that he shouted it aloud, and leapt to his feet in the same moment. Something in the very depths of his mind had said: I don’t want to die at all.
That made sense. He didn’t want to be here on Quasimodo IV. He didn’t want to have a vast ache all down his legs and a twisted ankle and a dry throat and particularly he didn’t want a patient who insulted him when he was trying to help. But he did want to live. With almost three-quarters of a lifetime ahead of him, he hated the idea that he might be doomed by someone’s damn-fool carelessness!
Unsteadily, head pounding, with only the pencil beam of the torch to guide him, he set off on a second exploration of the ship.
Hours passed. His watch was working, but he had forgotten to check it when he awoke after the crash, and when it did occur to him to look at it he found it wasn’t much use. It had been set to the arbitrary ship’s day, and assured him the “real” time was a few minutes before noon. Only the star-spangled sky of which he caught occasional glimpses remained dark, and he vaguely remembered seeing somewhere that the day of this planet was much longer than Earth’s, well over thirty hours. So it wouldn’t even
