“Thirsty!” Andrew said.
“Oh, of course. I’ll get you one of those tablets to suck.”
Behind the closed cupboard doors the presence of the EWO seemed to mock him when he entered the surgery.
Then, having made a frugal breakfast from half a can of fruit puree, Pavel sat down to work out a plan. In this sparse air he dared not over-exert himself; on the other hand, he must work quickly in order to improve their chances of survival, either to fix the beacon he’d talked about or simply to locate more provisions.
In a while, despite his aching head, he had what seemed to be a logical course of action. He hunted around for something he could adapt as a shovel, found a plastic chair with one metal leg still attached and, by wedging the leg in a crack in the wall and leaning on it with his full weight, straightened it so that the chair-seat made a kind of flat scoop, and the leg a handle. Fine. Very pleased with himself, he set about digging where he had found the bulbs of soup yesterday.
And almost at once discovered a mangled corpse.
The thought crossed his mind that if he absolutely had to, he could reserve the canned supplies until last, and eat meat. It should remain good for a long time in this dry air, away from Earth-type bacteria.
Revolting! cried his subconscious. Better the EWO than cannibalism!
Maybe.
He moved the body and with much effort dragged it to a gash in the hull, and pushed it outside. He scrambled after it, dragged it out of sight down the dune and flung a few shovelfuls of sand after it. Then, aching in every limb, he decided to walk around the ship instead of going straight back inside. The going was very difficult; the dune was so dry, he sank in over his ankles at every step. But he managed to carry out a complete inspection of the exposed part of the ship, and the more he saw, the more he marvelled at his own escape. A bare fifth of the vessel’s length was visible, and as badly cracked as a hard-boiled egg ready for shelling. His heart sank. Was there any hope at all of finding serviceable equipment to rig his beacon?
Well, there was only one way to find out. He went back to his digging.
After that, time passed in a monotonous slow blur. He fell immediately into the routine which he was to follow for the whole of their stay. He dug for a while, making either the discovery of a corpse or the location of a bit of intact equipment the excuse to break off, and then went to see Andrew and attend to his requests or—more and more often—inform him that they couldn’t be met right now, because there were only a handful of injectors left, or the medical equipment reported that it would be dangerous to give him more liquid by mouth, or there was some other reason for denying him what he wanted.
The first time he told Andrew he would have to lie in pain a bit longer before another shot, Andrew curled his lip back and said, “I’ve got you figured out. You like this.”
“What?”
“You like this. You like having someone totally helpless, the way I am. Gives you a sense of power!”
Sweat beaded his face, but evaporated almost at once into the dry air.
“Nonsense!” Pavel said roughly, looking over the equipment at the foot of the bunk. One of the lights which had been green had turned red. But there was no help for that.
“Oh, I know your type!” Andrew snapped. “Nothing suits you better than—”
“Shut up,” Pavel said. “I’m trying to keep us both alive. And, if possible, sane. Don’t start on crazy fantasies like that, or you’ll run the risk of making me angry. And I’m already living on my nerves.”
“So what does a doctor do when his patient makes him angry? Turn off the life-supports?”
“No.” Pavel drew a deep but unsatisfying breath. “Gets out of earshot of the goading, and stays there.”
He marched out of the cabin and slammed the door. In the corridor he leaned for a while against the wall, head on hands. If this was going to go on indefinitely . . .
But there was work to do. He roused himself and returned to it. Not for the first time as he mustered all his energy and thrust the improvised shovel into yet another heap of sand, he wondered sickly why he was wasting his time. He was now well into the section where he ought to have located usable electronic or subelectronic equipment if any had survived, and all he was finding was charred or half-melted masses of metal and plastic. There had been a fire here, and a hot one. Also, now and then, he found items from spacemen’s uniform, such as buckles and rank badges. And there were bones.
It took him almost three days—daytimes, rather—to clear the section of the ship of which he had the highest hopes. The only thing he found which was any use at all was a solid-state emergency lamp, its lumen-globe intact and its powerpack barely below maximum. When he came upon it, night was falling. He switched it on, thinking how wonderful it was to have a proper light.
And then, with a pang of conscience, how terrible it must be for Andrew lying alone in the dark, forced to wait hours between anesthetic shots. He picked the lamp up and carried it to Andrew’s cabin.
He was dozing, and did not at first react to the sound of the door sliding back—it moved noisily now, because the finest grains of sand sifted everywhere when the wind rose, and the groove at the bottom was covered with them. When he opened his eyes, however, he did not comment on the lamp.
He said, “Pavel, you—you look terrible!”
“What?” Pavel touched
