Floundering, almost swimming, he began to force himself to the surface of the pile, and realized as he did so that his weight felt only a trifle less than Earth-normal. His spirits rose. The air around might then be breathable after all. The system they had been bound for was among the rare ones which boasted two oxygen-high planets: their destination, Carteret, and another which had not been colonized. This was the fringe of human space, and the original impulse which had carried the species so far so fast was waning. Conquering a brand-new world when there was another next door considerably warmer and more hospitable was not an attractive proposition.
In any case, “oxygen-high” was only a comparative term. If his guess were right, and they were on the next planet out from Carteret, the air would be of poor quality because the vegetation from the sea had as yet barely begun to invade the land; most of it was desert, either sandy or rocky and in both cases chilly. The shoreline plants put about two-thirds of Earth-normal oxygen into the air, and they were mutating rapidly and extending their terrain, so in a million years or so one could look forward to a marked improvement.
Hah!
For the time being, though, what counted was that conditions could be endured, if not enjoyed, on Quasimodo IV. He reminded himself that he must take things easy as he fought his way out of the furs—he couldn’t recall offhand what the CO2 count was in the air here, but he knew it was dangerously high. Indeed, the throbbing ache in his head was probably due to it rather than to the blow which had cut his eyebrow and sent a trail of blood down to the corner of his mouth.
Something hard and cool met his probing right hand. He recognized the shape: one of his medical instruments, a lung inspector. And next to it—
He withdrew his hand with an oath. Something wet and soft. He preferred not to wonder about what it had been before the crash, and was glad of the darkness.
The triple banging came again, but weaker. There would be time enough to search for his equipment later, he decided, and continued his attempts to work free of the furs.
When eventually he found solid footing, he groped his way across a tilted floor, located what he had suspected—a rip in the bulkhead—and slithered through it, snagging his shirt on a projecting spike of hard plastic. Beyond, there was light. Not much, just a pale wash of daylight leaking through a gash in the hull, very yellow to his dark-adjusted vision. But it was daylight, and this was natural air he was breathing, contaminated with smoke from the crash, and there was gritty sand under his feet, all of which went to confirm his guess about arriving on Quasimodo IV.
He would have felt almost cheerful but that by this dim reflected sunlight he was able to see the ruin of his surgery. Everything had been spilled out from every cupboard, every drawer, every shelf, and he had to push confused piles of medical phials and instruments out of the way with his toes to find a path across the room. In two places the wall had split open, revealing the electronic veins and arteries of the ship, and something was dripping loudly somewhere.
But he would have to leave a proper investigation of the mess until he had located the other survivors.
Brackets around that plural “s.”
It was like walking into a nightmare to turn along the crumpled corridor in the direction of the noise he’d heard. Everything was distorted, and although the little light which guided him came in only through cracks in the hull there were all too many such cracks and he saw more detail than he would have liked. At the extreme end of the passageway, in particular, there was something which looked loathsomely half-human, as though one were to make a doll from overripe bananas and hurl it at a wall: splat! Even as a trained medical man, he didn’t as yet feel up to facing it.
Now he located the noise. It was coming from one of the nearest first-class passenger cabins, the door of which was stiff but still moving in its grooves. He slid it aside and found a young man lying in a bunk which had torn completely loose from its mountings. He had something in his limp hand, the object he had used to bang on the wall, Pavel presumed? but it appeared that while he was opening the door the man’s strength had failed him, for he now lay still.
His heart sank. Of all the people aboard, he would have chosen this man last to be his companion after the crash. Andrew Solichuk, who had never tired of informing anyone and everyone how wealthy and influential his family was back on Earth and had complained endlessly about the food, the lack of comfort and amenities, the taste of the air, and the company he bad to endure simply because he was on a grand tour of the commercial empire he was due to inherit and there was no luxury line serving the Quasimodo system, only the Pennyroyal and her sister ship the Elecampane.
But he was human, and alive. Pavel forced his professional
