When he wanted water, he tilted his head and drank. When he needed to relieve himself, he did so. A hundred different times he almost turned and shouted that okay, yes, he’d talk. Each time something hard and unyielding inside him refused. From time to time, an intern or doctor passed by, stopped, watched a moment or two, sometimes nodded, sometimes shook their head, often marking a slate and finally strolling on. Twice the major returned. She spoke to him over the intercom. He ignored her until she went away. Minute after minute he levered the handle up and down in stupefying monotony. After twenty-eight hours, sharp pains knifed into his back. He groaned, came close to collapsing, but then he gritted his teeth and pumped on.
Finally, he stopped and let the water cascade upon him. It rose to his thighs, his stomach, up to his chest.
“I suggest you pump quickly, Mr. Kluge,” the doctor said over the intercom. “The water acts as a drag and will make pumping later many times more difficult.”
The work stoppage felt so glorious that Marten almost let the water reach his neck. He didn’t really believe they’d let him drown. Then a sudden and elemental wish to live bid him grasp the pump and move it! Pain exploded in his back and shoulders. His forearms knotted and the lever slipped out of his grasp. A desperate cry tore from the depths of his being. He concentrated on grasping the handle and pumped with a will. Water touched his chin. He pumped as air wheezed down his throat. He pumped as the horrible pain in his forearms receded. He pumped as ever so slowly the water inched down to his chest, his stomach and finally to his mid-thighs. Then he could no longer keep up the ferocious pace. He leveled off and tried to think. It was impossible. Life was one long agonized blur of pain and pumping.
Later, through the distortion of his glass and that of the cylinder beside him, he saw a woman drowning. Her hair floated freely as she banged her fists against the stopper. Marten released his pump and banged on his glass. A nearby intern faced him. Marten pointed at the woman. The intern followed the finger, and his mouth opened in shock. The intern shouted. Marten couldn’t hear the words. Men rushed the platform to the tank.
As Marten pumped, he watched them take her out, carry her to the medical center and work on her. After a short time, the doctor shook his head and covered her face with a blanket. Terror filled Marten. The woman had drowned, died, ceased living! They hadn’t paid enough attention. He became depressed and paranoid. He might die in here. Perhaps he
“What’s the use?” he whispered.
He turned his head to call, but then a burst of pride made him clamp his mouth shut. He pumped the lever. His hands were like lumps and his arm muscles quivered. Air burned down his nostrils. The endless rhythm was agony, and the agony stole pieces of his pride minute after minute. The woman had died. He would die soon. Up and down, up and down. The sheer exhaustion was too much. He couldn’t do this anymore. It was time to give up.
At that precise moment, Major Orlov marched into the room and halted at his cylinder. Perhaps she saw his despair. She grinned, and her eyes roved over his nakedness. Marten closed his eyes, refusing to look at her. But… yes, if that’s what it took. A great and mighty weariness stole over him. He opened his mouth and croaked, “You win.”
In the silence, the water rose around him. Marten opened his eyes. Major Orlov had left. He wildly looked around. She wasn’t in the room.
Marten pumped, and through the fog of exhaustion, he considered what that meant. Slowly, a new form of pride renewed his will and gave him more energy. He checked the wall clock. Thirty hours he’d been here. Could he go ten days?
“Pump,” he whispered.
He did.
At thirty-one hours, a final numbing fog came over Marten.
Then a thud, a shiver, shook the room and shook the cylinder. Marten blinked, wondering what had happened. The doctors, nurses and interns looked alarmed and pointed at the ceiling. Marten glanced up. He didn’t understand what caused their concern. Miraculously, the water falling onto his head slowed. It slowed and became a trickle. The trickle stopped. Marten didn’t understand. He didn’t need too. He simply collapsed and fell asleep.
He woke to the sound of interns removing the stopper. Groggily he looked up. They lowered hooks. He grabbed hold and they lifted him.
Major Orlov brooded at the bottom of the platform. Red-uniformed PHC thugs stood beside her.
“This is highly unusual,” the doctor told her.
Major Orlov glared at him. The doctor fidgeted with his clipboard
An intern draped a tunic over Marten. The thugs each grabbed an arm and marched him out of the auditorium and down a hall. Marten could barely walk. The muscles in his back, shoulders and arms had frozen. The thugs deposited him in the interrogation room with the bench. This time, however, Stick wasn’t there. The two held him up. Otherwise, he’d simply have fallen over.
“Your time runs short, Mr. Kluge.”
Marten wasn’t sure, but Major Orlov sounded desperate. A spark of something bade him keep his mouth shut.
“Give me your agonizer.”
Incredibly, the thug seemed reluctant. But at this point, Marten couldn’t be sure about anything.
Major Orlov twisted the setting and touched the agonizer to his chest. Marten bellowed and fell backward.
“I have decided to accelerate the process,” said the major.
The two thugs picked Marten off the floor and set him back on the bench. Smiles twitched across their lips.
Major Orlov lowered the agonizer for another touch. Marten squirmed as they held him tight.
“Well, Mr. Kluge?”
Marten stared at the agonizer. It moved closer, closer—
The door opened, and a guard said, “You’re needed, Major.”
Major Orlov hesitated. Then she tossed the agonizer to a thug. She glared at Marten and hurried out of the room.
After several moments, the red-uniformed PHC men moved to the door. They whispered urgently together. Somewhere outside a klaxon blared. Marten lay down on the bench. They didn’t say anything about it. So he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
9.
Months away from Earth in terms of space travel time—Tanaka Station orbited blue Neptune. Vast cargo ships circled this commercial clearinghouse. In the distance, a fat ice-skimmer worked its way up from the blue mass of the gas giant.
The Ice Hauler Cartel, which owned much of the Neptune System, also owed Tanaka Station. The habitat was run on strict capitalist lines. The general principle of the Solar System seemed to be that the farther one left the Inner Planets behind the purer became the capitalism. Unfortunately, for a first class-rated space pilot from Jupiter, this “pureness” came as a shock.
Osadar Di huddled miserably in a bar close to the docking bay where she’d berthed her ship. The owner of the vessel had just departed, leaving her in a dim cubicle. She held onto a beer, but she hadn’t sipped it. Around her in the packed bar mingled pilots, dockworkers, sex objects and gamblers. It was different from the Jupiter Confederation where she’d been born and raised, and only recently fled. The bar was like a caricature of an Old Asteroid Mining vid she’d watched as a child. The pilots and gamblers played cards, cheating, drinking and getting into fistfights. In other cubicles, shady deals were being hatched and nefarious plots conceived.
Osadar Di had short dark hair, dark worried eyes and an unremarkable nose. On the tallish side, she had long
