I push the packaged stretcher under his middle and pull the tape before I turn the light on to his legs to see the damage. I cannot make out very much; the joints of the suit are smashed some, but as far as I can see the inner lining is not broken which means it is still air-and-water-tight.
I put a hand under his chest to feel how the stretcher is going; it is now expanded to eighteen inches by six and I can feel it pushing out, but it is _slow_, what else have I to do--oh yes, get the helmet.
I am standing up to reach for it when M"Clare says, "What are you doing? Yes ... well, don"t put it on for a minute. There"s something I would like to tell you, and with all respect for your obstinacy I doubt very much whether I shall have another chance. Keep that light off me, will you? It hurts my eyes.
"You know, Lizzie, I dislike risking the lives of any of the students for whom I am responsible, but as it happens I find the idea of you--blowing yourself to atoms particularly objectionable because ... I happen to be in love with you. You"re also one of my best students, I used to think that ... was why I"d been so insistent on your coming to Russett, but I rather think ... my motives were mixed even then. I meant to tell you this after you graduated, and to ask you to marry me, not that ... I thought you would, I know quite well ... you never quite forgave me, but I don"t-want-to-have to remember ... I didn"t ... have the guts to--"
His voice trails off, I get a belated rush of sense to the head and turn the light on his face. His head is turned sideways and his fist is clenched against the side of his neck. When I touch it his hand falls open and five discharged ampoules fall out.
Pain-killer.
Maximum dose, one ampoule.
All that talk was just to hold my attention while he fixed the needles and--
I left the kit spread out right next to him.
While I am taking this in some small cold corner of my mind is remembering the instructions that are on the pain-killer ampoule; it does not say, outright, that it is the last refuge for men in the extremity of pain and despair; therefore it cannot say, outright, that they sometimes despair too soon; but it does tell you the name of the antidote.
There are only three ampoules of this and they also say, maximum dose one ampoule. I try to work it out but lacking all other information the best I can do is inject two and keep one till later. I put that one in my pocket.
The stretcher is all expanded now; a very thin but quite rigid grid, six feet by two; I lash him on it without changing his position and fasten the helmet over his head.
Antigrav; the straps just go round him and the stretcher.
I point the thing up towards the trap door and give it a gentle push; then I scramble up the rungs and get there just in time to guide it through. It takes a knock then and some more while I am getting it down to the next part.i.tion, but he can"t feel it.
This time I find the door, because the roar of noise behind it acts as a guide. The sea is getting up and is dashing halfway to the door as I crawl through. My boat is awash, pivoting to and fro on the grips of the front "limbs."
I grab it, release the limbs and pull it as far back as the door. I maneuver the stretcher on top and realize there is nothing to fasten it with ... except the antigrav, I get that undone, holding the stretcher in balance, and manage to put it under the stretcher and pa.s.s the straps between the bars of the grid ... then round the little boat, and the buckle just grips the last inch. It will hold, though.
I set the boat to face the broken end of the ship, but I daren"t put it farther back than the doorway; I turn the antigrav to half, fasten the limb-grips and rush back towards the nose of the ship. Silver k.n.o.b under the dial. I turn it down, hear the thing begin a fast, steady ticking, and turn and run.
Twenty minutes.
One and a half to get back to the boat, four to get inside it without overturning. Nearly two to get down to the sea--balance difficult. One and a half to lower myself in.
Thirty seconds" tossing before I sink below the wave layer; then I turn the motor as high as I dare and head for the sh.o.r.e.
In a minute I have to turn it down; at this speed the radar is bothered by water currents and keeps steering me away from them as though they were rocks; I finally find the maximum safe speed but it is achingly slow. What happens if you are in water when Andite blows half a mile away? A moment"s panic as I find the ship being forced up, then I realize I have reached the point where the beach starts to shelve, turn off radar and motor and start crawling. Eternal slow reach out, grab, shove, haul, with my heart in my mouth; then suddenly the nose breaks water and I am hauling myself out with a last wave doing its best to overbalance me.
I am halfway out of the boat when the Andite blows behind me. There is a flat slapping sound; then an instant roar of wind as the air receives the binding energies of several tons of matter; then a long wave comes pelting up the beach and s.n.a.t.c.hes at the boat.
I huddle into the shingle and hold the boat; I have just got the antigrav turned off, otherwise I think it would have been carried away. There are two or three more big waves and a patter of spray; then it is over.
The outlet valve of the helmet is working, so M"Clare is still breathing; very deep, very slow.
I unfasten the belt of the antigrav, having turned it on again, and pull the belt through the buckle. No time to take it off and rearrange it; anyway it will work as well under the stretcher as on top of it. I drag the boat down to the water, put in an Andite cartridge with the longest fuse I have, set the controls to take it straight out to sea at maximum depth the radar control will allow--six feet above bottom--and push it off. The other Andite cartridge starts burning a hole in my pocket; I would have liked to put that in too, but I must keep it, in case.
I look at my chrono and see that in five minutes the hopper will come.
Five minutes.
I am halfway back to the stretcher when I hear a noise further up the beach. Unmistakable. Shingle under a booted foot.
I stand frozen in mid-stride. I turned the light out after launching the boat but my eyes have not recovered yet; it is murkily black. Even my white suit is only the faintest degree paler than my surroundings.
Silence for a couple of minutes. I stand still. But it can"t have gone away. What happens when the hopper comes? They will see whoever it is on the infrared vision screen. They won"t come--
Footsteps again. Several.
Then the clouds part and one of those superfluous little moons shines straight through the gap.
The bay is not like the stereo the colonel showed because that was taken in winter; now the snow is melted, leaving bare shingle and mud and a tumble of rocks; more desolate than the snow. Fifty feet off is a man.
He is huddled up in a ma.s.s of garments but his head is bare, rising out of a hood which he has pushed back, maybe so as to listen better; he looks young, hardly older than me. He is holding a long thin object which I never saw before, but it must be a weapon of some sort.
This is the end of it. All the evidence of faking is destroyed; except M"Clare and me. Even if I use the Andite he has seen me--and that leaves M"Clare.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
I am standing here on one foot like a dancer in a jammed movie, waiting for Time to start again or the world to end--
Like the little figure in the dance-instruction kit Dad got when I was seven, when you switched her off in the middle.
Like a dancer--
My weight shifts on to the forward foot. My arms swing up, forwards, back. I take one step, another.
Swing. Turn. Kick. Sideways.
Like the silly little dancer who could not get out of the plastic block; but I am moving forward little by little, even if I have to take three steps roundabout for every one in advance.
Arms, up. Turn, round. Leg, up. Straighten, out. Step.
Called the Dance of the Little Robot, for about three months Dad thought it was no end cute, till he caught on I was thinking so, too.
It is just about the only kind of dance you could do on shingle, I guess.
When this started I thought I might be going crazy, but I just had not had time to work it out. In terms of Psychology it goes like this; to shoot off a weapon a man needs a certain type of Stimulus like the sight of an enemy over the end of it. So if I do my best not to look like an enemy he will not get that Stimulus. Or put it another way most men think twice before shooting a girl in the middle of a dance.
If I should happen to get away with this, n.o.body will believe his story, he won"t believe it himself.
As for the chance of getting away with it, i.e., getting close enough to grab the gun or hit him with a rock or something, I know I would become a Stimulus to shooting before I did that but there are always the clouds, if one will only come back over the moon again.
I have covered half the distance.