Linc did that, and the wall screen began printing out instructions for medicine and setting up an automated auxiliary ventricle pump. Linc followed the step-by-step instructions as they came on the screen. He lost all track of time, but finally had Jerlet surrounded by gleaming metal and plastic machines that hooked themselves onto his arms and legs.
Still the numbers on the wall screen glared red.
Linc stood by the bed endlessly. Jerlet lost consciousness, regained, drifted away again.
Linc fought to keep his eyes open. The only sounds in the room were the humming electricity of the machines, and a faint chugging sound of a pump.
“Linc—”
He snapped his eyes open. He had fallen asleep standing up.-
Jerlet’s hand was fluttering feebly, trying to reach toward him. But the machines had his arm firmly strapped down.
“Linc—” The old man’s voice was a tortured whisper.
“I’m here. How do you feel? What can I do?”
“Terrible… and nothing. If the machines can’t pull me through, then it’s over. ’Bout time, too. I—” His words sank into an indecipherable mumble.
“Don’t die,” Linc begged. “Please don’t die.”
Jerlet’s eyes blinked slowly. “Not my idea, son…Just glad I held on long enough… to meet you… train you—”
“No—” Linc felt completely helpless.
The old man’s voice was getting weaker. Strangely, the harshness of it seemed to melt away as it faded. “Listen—”
Linc bent his ear to the ragged, ravaged face of Jerlet. His breath was gulping out in great racking sobs that were painful just to hear. His whole bloated body heaved with each shuddering gasp. Linc felt the old man’s breath on his cheek. It smelted of dust.
“You… you know what… to do…?”
Linc nodded. His voice wouldn’t work right. His eyes were blurry.
“The machines… you’ll fix… what they need… to get to Beryl…”
“I will.” It was a distant, tear-choked voice. “I promise. I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Jerlet’s face relaxed into a faint smile. His body-racking gasps eased. His eyes closed.
“Please don’t die!”
Jerlet’s eyes opened so slightly that Linc couldn’t be sure the eyelids moved at all. “You can… make it without me.”
Linc clenched his fists on the edge of the bed’s spongy surface. “But I don’t want you to die!”
Jerlet almost laughed. “Told you… wasn’t my idea—I’m no … proud-faced martyr, son. Just get back … away… machinery oughtta start… any second—”
“Back? Away?”
“Go on… ’less you want to… be frozen, too “
Unconsciously Linc edged slightly away from the bed. He stood there for a moment uncertainly, watching the old man lying there. Jerlet’s eyes closed again. All the numbers and the symbols on the wall screen began blinking red, and a soft but insistent tone started beep-beeping. The words CLINICAL DEATH flashed on and off again so quickly that Linc hardly had time to notice them. Then a piercing whistling note howled out of the machines around Jerlet’s bed, as if in their mechanical way they were bewailing his death—or their inability to save him. Then the screen lettered out in green: CRYOGENIC IMMERSION PROCEDURE.
As Linc stepped farther away from the bed, the screen flashed numbers and graphs so quickly that only a machine could read them. The shining metal things around Jerlet’s bed began to hum louder, vibrate, and move back. Linc watched, frozen in fascination, as Jerlet’s entire bed sank down slowly into the floor. The machines went silent and still as the bed slowly receded through a trapdoor. As Linc stepped up for a closer look, the bed disappeared entirely and the trapdoor slid shut once again. A whisp of white steamy vapor drifted up just before’ it closed completely.
The machines rolled silently back to their niches in the room’s bare white walls. The viewscreen went blank.
“Cryogenic immersion,” Linc muttered to himself. His mind started working actively again. “He had this all set up for himself. The machines are going to freeze him, so that he can be revived and made healthy again someday.”
Even though Linc knew that Jerlet was dead in every sense of the word, that he would never see the old man again because even if he were revived someday it would be so far in the future that Linc would never live to see it, even though he realized all this. Linc somehow felt better.
“Good-bye old man,” he said to the empty room. “I’ll get them to Beryl for you.”
12
Despite all his training, despite all he knew, despite Jerlet’s assurances, Linc was tense as he donned the pressure suit.
It was like being swallowed alive by some monster that was vaguely human in form, but bigger than any man and strangely different. Linc’s nose wrinkled at the odors of machine oil and plastic as he stepped into the suit and eased himself into it.
And there was another scent now, too. His own clammy sweat. The odor of fear, fear of going into the outer darkness.
It’s space! he fumed at himself. Nothing but emptiness. Jerlet explained a thousand times. There’s nothing out there to hurt you.
“If the suit works right,” he answered himself as he lifted the bubble-shaped helmet over his head.
Just as he had been taught, he sealed the helmet on and then tested all the suit’s seals and equipment. The faint whir of the air fan made Linc feel a little better. So did the slightly stale tang of oxygen.
Slowly he clumped to the inner hatch of the deadlock. Airlock! he reminded himself. He reached out a heavily-gloved hand for the buttons on the wall that would open the hatch, and stopped.
“You could stay right here,” he told himself, his voice sounding strangely muffled inside the helmet. “Jerlet left everything in working condition. You could live here in ease and comfort for the rest of your life.”
Until the ship crashes into Baryta, he answered silently, and everyone dies.
“What makes you think Magda and the others will believe you? You think Monel’s going to do what you tell him? You think any of them will touch a machine just because you say it’s all right to do it?”
But Linc knew the answers even before he spoke the questions, It doesn’t matter what they think or do. I’ve got to try.
His outstretched hand moved the final few centimeters and touched the airlock control button. There was a moment’s hesitation, then the heavy metal hatch slid smoothly aside for him.
He flicked at the other buttons, which would set the airlock mechanism on its automatic cycle, then stepped inside the cramped metal chamber. The inner hatch sighed shut. Pumps clattered. Linc couldn’t hear them inside his suit, but he felt their vibrations through the thick metallic soles of his boots. H is pulse throbbed faster and faster as he stood there, waiting.
The outer hatch slid open. Linc was suddenly standing on the edge of the world, gazing out at endless stars.
And smiling. All his fears evaporated. It was like being in the observatory. The beauty was overwhelming. The silence and peace of eternity hovered before him, watching gravely, patiently.
Linc stepped out of the airlock and for the first time saw the ship as it really existed: a huge set of wheels within wheels, starkly lit by the glaring yellow sun that was behind his back. Fat circular wheels, each one bigger than the one before it, stretching away from the central hub where he stood, turning slowly against the background of stars. And connecting them were half a dozen spokes, the tube-tunnels, seen from the outside.
One of the spokes was lit by a row of winking tiny lights. Jerlet had shown Linc how to turn them on. They were Linc’s guidepath, showing him which tube-tunnel would lead back to the living area in the farthest, largest wheel, where the rest of the people were.