It's stopped. Suddenly, like a light switch being thrown. What the hell? God. I thought it would drive me insane. Alewel did lose his cool for a minute, holding his head and screaming, "Make it stop! Make it stop!" Piniaz had to sedate him.
Silence. Stretching out. Getting spooky. Stretching, stretching. Becoming worse than the bombardment.
Have they gone away? Are they laying back, waiting for us to come down?
The Executioner, they say, is a master of psychological warfare.
I unbuckle and venture to the honeypot. Sacrifice made, I prowl the confines of the compartment, trying to calm myself. Piniaz endures my footsteps for five minutes before snapping, "Sit down.
You're generating heat."
"Shit, man. That seat's getting hard. And wet." "Tough. Sit. You're in the Climbers now, Lieutenant." My restlessness isn't unique. This silence is a rich growth medium for the jitters.
Nobody looks anybody else in the eye.
Ten hours. Somebody in Ops is whimpering. Curious. We've been up this long before. Why is this time harder to endure? Because the Executioner is out there? They use a sedative to quiet the whimperer.
The Commander's methodical madness has proven effective. Internal temperature increase is lagging well behind the normal curve despite the fact that we haven't much fuel to use as a heat sink.
Soon after the whimperer goes quiet, the Old Man orders the atmosphere completely recycled. Then,
"Corps^ man, I want the Group One sleepers given."
It's warm now but I shiver anyway. Sleepers. Knockouts. The last ditch effort to extend Climb endurance by reducing metabolic rates and making the least critical men insensitive to their environment. A desperation measure. Usually applied much later than this.
"Voss, why don't you just hand out capsules?" I ask the Pharmacist's Mate as he comes through Weapons with his injection gun. It looks like a heavy laser with a shower-head snout.
"Some guys would palm them."
I roll up a tattered sleeve. Vossbrink ignores me. He turns to Chief Bath, whom I consider more important to the ship's survival. The Chief looks like a man expecting never to waken.
"Why not me? How do you choose, anyway?"
"Psych profile, endurance profile, Commander's direction, critical ratings. You can almost always find somebody to do a job. Can't always find somebody who can take the heat and pressure."
"What about when we go down?"
He shrugs. "They'll be gone. Or they won't. If not, it won't matter."
I lean his way, offering my arm. The sleeper looks like an easy out. No more worries. If I wake up, I'll know we made it.
"No. Not you, sir."
"There's nobody more useless than me."
"Commander's directive, sir."
"Damn!" Right now I want nothing more than total absolution of any responsibility for my own fate.
Fourteen hours. Feeling feverish. Unable to sit still. Soaked with perspiration. Breathing quick and shallow because of heat, stench, and the low oxygen content of the air. Pure oxygen. It's supposed to be pure oxygen.
What the hell is the Climb endurance record? I can't remember. How close are we? Looks like the Old Man means to break it. And stretch it with every trick ever tried, including predicting his heat curves with the discounts of the men we lost.
Don't look at the bulkheads. Mold blankets them now. I can almost see it spreading, sporulating, filling the air with its dry, stale smell. Jesus! There's a patch of it on Chief Bath's shirt. I'm coughing almost continuously. The spores irritate my throat. Thank heaven they don't give me an allergic reaction.
The last of our juice is gone. We're down to water and bouillon and pills. Yo-ho-ho. Famine in the Climbers.
Where's that fearless old spacedog who jollied the boys on the beacon? Ho! The life-takers have whisked away his disguise.
Vossbrink came round an hour ago. He bypassed me again. I cursed him mercilessly. He gave me a tablet I'm to swallow only on the Old Man's orders.
Those of us still conscious are a little insane. I want out, but... I don't have enough residual defiance to take the tablet. Been thinking about it, but can't get my hand to my mouth.
Christ, it's gloomy in here!
Maintaining a tenuous touch with reality by hating the Old Man. My old friend. My old classmate.
Doing this to me. I could cut his throat and smile.
And those bastards out there. Why the hell don't they go away? Enough is enough.
Westhause and the Commander are the only watchstanders left in Ops. I can't hear anything from Engineering, but somebody is holding out. Only Bradley is active in Ship's Services. The Ensign is stubborn. Here in Weapons I have two open-eyed companions, Kuyrath and Piniaz.
Kuyrath suddenly throws himself toward the Ops hatch. Muttering, he tries to claw his way through.
What the hell?
Aha. Another reason for the sedations. This could be contagious. The madness howls along the frontiers of my mind. I force myself to rise, to stalk Kuyrath with a hypo Vossbrink left for this contingency.
Kuyrath sees me coming. He leaps at me. His eyes are wild, his teeth bare. I punch the hypo into his stomach, yank its trigger.
For a dozen seconds I shield my testicles and eyes, writhe away from champing teeth, evade clawing fingers, and wonder what went wrong. Why doesn't he fold?
He collapses.
"What's going on back there?"
I stagger to a comm, mumble. Somehow, the Commander understands. I stare at Piniaz. Why didn't he help me?
His eyes are open but he isn't seeing anything. He's out. The bastard. What the hell did he do?
"All right." The Commander sounds like he's talking from the next galaxy. 'Take Alewel's board."
"Huh?" I'm getting foggy. Want to give up. The exertion drained me. I can't get the drift.
"Take over on Alewel's board. I've got to have somebody on Missiles. Where's Piniaz?"
"On Missiles. Somebody on Missiles." I stagger to Alewel's seat. The Missileman is curled on the deck grates. His breathing is strained and ragged. He's in bad trouble. 'Tired. Going to take capsule now. Sleep."
"No. No. Come on. Hang in there. We're almost home. All you have to do is activate the missile board."
"Activate missile board." My fingers act of their own accord. My hands look like thin brown spiders as they dance over the slimy, mold-green board, caressing a wakening galaxy of key-lights.
I giggle incessantly.
"Where's Piniaz?"
This time the message gets through. "Sleeping. Gone to sleep." Alewel is making a thin, whining sound.
"Damn. Be ready to launch when we go norm."
"Ready... Launch missiles." One spider starts dancing the arming sequence. The other explores the mysteries of the safeties.
"Negative. Negative. Get your hands away from that board. Waldo, I'm going to have to go back there."
A semblance of reason returns. I draw my hands back slowly, stare at them. Finally, I say,
"Missiles prepared for launch. Launch Control standing by."
"Good. Good. I knew I could count on you. It'll be a while yet. Just hang on."
Hang on. Hang on. Only five men conscious in the whole damned ship and one of them is hollering hang on. Till when?
Till the Commander and I are the only ones left? Suppose the party is still going on when we go down? It won't matter to the others, but what am I supposed to do? Bend over and kiss my ass goodbye?
Alewel has stopped making noises. He's even stopped breathing. Mostly I feel puzzled when I look at him.
I don't think he's the only one. It's that bad in here.
I drive myself back into rituals of hatred and anger, thinking up tortures to inflict on the Old Man. Curses and threats rip themselves from my throat in an evil imitation of a Gregorian chant.