Lying on the floor, the salty taste of blood in the mouth. The sting of something on the cheek, a face above.
'Rama...?'
'You fell, sir. A minor cut. I am dressing the wound...' Fear!
'The apparatus? Did I break any?'
'No, you must have felt it coming. You pushed yourself away, fell backwards. I heard the buzzer and it would not stop. What is next to be done?'
'Help me up and I'll show you.'
Hard to think. The grey fog in his head was now before his eyes. It was very difficult to see through. It was very difficult to think. The patients?
'How long since the injections?'
'Over eight hours, sir. I gave you yours when...'
'How are they?'
There was a long silence and Don could make out Rama's face only as a blur: he finally answered.
'No change, no change at all. Two deaths. The Chief Kurikka fell ill in the control-room and has been brought in.'
'Is it all a waste? Are we all dead?' Don spoke hoarsely, to himself. 'Will it all end like this? There can be no other answer.'
It was time to give in, to collapse, to die. But he would not. With an effort of will, will alone because his body was failing him, he straightened up. His eyes could see, they had to see. He rubbed them with his knuckles, angrily, until he could feel the pain of the pressure even through the haze of drugs that enveloped him. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he could see, dimly, again. He stumbled to the bench.
'Turn off the buzzer. Here. Decant these, into those test-tubes. Cool them. Then into the centrifuge. Four minutes spin. Then use.'
'That will be the final solution, the cure?'
Don thought he was smiling, but his lips were curled back, like those of a horse in pain, his teeth showing widely. Speaking took immense effort.
'That will be a transparent liquid. Looking exactly like distilled water. It may be only distilled water. We have ... we have...'
Blackness, and he was falling, and it was the end.
There were two mountains of blackness in a universe of darkness each as big as a world itself. Yet they moved, slowly, this way and that, the motion hard to see amidst the driving midnight streamers that blew past. And they talked, unknown words in an unknown tongue, nothing that could be of interest. Mountains murmuring, rocking with the eternal motion of mountains...
But the words could make sense. What else are words for?
'...can begin...'
'...or...'
'...it over...'
Fragments, disconnected, words. From mountains? No, not mountains, presences. And they were speaking.
For a long time, measureless, Don held on to this idea and worried at it. It would drift away, and he would forget about it, but the voices were still there and they must mean something.
Some time during this period he realized that his eyes were closed. His memory was nothing but a patch of grey and his body was numb and somehow disconnected from his thoughts. The eyes were the first part, because the mountains were people, pushing him towards consciousness and he wanted to see who they were. With infinite labour he opened his eyes and looked at the blurred presence. A white shape.
'Doctor, his eyes are open.'
The voice helped him to focus and when he did a girl's face, a white nurse's uniform, swam into view. He had never seen her before. How could there be someone on the ship he had never seen before? And the other figure, white dressed too, a doctor, another doctor, also someone he had never seen before. He looked up at them and the doctor had to speak the obvious to him, his thoughts were that numb. Had to tell him what his eyes saw and what he could not understand.
'You are not well, but you are alive. You will recover. I want you to think about that while you go back to sleep.'
Like a child obeying a command he closed his eyes and drifted into a dreamless sleep.
The next time he awoke he was rational. Sick, exhausted, limp as a wet rag and unable to move. But rational. And the strange faces were not there this time, but instead the familiar dark features of Rama Kusum swam over the foot of the bed. His eyes were wide and he raised both hands with excitement.
'Chief,' he called out, 'Chief Kurikka - come at once! He is awake!'
There were heavy footsteps and Kurikka appeared at his side, smiling.
'We made it, Captain. You pulled us through.'
Those were the words he wanted to hear. The Chief had known how he felt. They had made it. Did anything else count? Don tried to talk but his voice cracked and he started to cough. Rama rushed him a glass of water and held the straw to his lips. It was cool and it felt good going down. This time he succeeded.
'What happened? Tell me everything.' His voice was only a hoarse whisper: he could speak no louder.
'It was a close one, Captain, that's for certain.' Rama nodded solemn agreement to the Chief's words.
'Rama called me when you collapsed, I was right there in the sick bay. I wasn't feeling so good myself. Everyone in the ship had it by that time. We laid you on the bunk and Rama showed me the second solution you were running through the equipment. When it came out of the centrifuge he gave you the first shot, then I helped him with the patients in the sick bay. There was one of them dead, I remember that clearly, because he was the last one who died. It was that Doyle, believe it or not, so he won't be standing in the dock next to the general when that day comes.'
'The general...?'
'Alive and well,' Kurikka smiled coldly. 'Be in fine shape for the trial. But that's not the important part, not now. It was you, just like night, and day, Captain. Unbelievable if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes. We emptied those hypos and came back for more, and Rama here took a look in at you and I heard him gasp. I moved fast then, I can tell you.'
'Minutes,' Rama said, 'just minutes. And the fever was gone and you were lying quiet, even snoring in natural sleep.
The ravages of the disease were not gone that instantly, to be sure, but the fever instantly stopped.
'The second batch of juice that you cooked up was it. The people who had just been hit by the bug almost climbed out of bed after the injections. Stopped it dead. We injected everyone in the ship, and had the engine-room and control-room manned next day when we went into orbit. They didn't have to bring us in, sir, the Big Joe did it herself.'
'You are tiring him,' a new voice said. 'You will have to leave.'
Don looked at the doctor in the doorway and shook his head on the pillows, smiling. 'This is better than medicine, Doctor.'
'I'm sure of it. But I think it is enough for the moment. After you have slept they can come back.'
When they had gone the doctor took a hypodermic from the bedside table. When Don turned to look he saw, for the first time, that he wasn't in his own bunk. The bed was bigger, as was the room. It was the captains quarters, he realized, when he saw the large photo of the Johannes Kepler on the wall, and the repeating instruments from the control-room.
'Just a few questions before I go to sleep,' he said, and the doctor nodded agreement.
'My patients, how are they?'
'All better than you are, and still aboard. Your miracle cure worked all right, but the ship is still quarantined until we can make the proper analysis to be absolutely sure. You're the worst of the lot. You drugged yourself and overloaded your system and, to be very frank, it was touch and go for a while there.'
'But I had to - didn't I?'
The doctor opened his mouth, but did not answer. He smiled. 'Yes, I imagine you did have to. I'm glad you were aboard, because I doubt very much if I could have done it. Now, the shot.'
'A moment, please. About the so-called mutiny. What do the authorities mean to do with the people? You must realize the situation, that there was provocation...'