“I was just leaving the plant, Dr. Ferrel, when my name came up on the outside speaker, but I had trouble getting here. We’re locked in! I saw them at the gate — guards with sticks. They were turning back everyone that tried to leave, and wouldn’t tell why, even. Just general orders that no one was to leave until Mr. Palmer gave his permission. And they weren’t going to let me back in at first. Do you suppose… do you know what it’s all about? I heard little things that didn’t mean anything, really, but—”
“I know just about as much as you do, Meyers, though Palmer said something about carelessness with one of the ports on No. 3 or 4,” Ferrel answered her. “Probably just precautionary measures. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it yet.”
“Yes, Dr. Ferrel.” She nodded and turned back to the front office, but there was no assurance in her look. Doc realized that neither Jenkins nor himself was a picture of confidence at the moment.
“Jenkins,” he said, when she was gone, “if you know anything I don’t, for the love of Mike, out with it! I’ve never seen anything like this around here.”
Jenkins shook himself, and for the first time since he’d been there, used Ferrel’s nickname. “Doc, I don’t — that’s why I’m in a blue funk. I know just enough to be less sure than you can be, and I’m scared as hell!”
“Let’s see your hands.” The subject was almost a monomania with Ferrel, and he knew it, but he also knew it wasn’t unjustified. Jenkins’ hands came out promptly, and there was no tremble to them. The boy threw up his arm so the sleeve slid beyond the elbow, and Ferrel nodded; there was no sweat trickling down from the armpits to reveal a worse case of nerves than showed on the surface. “Good enough, son; I don’t care how scared you are — I’m getting that way myself — but with Blake out of the picture, and the other nurses and attendants sure to be out of reach, I’ll need everything you’ve got.”
“Doc?”
“Well?”
“If you’ll take my word for it, I can get another nurse here — and a good one, too. They don’t come any better, or any steadier, and she’s not working now. I didn’t expect her — well, anyhow, she’d skin me if I didn’t call when we need one. Want her?”
“No trunk lines for outside calls,” Doc reminded him. It was the first time he’d seen any real enthusiasm on the boy’s face, and however good or bad the nurse was, she’d obviously be of value in bucking up Jenkins’ spirits. “Go to it, though; right now we can probably use any nurse. Sweetheart?”
“Wife.” Jenkins went toward the dressing room. “And I don’t need the phone; we used to carry ultra-short-wave personal radios to keep in touch, and I’ve still got mine here. And if you’re worried about her qualifications, she handed instruments to Bayard at Mayo’s for five years — that’s how I managed to get through medical school!”
The siren was approaching again when Jenkins came back, the little tense lines about his lips still there, but his whole bearing somehow steadier. He nodded. “I called Palmer, too, and he O.K.’d her coming inside on the phone without wondering how I’d contacted her. The switchboard girl has standing orders to route all calls from us through before anything else, it seems.”
Doc nodded, his ear cocked toward the drone of the siren that drew up and finally ended on a sour wheeze. There was a feeling of relief from tension about him as he saw Jones appear and go toward the rear entrance; work, even under the pressure of an emergency, was always easier than sitting around waiting for it. He saw two stretchers come in, both bearing double loads, and noted that Beel was babbling at the attendant, the driver’s usually phlegmatic manner completely gone.
“I’m quitting; I’m through tomorrow! No more watching ’em drag out stiffs for me — not that way. Dunno why I gotta go back, anyhow; it won’t do ’em any good to get in further, even if they can. From now on, I’m driving a truck, so help me I am!”
Ferrel let him rave on, only vaguely aware that the man was close to hysteria. He had no time to give to Beel now as he saw the raw red flesh through the visor of one of the armor suits. “Cut off what clothes you can, Jones,” he directed. “At least get the shield suits off them. Tannic acid ready, nurse?”
“Ready.” Meyers answered together with Jenkins, who was busily helping Jones strip off the heavily armored suits and helmets.
Ferrel kicked on the supersonics again, letting them sterilize the metal suits — there was going to be no chance to be finicky about asepsis; the supersonics and ultraviolet tubes were supposed to take care of that, and they’d have to do it, to a large extent, little as he liked it. Jenkins finished his part, dived back for fresh gloves, with a mere cursory dipping of his hands into antiseptic and rinse. Dodd followed him, while Jones wheeled three of the cases into the middle of the surgery, ready for work; the other had died on the way in.
It was going to be messy work, obviously. Where metal from the suits had touched, or come near touching, the flesh was burned — crisped, rather. And that was merely a minor part of it, as was the more than ample evidence of major radiation burns, which had probably not stopped at the surface, but penetrated through the flesh and bones into the vital interior organs. Much worse, the writhing and spasmodic muscular contractions indicated radioactive matter that had been forced into the flesh and was acting directly on the nerves controlling the motor impulses. Jenkins looked hastily at the twisting body of his case, and his face blanched to a yellowish white; it was the first real example of the full possibilities of an atomic accident he’d seen.
“Curare,” he said finally, the word forced out, but level. Meyers handed him the hypodermic and he inserted it, his hand still steady — more than normally steady, in fact, with that absolute lack of movement that can come to a living organism only under the stress of emergency. Ferrel dropped his eyes back to his own case, both relieved and worried.
From the spread of the muscular convulsions, there could be only one explanation — somehow, radioactives had not only worked their way through the air grills, but had been forced through the almost airtight joints and sputtered directly into the flesh of the men. Now they were sending out radiations into every nerve, throwing aside the normal orders from the brain and spinal column, setting up anarchic orders of their own that left the muscles to writhe and jerk, one against the other, without order or reason, or any of the normal restraints the body places upon itself. The closest parallel was that of a man undergoing metrozol shock for schizophrenia, or a severe case of strychnine poisoning. He injected curare carefully, metering out the dosage according to the best estimate he could make, but Jenkins had been acting under a pressure that finished the second injection as Doc looked up from his first. Still, in spite of the rapid spread of the drug, some of the twitching went on.
“Curare,” Jenkins repeated, and Doc tensed mentally; he’d still been debating whether to risk extra dosage. But he made no counter-order, feeling slightly relieved this time at having the matter taken out of his hands; Jenkins went back to work, pushing up the injections to the absolute limit of safety, and slightly beyond. One of the cases had started a weird minor moan that hacked on and off as his lungs and vocal cords went in and out of synchronization, but it quieted under the drug, and in a matter of minutes the three lay still, breathing with the shallow flaccidity common to curare treatment. They were still moving slightly, but where before they were perfectly capable of breaking their own bones in uncontrolled efforts, now there was only motion similar to a man with a chill.
“God bless the man who synthesized curare,” Jenkins muttered as he began cleaning away damaged flesh, Meyers assisting.