Laura watched them in puzzlement. “You no want go?” she asked tentatively. “You have bad man?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” sobbed Miriam. “Mother, mother…,” and could not proceed. Laura placed a thick arm across Miriam’s bowed shoulders, gathered her vocabulary and offered the following consolation “All mothers bitches. You happy now. Great big man, huh?”
Miriam shook her blonde head wildly, tore herself free from the restraining hawser and flung herself prone on the bunk. The photograph of Franco Parzetti fluttered to the floor carrying out quick two steps as he went. On the floor he stared up at Laura Krankovski’s baffled face. She shrugged, picked up the piece of plastic and put it in Miriam’s clenching hand. It crumpled (France Parzetti limped thereafter) and Miriam’s wailing became louder. Laura stood watching her with stolid thoughtfulness, then turned and pushed her way past the collection of women who had gathered outside the open cabin door. At the end of the corridor was the surgery and into this Laura went.
A moment later she came out behind Mary Elizabeth McPrince, chief medical officer, who was on duty at the time. McPrince shooed off all the onlookers, dismissed Krankovski to the common room, and shut herself in with Miriam. She pricked Miriam’s quivering bottom with a very sharp needle, and then asked her what ailed her.
Miriam turned and looked into McPrince’s matronly face, and in her emotional state and with a subtle drug seeping into her brain, immediately imprinted the McPrince face on her soul and henceforth the word ‘mother’ conjured to her the consoling face of Mary Elizabeth McPrince.
“Mother,” she choked, and buried her face in the soft bosom.
“Oh, come now, dear,” said the doctor. “You’ve got to do better than this: a big girl like you.”
“Take me back,” sobbed Miriam amongst the billows.
McPrince eased her tack gently. “You’ve got to be stronger than this, Miriam, Think of your husband waiting for you and try to be strong for him. He won’t want a silly girl all tears, will he? There’ll be a lot to do; no time to think about home on Earth. Mars will be home. Now don’t mope. Be a good girl. Find something to do. Do you go to the gymnasium? No? Well, do so. Go regularly, make friends with the girls, and keep fit and well so that when you meet your husband he will see you strong and lovely.”
Miriam looked into McPrince’s eyes with adoration. “Yes, oh yes,” she breathed, “I will.” She hesitated shyly. “May I come and talk to you now and again? Show you how strong I get?”
McPrince smiled a little thoughtfully and stood up out of the immediate aura of Miriam’s worship. “You keep busy — talk with the girls. Come and see me when your monthly check-up comes round. All right, dear?”
Miriam looked momentarily as if a cool wind had blown over her ardor, but then she smiled and nodded prettily.
McPrince departed briskly and went and sought out Captain Ronald Able in his cabin.
“The troops are getting restless,” she said after a brief kiss. “I think treatment should commence,”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll pass the word along.” He dismissed the subject and allowed more interesting things to mold his facial expression. “Got an hour to spare, you gorgeous thing?” He emphasized his meaning by clamping a hand around one of her wrists and pulling her into close contact. She turned her head a little but moved her body in another way.
“Why, Captain Able! How you do treat your subordinates!”
“Good, eh?” he mumbled into her ear, “Well.…”
Two hours later the alarms went off all over the ship and smoke seeped out of the ventilators. Crew members rushed along corridors frantically blowing whistles and appealing for calm. Immediate panic ensued. Five hundred young women recalled those terrible tales of fire in space that form the staple part of youngsters’ reading diet in the year 2579. Death in one horrible form or another was inevitable: the passengers fled in all directions searching for a place where the smoke was thinner.
The metal corridors echoed shrilly with screams. Smoke in even thicker concentrations rolled from the ventilators. One or two bodies slumped to the carpet coughing piteously. Miriam, slowly recovering from the tranquilizer injected by ‘mother’ McPrince, found her emotions rising like a thermometer column from cool to hot. It gradually penetrated her mind that the smoke in her room could be linked to the screams outside the room. She sat up as her vague fears turned to alarm and at that moment the cabin door was thrown open and Laura Krankovski rushed in with a face of iron heroism. This shock was enough to transmute alarm into terror, and Miriam made the welkin ring.
They have a way in the remoter parts of New Russia of quelling panic, and Laura used it. Her fist caught Miriam under the ear and stopped the screams in one last ‘eeek’. Limp and half conscious, she was dragged from the bunk and pulled into the corridor, briefly propped against the wall and then hoisted up and over Laura’s shoulder. At a run, like a powerboat forcing a way up rapids Laura made her way aft.
She battled across the maelstrom of the common room, down to a lower level and in through a steel door yanked open as if it had been a gossamer curtain. Inside, the air was pure, and two engineers eating sandwiches looked up in consternation as the door slammed behind Laura.
“You can’t come in here!” shouted one.
“Laura!” exclaimed the other.
“Heinrich, I come,” confirmed Laura, “You no fire here.”
“Who’s that you’ve got there?” blustered the first man standing up. “You know nobody’s allowed in here.” And then to Heinrich: “Is this your Russian bird? Christ, we’ll be crucified if she’s found in here! Get her out before Li comes along. Go on, get her out.” He moved forward as if to implement his own order. Laura moved forward and he stopped.
“We stay ’til no fire,” said Laura, and laid her burden down on the floor. She straightened up and looked at Heinrich. “You kill fire,” she commanded. Heinrich looked at the other engineer then at the clock above the control board along one side of the room.
“Not yet,” he said. “Kill fire in four minutes. Sit down, Laura, and have a sandwich.”
Laura’s broad shoulders seemed to swell. “Heinrich, you go kill fire…now!”
“I can’t leave here, Laura,” appealed Heinrich. He approached her with his hands moving in soothing curves. “They’ll have the fire out soon. Be a good girl and go back to your cabin.”
“No,” said Laura forcibly. She grabbed him by the throat of his loose uniform. “You kill fire now or me love others.” He was too much of a gentleman to use his feet or knees against her and slowly his face grew purple as she constricted his throat.
“Hey!” said the other engineer.
“Gug,” said Heinrich. “Kill it, Joe. For Christ’s sake kill it!”
Joe dithered, looked at the clock, looked at Heinrich’s face, then ran to the control board and snapped off various switches.
“What the hell we tell Li?” he rattled, “We’re two minutes early.”
Laura was still strangling her lover trying to inspire him with the need to rush out and perform heroic deeds. She did not connect Joe’s actions with ‘killing’ the fire.
“Fire’s out,” gasped Heinrich in last extremity. Laura dragged him to the door and pulled it open with one hand. Outside, the last traces of smoke were being sucked back into the ventilators. The screams were now shrill cries of joyous relief. Laura kissed her lover’s mauve lips and released him to stagger where he willed. She went to where Miriam was beginning to make whimpering noises and lifted her head solicitously.
“Come, baby,” she cooed, and gently slapped Miriam’s cheek. Miriam struggled out of unconsciousness and then away from the buffeting. She spiraled up into Laura’s waiting arms, Her head felt as if it had been flattened in the recent past and was now undergoing re-inflation, Blindly she was led out of the engineers’ room, through corridors full of women expressing every emotion from joy to fury, to the surgery.