Starvation Orbit
New Worlds Science Fiction – September 1954
(1954)*
James White

Accidents are going to happen in space when interplanetary travel becomes a fact. The most important people on ship, space station or extraterrestrial base will be the doctors—and they will have to discover new methods of treatment under very unearthly conditions.

	Russell moved towards the damaged section of the Station, sliding his foot magnets slowly over the buckled areas of the hull, lifting them carefully when twisted, jagged-edged metal threatened the fabric of his spacesuit.

	What a mess, he thought, as he avoided a tangle of wreckage that had once been the water reclamation plant, what a rotten mess. For the first time in the short history of space travel, a ship had collided with a space-station. He hadn't realised until now just how lightly-constructed the stations were. Balloons strengthened with cobwebs, that's all they were. Lucky thing the ship had merely gouged a piece out of the rim. He added another layer to the glare shield on his helmet. The blinding white expanse of Venus' eternal cloud blanket filled half the sky, and it was beginning to hurt his eyes. There was no shortage of light out here. If there was anything to find, he could hardly miss seeing it.

	Russell didn't really expect to find anybody alive. It seemed an impossibility. But the Station people said there was a chance, a slim chance, that if the men in the rim had time to get into their spacesuits before the crash, and if the crash hadn't made mince-meat of them, then there might still be a few of them alive. Naturally, if there was any chance at all, he'd have to search until he was absolutely sure one way or the other.

	He looked once to either side to see if the two men helping with the search had had any better luck than himself. Apparently they hadn't. He was almost at the rim now. Most of the hull plating hereabouts had been ripped away, which made it harder to move around. He wished he'd been able to become a little more proficient at handling himself in a spacesuit, but as Medical Officer of the North Polar Base on Venus his trips up to the Station had been confined to short routine visits of only a few hours each, so there had never been much time to practise.

	A voice in his headphones, toneless and metallic, brought him up sharply.

	"Doctor! Over here."

	The man on his right was waving his arms slowly above his head. Russell moved over to him as quickly as he could, then he saw what the other had found

	The man had been trying to get into his suit when the smash had come, but had only managed to cover one leg before being exposed to space. For yards around him the wreckage was coated with a reddish-brown stain, like rust. But it wasn't rust. When subject to explosive decompression in space, the human body looses all its fluid and gaseous contents in a matter of seconds. There is a surprising amount of blood in people.

	Russell bent forward. He had to look for some identification on the body, a very messy job. But before he could begin, the man who had found it spoke again.

	"Don't bother, Doc. It's Murray. I recognise the pyjamas ..." His voice choked into silence for a moment, then, with awful intensity, he said softly, "Oh, blast that ship."

	The doctor knew how he felt. He followed the other's furious stare out to where the six-hundred foot winged daft that was the Queen of Darkness tumbled end over end less than a mile away. The ship seemed to be in an even worse predicament than was the Station, for when the Queen hit the rim and caroomed off, she had absorbed the not inconsiderable amount of kinetic energy possessed by the rotating spacestation. Now the station no longer rotated, but the ship spun and twisted and rolled wildly with a motion that made Russell's stomach feel uneasy just by looking at it.

	But the ship was gradually being brought under control. Somebody aboard was doing a brilliant series of permutations with the steering jets; it would be only a matter of time before the ship was completely at rest, then it would be needing help, too. He felt sorry for the crew. Unless they had all been strapped in, they must have taken an even worse beating than the men on the Station.

	Russell looked away from the madly-spinning ship and said quietly, "Take it easy. We don't know what happened exactly. Maybe it wasn't their fault."

	The other just grunted and turned to renew the search.

	The doctor was about to do the same when the voice of the third member of the party came crackling out of his 'phones. He had found something, too. They both hurried over to join him.

	Russell saw immediately that this one had been lucky, he'd had time to don his suit and seal it properly. Also, he must have been knocked out at once, for the spacesuit had starfished from the internal air pressure, and that couldn't have happened if the man had had conscious control over his arm and leg muscles. He floated motionless, a few feet out from the rim, with one foot caught in a tangled strand of electrical cable. The cable, which was less than an eighth of an inch thick, had kept him from drifting off into space. The doctor couldn't see the man's face very well through the helmet, but there was a purplish tinge in it that he didn't like at all. It dawned on him suddenly that the suit's air tank must be practically exhausted. The poor fellow must be smothering in there. He said sharply to the men beside him, "Quick. I think his air has run out. Pull him in."

	Russell had a spare oxygen tank ready when they got him back onto the hull. He changed that first, then plugged his transmitter lead into the injured man's helmet and said distinctly, "Can you hear me?" No answer. He reached forward quickly to increase the volume of the other's receiver. His elbow barely touched one of the loosely outflung arms, and a low, shuddering moan came through his 'phones, but the man didn't come to. Russell cursed himself for a clumsy, bungling fool. That arm was probably fractured somewhere—people always stuck their arms out to save themselves in a smash—and he was making it worse by manhandling it about like a sack of potatoes. Very carefully he lifted the man by his wide metal belt so as not to touch the arms and legs, and retraced his steps to the station's central airlock.

	He had just anchored the unconscious man to the hull beside the lock with a magnet when the voices of the other two searchers came, almost simultaneously, over his 'phones.

	"Doctor. I've found another one."

	"I can see two over here, Doc. But we're going to have trouble getting them out, better bring the cutting torch when you're coming."

	Dr. Russell brought a crowbar and some rope as well as the cutting torch. He'd an idea they'd need everything. He was right.

	Half an hour later, as he stood in the airlock with the four still figures of the men they'd been able to rescue lying at his feet, he marvelled anew at the nearly limitless capacity of the human body for taking punishment. Of the seven men who had been in the wreckage, these four had been able to get their suits sealed in time. There was no way of telling how badly they were hurt until he had them inside in the air, but it was a miracle that they were alive at all. He shook his head, then began to loosen his helmet as air whooshed into the lock and the inner seal opened.

	One of the station crew, his head and hands swathed in bandages, moved forward to help him. The bandages wrinkled a little where the man's mouth was as he mumbled painfully, "I'll give you a hand, Doc."

	Russell looked at the bandaged hands, then up at the pale grey eyes that peered at him through ragged slits in the gauze covering his face. This must be the chemist—the one who had taken the header into the benchful of glassware. When the doctor left for outside, Robinson had been treating him. Surely he shouldn't be wandering about like this.

	"It's all right. I can manage," he said quickly as the other bent over one of the injured men, "But you could go tell Dr. Robinson to come here as quickly as possible with the hypos. She'll know what you mean. And," Russell ended sternly, "you take it easy, chum. If there was any gravity here we'd have you flat on your back in bed. Go anchor yourself in some warm spot and rest, or you'll be needing a blood transfusion."

	Without answering, the man kicked strongly with both feet and went sailing off down the corridor. He did a beautiful somersault and landed squarely at an intersection. Before he disappeared in the direction of the sick bay to deliver the message, he called back softly, "Look, Doc. No hands."

	The show-off, thought Russell, and wondered at the strange quirk in human beings that made it well nigh impossible for them to take good advice. He turned and began removing the helmets of the injured men and cutting away the clothing around their necks. His assistant would be along in a minute and he didn't want to waste time.

	The sting of the needle going into the fleshy part at the side of his neck brought one of the men to momentarily. He clenched his teeth, then began to relax as the contents of the hypo took hold. His eyes focussed on Robinson's flaming thatch above him. In a weak, bemused sort of voice he murmured, "What d'you know, a beautiful nurse," and passed out.

	The beautiful nurse, or doctor to be exact, inclined her head and said, "Well, thank you." Then she moved to the next man.

	"Have you got enough?" Russell asked. He was referring to the shots which were being injected to counteract shock and deaden the pain of the fractured limbs prior to the men's spacesuits being removed. They couldn't, of course, peel off the tight-fitting metal and plastic suits while the men were conscious. That would have been one of the most hellish tortures imaginable, so they had to anaesthetize the patient first. Then, while stripping off the suit they had to be as careful as possible not to compound or complicate any of the injuries he had suffered. That was the worst part, Russell knew. No matter how careful they were, they could never be completely sure that they weren't increasing the damage.

	Robinson answered, "Yes, but we're running short," she stopped talking to attend to the last man, then went on, "There's enough for about eight more shots, but nearly all the people we treated first will need renewals. They were badly knocked about, you know." She sounded worried.

	Russell did know, only too well. When Robinson and himself had been whisked up to the station from the colony at the North Pole of Venus in answer to a panicky call for help, they'd found a shambles. The crash, reducing as it did the four revolutions per minute rotation of the Station to complete immobility in the space of a few seconds, had flung the personnel against walls and bulkheads with bone-shattering violence. A few were lucky. They'd been in the central weightless section, waiting to begin unloading the approaching Queen of Darkness, so the abrupt halting of the station's spin hadn't hurt them. But with the others it was another matter entirely. Every single one of them was a fracture case.

	It would have been much worse, the doctor knew, if the runaway Queen of Darkness hadn't given a few minutes warning of the impending smash. But the radio operator on the ship had yelled something about their A-Drive being on the blink and for everybody on the station to get in their suits quick. Davenport, the station radioman, had thrown the Multiple Puncture Alarm switch and hastily taken the other's advice. Then, when the crash left him drifting weightless above his transmitter with a broken arm and his shoulder out of joint, he had called for help until his antenna was carried away by the shifting of loose wreckage.

	The suits had given a measure of protection to the men, even though they were of the lightweight, emergency type that hung about the station in much the same way as lifebelts on an ocean-going liner. Most of the bodily damage was confined to bruises and breaks. Mostly breaks. Russell winced a little as he thought about some of them.

	If they'd only known what to expect, Robinson and himself would have come better prepared. The one and only colony at the north pole of Venus was small as yet, but it was very well equipped with regard to the medical end. They could have taken the complete fittings of a small hospital up with them providing said fittings could be got into the ferry rocket. But instead of knowing what to bring, they had had to guess at what would be needed. Their guessing had been pretty close to the mark, but it hadn't been quite good enough. Necessary supplies were running very short, and anaesthetics were high on the list.

	As they manoeuvred the unconscious men along the corridor and into the dining hall which housed the most seriously injured personnel, Russell asked, "Anything come up while I was outside?"

	She shook her head. "Nothing, except that McBride came to, and wouldn't let me put him over again until he'd talked to some of his crew. After he'd talked to them he wouldn't let me put him over at all. He wanted to go on a tour of inspection …" 

	Russell said faintly, "Oh, no."

	"Oh, yes. And," she went on, "when I put my foot down and told him that with two broken legs he wasn't going anywhere, I thought he was going to spit in my eye. What a temper that man has." She shuddered expressively at the memory of it. "Now he has the men who were in the no-weight section and escaped injury climbing about all over the place in spacesuits trying to assess the damage, and the walking, or should I say flying wounded, dashing about doing McBride only knows what.

	"A few minutes before you came back I went in to see how he was doing. There were six other men in the room and they were all talking a blue streak. When I went in they all shut up and wouldn't say a word until I'd left. I don't get it at all." She paused, then stated quietly, "Something is happening, or has happened, that they don't want us to know about. I wonder what it is."

	Russell was curious, too. Something must be going on, he knew, because Robinson wasn't given to exaggeration, but he couldn't spare the time to wonder about it just now. He told her to get the stuff ready, and they began the slow, nerve-wracking job of removing the spacesuits from the unconscious men.

	They didn't talk much. There was no need to. Robinson was the best assistant Russell had yet found. Sometimes he suspected her of being telepathic. She was what every doctor prayed for. An extra pair of hands directed by a single brain, his. He was going to miss her terribly when her three-year spell at Venus colony was finished.

	Two of the men, splinted and bandaged, were floating a few inches above their tables, and they were working on a third when a scraping, metallic clanking sound reverberated along the corridor and the whole station lurched slightly. The patients, suspended in various positions about the room, bobbed gently and became still again. Russell looked up anxiously, but when the bump wasn't repeated, they went on with their work.

	Their concentration was so intense that the noise of the main airlock being opened followed by the sound of voices, raised in anger and bitter recrimination, failed to distract them.

	Russell was finishing with the last case, and Robinson was swooping about the room trying to round up a widely-dispersed shoal of loose dressings and bandages, when a low voice speaking from the doorway enquired, "Doctor Russell?"

	The doctor looked up and nodded. He saw two men, both wearing spacesuits with the helmets thrown back, floating just inside the door. The speaker, a tall, thin-faced man with sandy hair, seemed to have escaped injury completely. His companion had been less lucky. His right arm was strapped tightly to his side with several strands of electrical cable, and a great, livid bruise made a technicoloured mess of his face from temple to jaw. The jaw was obviously broken, because his mouth hung open and he didn't seem able to close it. Russell wondered why he hadn't reported himself for treatment long ago. The first man spoke again and he knew the reason.

	"This is Captain Allerton, of the Queen of Darkness. I'm Winthrop, the ship's radioman." He spoke defensively, as though the mere words of identification would make the doctor start throwing things. Russell made no comment and he went on, "We've had casualties. Some of them are in a very bad way. I wonder if you'd come and have a look at them, Doctor. I don't want to risk moving anybody until I'm sure of what's wrong."

	Russell looked at the Captain. So this was the villain. The man responsible for the smash, if what the Station men said was true. His eyes, though open, had a glazed, unfocussed look. He was out on his feet. The doctor brought his attention from the Captain to ask Winthrop for details about the ship's injured.

	When the radioman had finished his tale of carnage and destruction, Robinson, who by this time had joined them, said briskly, "I'll go, Doctor. You've been outside enough for one day. I'll get my suit."

	"But—" Winthrop began a protest. Russell silenced it by telling him that Doctor—he stressed the 'Doctor' slightly—Robinson was every bit as good at the job as he was himself. And hadn't he better bring the Captain the rest of the way in and have his arm and face seen to?

	"Maybe Mister Winthrop is old-fashioned, or doesn't believe in lady doctors," Robinson put in as she gently eased the Captain towards an empty table. She sighed and fluttered her eyelashes like the poor, weak, ineffectual woman that she most decidedly was not, but became serious again and said, "Give me ten minutes to get ready, then you can take me out to the ship."

	"Sorry," said Winthrop, his face going slightly red. This was his first trip to Venus, and nobody had told him about the glamorous half of the Medical Section there. He continued, "I'll come back for you in a few minutes, if you don't mind. I've got to see the Station Chief right away. Does anybody know where Mr. McBride is?"

	Russell indicated the direction with a nod of his head and said, "Next door." Winthrop left. Robinson began the series of mid-air acrobatics necessary for the donning of a spacesuit in the weightless condition. The Queen's radioman returned as she finished. They both left quickly for the airlock carrying sealed cannisters of drugs and instruments. The doctor continued working over the Captain.

	Allerton wasn't in very bad shape apart from a simple fracture of the humerus and another of the inferior maxilla. The arm injury would keep him from writing love letters and the broken jaw would stop him from talking for a while, otherwise he was good as new. But Russell decided to keep him under observation for a few days just in case, because the Captain and himself had had quite a wrestling match before Allerton would submit to the injection of the anaesthetic. He had struggled like mad, and all the time making pitiful mumbling sounds through his messed-up mouth. The doctor shook his head in perplexity. Anybody would have thought he was being killed instead of put to sleep.

	Russell sighed and gave a sudden yawn that threatened to dislocate his own jaw, then he shook himself and rubbed his eyes. It was time he made another round of his patients.

	The dining hall and the two storage compartments adjoining it had contained seventeen of the casualties. The number had now shrunk to eight. These were the serious cases who had been drugged to prevent them from compounding their injuries by involuntary movement. Presumably, the others were out running errands for McBride. The doctor felt anger at the Station Chief's callousness mounting as his check-up of the unconscious men proceeded. McBride shouldn't have asked the men in sick bay to do anything. They were supposed to rest until the Queen of Darkness was ready to take them down to the colony hospital—the tidying and patching up of the Station could wait until a fit crew from Luna arrived. In this absence of gravity those men could have some nasty accidents. He'd go and speak to McBride about it, as well as a few other things he had on his mind as well.

	On the way to McBride's room two of his missing patients passed him without stopping. In fact, they hardly even noticed him. They were talking technicalities in low, worried tones, and they looked, Russell thought, as if all the cares of three worlds and a fair-sized moon had fallen on their not particularly broad shoulders. He began to wonder uneasily just how bad things were here. Nobody had thought of telling him.

	There was a lot of shouting coming from McBride's room. Two men seemed to be doing most of it. He recognised the Station Chemist's voice because it sounded as though it was coming through a wet towel. He didn't know who the other belonged to. As he reached the door, a roar from McBride drowned both of them out. "Stop that!" he shouted, "I don't care who was responsible for the crash." Then, cutting down the volume slightly he went on, "That can wait. What we want to know now is how ..." He broke off as he saw Russell in the doorway. "... Yes, Doctor?"

	The Station Chief floated above a small table to which a large plan of the station had been fastened by three pieces of sticking plaster. He'd been pointing at something on it when the doctor had entered. With both his legs splinted and bandaged together he looked just like a dragonfly, Russell thought. But the sight wasn't one to cause amusement. At opposite sides of the table Winthrop and the chemist were trying to murder each other with their eyes. As if nothing was happening, Russell spoke.

	"It's about the men in the dining hall—what's left of them," he couldn't help adding. McBride had no right at all to set injured men to work without first checking with him. He went on, "I need further supplies of special splints and anaesthetics urgently, also other items which I can list for you. Those men have to be kept under until we can get them down to the Colony, but a few of them are due to wake up any time now and there isn't enough dope to put them over again. The splints are needed to replace the make-shift ones we've been using up to now, which have been all right in weightless conditions, but which might not hold up during deceleration and landing. Practically all the men will need them, so the sooner I get some, the quicker we can evacuate this place." He stopped and grabbed at a wall net to keep from drifting into Winthrop then finished, "Will you send the ferry down for them as soon as possible?"

	While he had been talking the three men had never taken their eyes off him, and the expressions on the two faces that he could see defied analysis. When he had finished, the chemist shook his head dumbly. Winthrop opened his mouth to say something, but McBride silenced him with a look. Russell felt embarrassed and a bit uneasy. He was beginning to think a psychologist was needed up here as well as an M.D.

	After a silence of nearly half a minute, McBride cleared his throat and said, "I'd rather not do that just yet. The fuel, for one thing—"

	Russell rarely lost his temper. He didn't completely lose it then, but he said some very unkind things about people who hummed and hawwed about using a measly twenty tons of fuel at a time like this. McBride started to interrupt but the doctor talked him down. He pointed out that he was well aware that fuel was the most expensive item in space flight, but that this surely was a special case. Speaking in short, simple sentences he painted a vivid word-picture of what it would be like in the dining hall when the anaesthetic wore off. Men with nearly as many fractures as they had bones, inadequately treated, and forced to remain conscious. As a simile he mentioned the cockpit of one of the old-time ships of the line.

	Perhaps he dramatised things a little, but he couldn't help it. Russell always felt strongly for his patients, he was built that way. Some doctors become hardened to human suffering, he knew, and develop a detached, objective approach to it, but he had never been able to do that. He often wished that he could look on every patient as just another case it would be a good deal less wearing to himself. So now he was pouring it on thick to McBride. And the Station Chief, his face expressionless, was waiting for him to run down. 

	Finally Russell ended on a questioning note.

	"… And why is everybody being so secretive about something? Both Robinson and I have noticed it. I've been too busy to really look around this place. What exactly happened? Just how bad is it? And," he ended sharply, "what is going on that you don't want me to know about?"

	McBride exchanged glances with the men beside him. They both nodded slightly. The Station Chief came to a decision, sighed, and spoke.

	"I'll take your questions in order," he said in a level voice. He didn't seem a bit angry. "First. I am not worrying about the economics of the situation. The fuel has got to be saved, not because it is expensive, but because it is in rather short supply at the moment—"

	"Short supply!" The Station Chemist exclaimed incredulously. He laughed, completely without humour, and said something else which was muffled by his bandages. McBride ignored him.

	"—We didn't want to tell you this because you had enough to occupy your mind already. Also, we didn't want to give rise to unnecessary i anxiety until we were absolutely sure of our position. But I see no reason for holding back the information now. As simply as possible, this is what happened.

	"When the Queen hit us she was carrying, in containers attached to her outer hull, enough fuel to replenish the station's storage tanks which were empty at the time. As the fuel is manufactured and loaded at Luna base, and as there is no air resistance in space, this is the customary method of transporting large quantities of fuel in a relatively small ship. The collision ruptured the greater number of these containers and the fuel was lost. The rest broke free and were flung away when the ship was knocked into a spin. A wing of the ship ripped a hole in the station's main food storage compartment, and most of that was lost, too. The air regeneration plant suffered as well."

	As he paused in his catalogue of the destruction, Russell dropped his eyes and reddened in embarrassment. He shouldn't have gone off half cocked the way he had just now. He felt an awful fool.

	McBride continued, "The only fuel available at the moment is the small emergency supply carried by the Queen. This is far from enough to enable the ship to land on Venus. However, if we transfer it to the ferry rocket, the smaller ship will have sufficient to make two trips down to the colony and return. You can now see why I want to save fuel."

	"I'm sorry. I thought ..."

	McBride waved the apology aside, "No matter," he said, "it was a natural mistake under the circumstances. But you have convinced me that a trip is necessary to obtain the supplies you need. I'll send the ferry down, and use the opportunity to evacuate some of the men. The ship will take three people as well as the pilot. I suggest you pick out three of the wounded who are bad enough to require urgent hospitalization, but not so serious that the deceleration will fatally complicate their injuries, and arrange for their transfer to the ferry.

	"I'd like you to be as quick about it as you can, Doctor."

	He stopped talking. In a very polite and well-mannered way Russell had been given his orders. The doctor nodded dumbly. He was still trying to grasp the implications of the information he'd just been given.

	He turned to go, but halted himself at the doorway as the other called, "Er, Doctor. I forgot to mention it. From now until further notice, smoking and any other wasteful form of combustion is strictly forbidden, and the food and water will be rationed. You will get the details shortly from Bradley	he's in charge of distribution. That's all."

	He turned and began talking to Winthrop about the possibility of picking up some of the scattered fuel tanks on the radar screens and sending men out after them in gas-propelled spacesuits. Apparently he'd forgotten Russell's existence.

	The doctor continued to the dining hall, his mind in a whirl. Food rationing? Saving air? Just how long, he wondered, was McBride expecting to stay here.

	Robinson had come back from the ship and was telling five Station men who each had a limp crewman in tow, where to put them. When the men had gone she indicated the latest arrivals and said, "They're wearing heavy duty suits, the type that comes apart in three pieces. We shouldn't have much trouble getting them out." She stopped and looked closely at Russell. "You look sort of … Is there anything wrong?"

	Russell began stripping the suit off one of the ship's men. As he worked he gave Robinson a rapid summary of the position as had been revealed to him by the Station Chief, including the part about the evacuation of three of the wounded. He waited to see how she'd take it.

	"I'd an idea something like that would happen," she said quietly. "I heard somebody talking about it at the airlock, but I didn't think it was as bad as that." The prospect of an extended stay on short rations in the Station didn't seem to worry her at all. They worked for a long time in silence until she said thoughtfully, "I suppose Browning, with his depressed fracture of the skull, will go?" Russell nodded. She continued, "And Whatzizname over there in the corner …" She broke off, "... Oh, I wish I'd known this was going to happen. I could've packed an overnight bag or something."

	Russell laughed in spite of himself, but sobered quickly and said, "You finish this lot. McBride wants the men transferred to the ferry rocket as soon as possible, so I'd better get cracking on it. We can decide who the third man will be while Browning and," he grinned slightly, "Whatzizname are being prepared."

	"That man who was in the Queen's airlock when she hit, he should go, too, I think," she said seriously. "But putting him into a suit again for the changeover would probably kill him. He's in a bad way."

	"We don't have to worry about that," Russell reassured her. "When I was outside some of the men were getting ready to connect both ships directly to the station with spacetubes. By the time the men are ready, spacesuits will be unnecessary, but what I am worried about is plaster and splints. Those men should be in a cast from toes to chin. That ferry can make some very bumpy landings ..." He trailed off into silence.

	"They've got some stuff on the ship that you could use," Robinson said suddenly. "Insulation or something for the colony power-station, they said it was. They've several drums of it. It's very messy, like tar," she made a faint grimace. "One of the drums burst open so I know all about it. The stuff has a very low melting point, and it dries out as hard as rock in about fifteen minutes, they said."

	"That should do the job, I think," Russell agreed. "We can try it, anyway. I'll send to the ship for some."

	One of the three station men who were rigging the fuel transfer line from the Queen brought a drum of it to the dining hall for them. Thoughtfully, he'd brought a lighted blow-torch along as well. While the stuff was thawing out, the doctor began attacking various items of the room's furniture with a view to converting them into splints. He'd had lots of practice at that particular job recently so it didn't take very long. Then came the tricky business of applying the stuff.

	It was the stickiest, messiest, most evil-smelling goo the doctor had ever known, but it did the job. The station man played the torch over the drum, keeping it warm enough to be an easily handled porridge-like fluid, but not so hot that it would bubble out of the container and float about the room. But even so, the place soon looked like the photographic negative of a snowstorm. Russell lifted great, two-handed dollops of the stuff and slapped and patted it into position over clothing and bandages and splints with little regard for the trouble he was making for the people who would later want to take it off. Speed was the important thing at the moment.

	When he had finished he drew back a little and looked at the result. He thought, with a feeling of awe, that they resembled nothing so much as a trio of the Undead. Certainly they were the most unhygienic medical cases he'd ever seen. Poe, he thought, could have done a good job of describing them, but he couldn't.

	 Robinson, who had finished with her cases, was making dirty cracks about witch-doctors and zombies when the Station Chief, in person, arrived to say that the ferry was ready to go. They began pushing the injured men out of the room and towards the Number Two airlock, which was now connected to the ferry by a spacetube. As the tarry stuff wasn't quite dry, there were some very disparaging remarks made about it by the Station man and Robinson. It was the first time they'd met it hand to hand. McBride, who was directing operations from the rear, seemed to think there was an element of humour in the situation. It was the first time Russell had ever seen him smile.

	Later, after they had watched the ferry rocket, from a port in the dining hall, drop from sight towards the dazzling cloud blanket of Venus, Russell wondered how he was going to get the tar off his hands when the water was about to be rationed. Robinson suggested alcohol, but before he could try it there was an interruption. Bradley, the Station Meteorologist, and now acting Food Minister, glided into the room towing a net bag.

	"Tea up!" he announced with a sickening show of joviality, then amended himself hastily, "Actually it's water." From the bag he produced two narrow-necked bottles and two cans labelled 'Baked Beans' and 'Stewed Carrots' respectively and gave the lot to Russell with instructions to divide with Robinson fifty-fifty. Russell thanked him insincerely and remarked that if this was their tea, they were going to be well fed indeed. Bradley pointed out that 'tea' was only a figure of speech. They would get nothing more until Wednesday lunch-time, and that this, if anybody was interested, was Tuesday afternoon. He advised them strongly not to over-eat, laughed heartily, and left.

	"Him I'd love to strangle," Robinson murmured with great feeling. She sucked daintily at the water bottle.

	Russell sighed in resignation. "Oh, well. We've at least got a choice. Do you want beans or carrots?" He hated both.

	The doctor didn't mention it, but when Bradley had given him the rations, he had seen the unmistakable outline of a heavy revolver inside the other's shirt. Russell supposed it was there in case someone insisted on a second helping.

	They existed on beans and carrots for five days, then the menu was switched to rhubarb and black chocolate. The vegetables weren't Earth grown, Russell knew, but had been produced on Luna in hydroponic tanks. They were incredibly rich in vitamins and things, but nobody had ever been able to adequately describe their taste not in mixed company, anyway. The chocolate was standard emergency rations. One could cultivate a taste for it if one was starving. The doctor was starving. Everybody was. 

	But Russell was better off than the others. He bore that shameful stigma of the middle-aged, a well-developed spare tyre, so while the lean and hungry types grew ever leaner and hungrier, he was able to live off his fatty reserves. The ferry had returned with his needed supplies. His patients were progressing satisfactorily, all things considered. So all there was left to do was to wait until somebody either came and took them off the Station, or they thought of a way of getting down to the colony themselves.

	One patient still caused him considerable unease, and that was the Captain. Allerton, though he was in no physical danger from his injuries, seemed to go into near hysteria every time he came out of the anaesthetic.

	Once, when Winthrop and the doctor were beside him talking about the smash, he had nearly wrecked the place. Russell had to hang onto his legs to keep him from kicking himself across the room and into the other patients. All the while he kept waving and gesticulating with his good hand under the startled Winthrop's nose. He couldn't talk, of course, but he tried to so hard that his eyes bulged. The doctor had wished fervently for the umpteenth time that he had him in a proper hospital, for the treatments he was forced to use up here were, besides being the crudest of makeshifts, about fifty years out of date. It was Russell's belief that the collision had unhinged the Captain. He was certain of it after Winthrop told him what had happened on the Queen of Darkness.

	Allerton had been making the customary gentle approach to the Station on the steering jets. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the A-Drive let loose with a full five G's. Luckily, it lasted for less than a second, but it was enough to lay the crew, who had all unstrapped themselves in readiness for unloading, out cold. Winthrop, who hadn't unstrapped, had eyes only for the spot of light that was the Station dead-centring his radar screen, and growing larger and brighter every second. He yelled a crash warning to the Station operator, closed his own helmet, and just waited for it.

	The crash nearly shook him apart, but it was the others who suffered most. The complicated spin on the ship made them flop and bounce all ever the place. Winthrop, after an unknown period of time, had somehow managed to crawl around to the Captain, who was jammed face down onto an instrument panel, and succeeded in strapping him to his seat and bringing him round. He had done this by placing his mouth against the Captain's ear and shouting at the top of his voice.

	Then Allerton, with only one good hand, had fought the spin on the ship until he'd killed it completely. Winthrop didn't know how long it took, it felt like days. Several times the Captain passed out, and had to be revived again. Winthrop had to be pretty brutal about it, because the noises the injured crew were making was nearly driving him nuts.

	Finally, when the battered Queen had bumped gently alongside the station, Winthrop had tied up the Captain's arm and towed him across to the doctor.

	After an experience like that, Russell thought, a man had an excuse for irrational behaviour.

	There was one thing the doctor had never considered seriously in the beginning, and that was the transport problem. But, after a few sessions with Winthrop and McBride, he suffered a drastic change of mind.

	Winthrop and the Station Chief came often to the dining hall. McBride to play chess with the doctor and to ask after the wounded, and the Radioman to ask after the wounded and talk to Robinson. Mostly to talk to Robinson. It was pretty obvious that Robinson had struck Winthrop all of a heap. The man was head over heels. They had long since reached the first name stage, and an occasional 'dear' was creeping in, so Russell suspected that the converse also held true. At the moment, however, they were all talking about the mess they were in. The drinking water was McBride's chief worry. He said, "We'll have to cut the ration again. Say, half a pint per—"

	"And what about food?" Winthrop interrupted, "And, more important, air? At the present rate of consumption the food will be gone in two days, the water in six days, and the air in a little over a week." He laughed bitterly. "We're going to die of hunger, thirst, and asphixiation all at the same time. I don't think it's fair."

	"Watch it, old man, your persecution complex is showing," said Russell in reproving tones. The conversation was becoming morbid and he wanted to stop that happening, otherwise they'd all end up by discussing at length their last full meal and feeling rotten about it. Speaking to McBride he went on, "But this whole situation is silly. Here we are, circling Venus in the two-hour circumpolar orbit, in radio contact with the North Pole colony almost constantly. Why, if it wasn't for the cloud layer we could see the base, and yet we can't get down. I know that we haven't enough fuel to go down, and they haven't any to send up to us—"

	"Correction." McBride cut in, "They have a little. They make it themselves with a small-scale extraction plant similar to the big ones on the moon which process it from the Lunar rocks. But the plant is incapable of producing fuel in bulk. They make only enough to send us up an occasional message rocket carrying oxygen and water tanks. If it wasn't for those rockets we'd be dead already." • Russell switched his attention to Winthrop.

	"Your ship mounts the Allen Drive. Now, I know that the A-Drive doesn't operate in an atmosphere, but couldn't you figure out some way of making it do so?" he asked. "If you could rig it so's it would work for even half an hour, that would be long enough to allow the Queen to land us." He stopped, waiting hopefully.

	Winthrop shook his head. "If I could do that I'd be the most famous man in the System," he said, and began to explain just why it was impossible.

	The chief difficulty was that the Allen Drive had been, quite literally, given to humanity. An extraterrestrial, posing under the name of 'Allen' who had stranded himself on Earth, had exchanged the secret of the Drive for a means of transport off the planet. The details of the exchange had been hushed-up for security reasons, but the human race found itself suddenly in possession of a spacedrive which was efficient beyond their wildest dreams. Trouble was, they didn't know anything fundamental about its principles of operation. It worked, and how, but they didn't know why it worked.

	A stream of particles emitted by a specially treated copper plate were focussed and accelerated to a velocity verging closely orr the speed of light by a series of coils. The coils, which would have given a surrealist artist a neurosis just by looking at them, warped the fabric of space within their fields so that this terrific acceleration was possible with a very small consumption of current. The power came from somewhere, Winthrop said, but it was probably from another space-time continuum, otherwise there was a large loophole in the Laws concerning the Conservation of Energy. The particles, given almost infinite mass by virtue of their terrific velocity, could propel a ship the size of the Queen of Darkness around the Solar System with an acceleration of up to five G's. And the Queen's A-Drive unit was a cylinder measuring only ten feet by three.

	Unfortunately, the Drive worked only in a vacuum. Even the slightest trace of atmosphere was enough to upset the delicate balance of forces within the coils, then the drive just snuffed out like a candle. That was why, he explained, all ships had to use chemical fuel and motors to take off and land on any planet which had an atmospheric envelope, though they could flit about in interplanetary space at top speed without a single worry about fuel consumption.

	He ended by saying that some of the best brains in Physics were working on the problem, but without avail.

	The dismal silence which followed was broken by the Station Chief. He said, "Even if we could work a miracle by making it operate in an atmosphere, it's no good talking about it. The Drive is wrecked. One of my men reported on it first thing. The final focussing stage, which hadn't been retracted at the time of the collision, was carried away. There was some other damage as well, so the A-Drive is a total loss. It can't be made to work at all."

	"But surely .you've got spares?" queried the doctor. "Didn't that new Space Safety Act say that all stations must carry replacements for every type of ship?"

	"Ours hadn't arrived yet. They were being sent from Luna on the Queen of Darkness." McBride smiled wryly. "They're probably halfway to Mercury by now, with the rest of the Queen's outside cargo."

	"How do you know they were on the outside?"

	Winthrop laughed. "Doc, you'd have made a great detective," he put in before the Station Chief could answer, "Always asking questions. Well, we know because I found the Bill of Lading in the ship's papers. I didn't actually see them being loaded—I was delayed and only got aboard a few minutes before take-off. But the cargo list says they were on the outer hull beside the port stabilizer, and they aren't there now ..."

	There was a commotion as Captain Allerton woke and began to act up again. Judging by the way he suddenly began waving and kicking, Russell suspected he'd been playing 'possum' for the last few minutes. The doctor held him while Robinson administered another shot, then they rejoined the others.

	Russell Was out of his depth, and he knew it. An M.D. shouldn't be giving ideas to such high-powered technical talent, but there was something else he wanted to get straight.

	"Why don't we call for help?" he asked. "Not to Venus, of course, but to Earth or Mars base? Isn't our transmitter powerful enough? Surely ships from Earth, Luna, or Mars, using A-Drive, could get here in a few days, and carry the food and fuel we need with them."

	It was McBride who answered him. "Our transmitter is powerful enough, but we can't call to either the Earth-Moon system or Mars because they are both on the other side of the Sun at the moment—out of sight behind it, in fact. As we can't send a message right through the Sun, we'll have to wait until Venus moves sufficiently along in her orbit to bring them, not only into sight, but clear of the interference from the Sun's corona. Then we can send our S.O.S." He paused, then ended grimly, "That won't be for another four weeks."

	Four weeks, Russell thought, aghast. They couldn't possibly survive that long, even by cutting rations in half. Still, people were tough. If the air would only last out. And the water ...

	The Station Chief broke in on his brown study by grunting something to the effect that he was going to the radio room. Robinson and Winthrop began talking quietly beside one of the viewports, their heads very close together. Once they actually laughed. Russell smiled to himself and went to make a quick check of his patients. This done, he propelled himself into a fairly dark corner of the room and set his body spinning slowly. The circular motion of the room around him had a hypnotic effect, he'd found. Sometimes it put him to sleep, and he would forget how terribly hungry he was.

	Three days passed and things took a sudden turn for the better. The chemists on Venus somehow managed to step up production of the rocket fuel. Message rockets, their payloads consisting of tanked oxygen and water, began to arrive with increasing frequency. One even carried several cartons of the once-maligned black chocolate. The men in the station perked up. At this rate it would only be a matter of time before they were taken off. They would be mighty hungry, of course, but with air and water supplies coming in regularly, they'd be able to live through it.

	Then came disaster. The small, experimental-model extraction plant on the planet blew itself to pieces through overload. There was no more fuel. The supply rockets stopped coming. And when next the base contacted the station, there was an uncomfortably forced quality about the operator's voice, as if already he was talking to dead men.

	It was shortly after McBride had a long talk with the Venus base that Winthrop came to tell the two doctors the bad news. Robinson took it well. The doctor hoped his own emotions weren't showing in his face he wasn't proud of them. Then Winthrop began to stammer something else, but the words stuck in his throat at first. Finally he took a deep breath and burst out, "McBride wants you to leave, both of you. There's enough fuel in the ferry rocket for that." He looked straight at Robinson and said, "He thinks you people should go. You aren't space personnel, you just came here to help. You could've stayed on Venus. He says thank you, but you'd better go." He swallowed hard, and lowered his eyes. "I think you should go, too, before things get much worse."

	Russell couldn't speak for a moment. His mind raced, bringing him feverish, chaotic pictures of the crusty colony loaves, the water-cooler in his surgery, the lime-juice issue, meat ... He'd known about the ferry rocket standing by, but he'd never dreamed of being picked to go on its last trip down. Involuntarily, saliva filled his nearly-dehydrated mouth. But he couldn't go. It wouldn't be right. Cursing himself for being a stupid idiot, he spoke before he could have second thoughts.

	"Things can't get worse, surely," he protested, "and what about the patients? One of us will have to stay at least …"

	"Doctor," the other interrupted harshly, "you don't know the half of it. The men are polite, on their best behaviour, when you make your rounds. They're grateful, to both of you. After all, you've saved a lot of their lives. But a few more days of this and they'll want to eat you soon as look at you. At the moment everyone is agreeable to both of you leaving on the ferry. Better go while you can."

	"One of the wounded will go with you," he added. His face was expressionless, but his eyes, which studiously avoided meeting Robinson's showed the torture he was undergoing at the thought of never seeing her again It made something catch in Russell's throat. The doctor opened his mouth to speak, but his assistant beat him to it.

	"Doctor Russell is right about someone staying with the injured," she said, as if Winthrop hadn't spoken. "But if he thinks he's going to be the hero, he's mistaken. I'm the logical one to stay. His job on Venus is too important—"

	"Nuts," said Russell, and produced arguments. He grew quite heated. So did Robinson. They were fast approaching the level of rude name-calling when Winthrop shouted them down.

	"Shut up! Both of you," he yelled in exasperation, "you're arguing your lives away. Are you both daft?"

	"No," said Robinson, "We ..." She hesitated, and reddened uncomfortably. It was very hard to put the argument into words. She went on, "I don't want to get corny and talk about ethics, or stuff like that. It would only embarrass us ..." She trailed off into silence.

	Winthrop had some very hard things to say to Robinson. For a while it was really rugged. He wanted her to be safe more than anything else in his life, so he didn't mean the things he said, they were only a means to that end. Robinson knew he didn't mean them, Russell saw, so his insulting language was getting him nowhere at all. Winthrop had got around to the probably high incidence of insanity in her family, when she gravely interrupted him.

	"Don't you like me anymore?" she asked. Her eyes were laughing at him.

	Winthrop opened and shut his mouth several times. Finally he croaked, "Don't change the subject."

	Russell couldn't help smiling, but it was an understanding, pitying smile. Winthrop's reason for wanting her safe, and her reason for wanting to stay put were one and the same. He wished that, somehow, they could both go to Venus, but he knew that that was impossible. As Robinson and the radioman had apparently forgotten his existence, he coughed gently and said, "As one of us will be staying, I suggest we prepare two of the injured for transfer to the ferry. We can decide which of us will accompany them while we're doing that. All right?"

	He wondered if he could overcome Robinson and administer a knock-• out shot, then load her on the ferry while she was unconscious. Still, she was a husky girl, though she didn't look it. Maybe he'd better have Winthrop help him. He'd never get over it if she beat him in a wrestling match.

	As things turned out, he didn't have to pit himself against his assistant. The two cases were loaded aboard the rocket, and the doctors were still arguing like mad in the dining hall, when a man called Quigley sneaked aboard the ship and forced the pilot to blow for Venus base by threatening to detonate a box of flares in the control room. As the man had been handicapped by a multiple fracture of the tibia, this action aroused the secret admiration of everyone on the Station. Some of the men wished, a little wistfully, that they'd thought of it themselves.

	Three days later, in order to save air, the Station Chief ordered everyone to refrain from all unnecessary movement or exertion. In rooms and corridors all over the station, men hung singly or in groups, just waiting. Hunger and thirst had become as much a part of their existence as the act of breathing. They could hardly remember it any other way. They were all pretty far gone.

	In the dining hall nobody had spoken for a long time. It was too much of an effort. Winthrop and McBride were at the viewport. Russell could see their heads outlined against the white glare of the clouds. They were looking out, but he doubted very much if they were really seeing anything. Near them floated Robinson. She was using the point of her scissors to punch another hole in the strap of her watch. It had grown too loose again.

	The doctor kicked feebly against a bulkhead and drifted towards the port. McBride gave an infinitisimal nod and made room for him. He said, "Thanks," and didn't recognise the sound of his own voice.

	Winthrop ran a dry tongue around dryer lips and said hoarsely, "It wasn't our fault, you know. Honest. The A-Drive was switched off. There must have been a short or something ..." His voice tapered off into silence. McBride didn't say anything, it wasn't important anymore. Robinson came over and gripped the radioman's elbow gently. She didn't speak either.

	With his eyes half closed against the glare, Russell stared sadly down at the planet less than a thousand miles below. He was thinking how very near it looked. -

	Something grabbed him by the back of the neck.

	Allerton had broken free again. The doctor didn't want to do anything about it, he was fed up treating people when he needed treatment almost as badly himself, but he twisted around and gently disengaged the Captain's fingers from his neck. The hand, he noticed, was stained brown and reeked of antiseptic. The other gesticulated again, but not as violently as before. Weakly, but insistently, the Captain pointed at the opposite wall of the room. Russell looked. The others did likewise. Somebody gave a surprised grunt.

	After a while Winthrop said, "You know, Doc, he must have been trying to tell us he wanted to write all the time, and we just kept on doping him." He shook his head disgustedly and used some strong language about his own personal deficiency in brainpower.

	On the wall, in thin, straggling letters a foot high, three words were written, apparently with iodine. They said simply, Pencil, Paper, and A-Drive.

	"Why 'A-Drive'," the Station Chief wondered aloud, "What can he know about that when he was here all the time?"

	"We'll soon know," said Winthrop, and pulled a scratch-pad out of his breast pocket. "Anybody got a pencil?"

	Allerton, when given the writing materials, began to scribble rapidly while Robinson held the pad steady. He was left-handed, the doctor suddenly realised. McBride couldn't make head nor tail of it, but Winthrop was used to the Captain's bad handwriting, and deciphered it for him.

	"He was awake most of the time and heard us talking ... Wanted to tell us but the Doc kept putting him to sleep ... Something about the A-Drive spares …" Suddenly his voice rose excitedly, "... Mistake on Luna, had to re-distribute mass to trim the ship. Before you came aboard … Shifted cargo to—" Winthrop broke off, and looked long and steadily at McBride. Finally, he burst out, "You know what this means?"

	McBride nodded vigorously,- his eyes were alight and a wide smile opened cracks in his thick, dried-up lips. He said, "Ask him where he put them."

	After that things became very technical. Robinson and the doctor just hung there while paper rustled and the polysyllables flew back and forwards over their heads. Russell was just about to interrupt to ask what all the excitement was about, when Winthrop turned to him and said sharply, "Just don't stand there, Doc. Start getting the men aboard the Queen."

	Russell gaped at him.

	"That's right, Doctor," said McBride, "We're leaving. Do you think you can brace the injured to stand a constant three G's?"

	"Yes, I think so," said Russell dazedly, "For how many hours will the acceleration last?"

	"Not hours, Doctor," the other corrected, "It will last for days."

	It took about five minutes for the two men to convince Russell that they hadn't gone mad. After that, everybody seemed to forget that they were nearly dead from malnutrition, thirst, and oxygen starvation. They became very active indeed.

	Dr. Gerald Mathewson, eighty-six year old Director of the giant Luna Base, bounced about on the seat of the pressurised car as the treads forced it over the broken ground. He was getting too old for this sort of thing, he knew, but he had wanted to see the Queen of Darkness come in.

	A thing like that happened just once in a lifetime.

	The excitement had been intense, he remembered, when a point of A-Drive radiation was detected near the Sun. Obviously it was a ship making an unscheduled trip from Venus, but that was all they knew, because no ship's radio could function while the Drive was on. Then, when the Drive had been cut for a few minutes at turnover point, the whole story had come.

	The doctor had done the talking while Allerton worked the ship. These two were the only ones still conscious, everybody else had been doped to avoid injury. He had explained about the smash on the station and the impossibility of landing on Venus, the food, water, and air shortage. And he'd gone into details about the way he'd had to fix the injured so's they could take three G's continuously.

	Mathewson grinned to himself and looked at the two big, pressurised ambulances churning up the pumice ahead of his car. They were filled with men who were embedded like fossils in irregular lumps of tar-like plastic. His Medics, on first seeing them, had asked rather caustically whether maybe they shouldn't call Mining Division to blast the men out. But they'd been merely griping by habit, things were under control.

	Just before the A-Drive cut in again and drowned out the signal, the doctor had told of the discovery of the A-Drive replacements, which were thought to have been lost with the rest of the outer cargo, inside the ship. They'd been moved, it seemed, to rectify an error in the mass-distribution of the cargo which had caused the ship's centre of gravity to shift. The alteration hadn't been recorded in the cargo List, and the only crewman fit to talk didn't know anything about it.

	But the thing Mathewson would always remember was that landing. It was theoretically possible, everybody knew, to land on the airless Moon using only A-Drive, but pilots always eased down the last few miles on chemical motors. The Drive lacked delicacy of control for a direct landing. But the Queen of Darkness had come shooting in with three or four G's deceleration all the way, to land with scarcely a bump. It had been quite a trick.

	Dr. Mathewson made a mental note to draw up some new landing regulations. Some of the other pilots would want to try Allerton's trick, and a lot of them wouldn't be able to pull it off.

	Even with two hands.

The End