58: Recover/ Respond

Endurance, the cargo bay-

"Pete…"

No immediate response, so…

"Hey… Pete!"

John Tracy detached himself from his restraint and pushed off across the padded white cargo bay. Pete McCord, the mission commander, hung in midair beside the folded robot arm in a sort of weightless fetal crouch. Like John, he wore a mission tee-shirt, blue shorts and a galaxy of chirping bio-sensors. He didn't look so good, but… yeah; blame it on savage meds and cosmic radiation. Whatever.

He wasn't unconscious, though. When John drifted up, braking with an outthrust hand to the cargo arm, McCord mumbled,

"What's on your mind, Tracy?"

"Beer," the ice-blond pilot replied honestly. But there was more, so he added,

"Remember you… um… asked me to think about this… time distortion thing?"

Pete's eyes opened slightly; pale blue irises against deeply blood-shot whites.

"Yeah. Back in the airlock. What'd you come up with?"

They weren't exactly facing each other squarely. Since every gesture or puff of the cabin fans tended to affect their position, the two men drifted at angles to one another, something you got used to out here that probably would have bugged the hell out of people on Earth.

"Some kind of Lorentz violation, maybe," John responded. Corralling his thoughts was like scattering sunflower seeds on a rainy sidewalk and hoping the right birds came fluttering in. There was nothing much to do but talk, so he fumbled out an explanation, or tried to.

"Okay… suppose you have… assume a spherical observer."

The mission commander cocked a sandy eyebrow.

"Spherical…?" he half croaked, half chuckled, reviving enough to reach for his Velcro-mounted water bottle.

"Sorry. Bad physics humor. Say we have an observer… call him Ian… standing at the shore of a lake."

"How big?" McCord was interested, now, his eyes fully open.

"Beg pardon?"

"The lake. We talking Lake Michigan, here, or a cow pond?"

John considered, coming up at slow length with,

"Well, it's supposed to represent a universal, vectored Higgs-field, so… make it Lake Superior."

Pete uncurled somewhat, after taking a long, iodine-laced drink.

"Affirm. It's a big sonuvabitch. Lake and observer; now what?"

"Now, at mid-lake there's a stick, floating toward our shore observer. It's pushed by normal wave action at a given rate… and our observer's watching it."

"With what? A damn orbital telescope? How slow a month is this guy having?"

John looked away. Smiling at McCord's impatient questions, he said,

"High-powered binoculars… and he's extremely bored. Nothing to do up there but watch. And code."

"Gotcha. Ian's observing a floating stick in the middle of Lake Superior. How's all this relate to our time differential?"

"Well…" John refused an offer of chewing gum. He sort of wanted to eat, but his stomach had been cramping a lot, lately, and there was an oddly metallic taste in his mouth.

"Ian expects the stick to arrive within a certain time-frame, but something comes along and, uh… disturbs the parameters. An underwater methane bubble pops, or something, and this… big rush of surfacing gas creates giant waves in the water. Through it. Whatever."

Pete held a pinched-off square of unwrapped Juicy Fruit, but made no move to actually chew it. Evidently, he too was experiencing digestive technical difficulties.

"So, the stick moves faster than expected? Because something…?"

"Disturbed the field through which it was moving," John nodded. "Right. The stick, or ship, which was traveling point-first toward Ian, gets pushed sideways. It's now…. oriented differently than everything else, I guess… and so not just the bigger spacetime ripples, but the fact that it's broadside to wind and waves causes acceleration."

Pete ran a hand through his hair, creating some acceleration of his own.

"So… things 'll probably straighten out once our hero wades in there, fishes out this speeding stick and gets himself a life… and/or we reach home. That what you're trying to say? Okay… I get the whole gas bubble-and-lake scenario, but what about your field? What knocked Endurance on her ass, relative to everything else?"

Good question. John shrugged; almost, for a minute, thinking about a kamikaze crash dive and last-second transmission.

"Um… I dunno, Pete. Something big, high speed or extremely energetic, I guess, from outside our universe. Point is… our orientation to the Higgs-field has changed. Thanks to this disturbance, we've been given one hell of a temporal boost… from their perspective. Ian gets his stick in a hurry, all right, but an ant riding on the thing actually experiences a choppier, longer ride."

A low thudding noise interrupted the conversation between pilot and mission commander. The main cargo bay access hatch swung open, bumping against the padded interior. Kim Cho shot through an instant later, gripping the handles of a medical case between her teeth. Of course, she could have just leashed and towed the case, but when you stopped and your baggage didn't, major bruises tended to result. John had reason to know.

Seeing the doctor, Pete's face changed. He looked suddenly grim, but then, he was older and had been receiving the lion's share of her medications. Still managed to be a smart-ass, though. Giving Cho a nod, he said grandly,

"Doctor… how can we help you?"

The exobiologist returned a weary smile, not easy to do around that mouthful of nylon strapping. Soaring across the cargo bay, Cho hurried up to the dying men's side.

She wore a stark-white medical clean suit, including the hood, but had left aside her facemask. Some human contact was vital, even for terribly irradiated patients, and Kim Cho was willing to take her chances.

Halting her flight at the cargo arm, the Korean doctor switched her medical case from mouth to hand, then snapped open its plastic lid.

"Good morning, Gentlemen. I have given a renewed look to the data transmitted by Dr. Hackenbacker, and I have correspondingly manufactured a drug to his specifications that will… it is hoped… enable rapid regeneration of damaged tissues."

She worked as she spoke, taking up a thumb-sized capsule of murky fluid and loading it into an altered vaccination gun. John watched the biologist assemble her equipment, trying to decide whether this brainstorm of Ike's was going to do any more good than the last one.

"How's it work?" Pete asked.

For an instant, Cho paused; hands hanging still amid the capsules, batteries and drug phials that hovered in place around them. Taking a deep breath, she reached for a power cell, and then glanced up.

"That is not entirely certain. There is some risk of cancer, for tissue growth will proceed unchecked from newly created stem cells, to be halted when your organs have been repaired." Next she added, looking from Pete to John and back again,

"If you prefer not to attempt this treatment, we will go on as before, with conventional therapies, alone."

Her glum tone of voice pretty well said it all. Pete looked over at the silvery, half-assembled vaccinator.

"Honest assessment, Doctor… what're our chances of surviving long enough to reach Earth without this stuff?"

Cho tried to reply aloud, but could not, merely shaking her head and gazing down at her small hands. Her dark eyes were reddened, and it suddenly occurred to John that she'd been crying.

He and Pete exchanged glances. Then the mission commander held out his arm.

"Understood," he said, "and risk accepted. Let's do 'er."

McCord went first, the process requiring many super-sonically fired injections all over his marred and shaking body. By the end, with enzyme P-38 entirely subdued, he looked worse than ever, but had (hopefully) begun to repair himself.

Dr. Kim next came to John Tracy, subconsciously assessing his symptoms as she floated over. Younger than the commander and in better health to begin with, he was slightly less ravaged. But cosmic radiation had left its burning mark here, as well. He seemed as pale as the cargo bay interior, and could keep nothing down, requiring a strapped-on, pump action IV bag for fluids and nourishment.

"If this works," he asked her, as Cho began loading a freshly-tailored drug capsule, "we'll be good to go? Radiation, tissue damage… all taken care of?"

Dr. Kim's lips pursed. She flushed pink, which mystified John until she began explaining matters.

"That is indeed affirmed… all will be corrected, John, provided that cancer does not strike, or… that is… in light of your marriage to Linda… I must caution you against further intercourse, until… until the damaged generative cells have been, er… purged from your body."

He'd never known that an oriental female could blush so deeply.

"No sex. Got it." Figures…

She literally struggled over the next part, whispering in a hot-faced rush,

"It is not enough simply to abstain, John. You must…"

"Purge. Yeah… Understood, Doctor. I'll, um… keep my hands to myself. So to speak."

Bad choice of words, maybe. To spare her anguished blushes, John held out his left arm, saying,

"Let's get started, then. With the shots, I mean."

If he'd offended her, Dr. Kim certainly got even. The nearly continual hiss and pop of the vaccination gun, the sharp burning sensation of impressed drugs pretty much destroyed the next miserable hour. She must have finished with him, though (or just run out of ammo) because a long peaceful stretch went by. Okay, he still felt like shit, but at least no one was pistol-whipping him with a damn air-powered drug gun. Then something went off; an alarm, from his velcroed personals bag. The wrist comm?

Needing distraction, John talked himself through detaching his restraint straps and then dragged himself hand-over-hand to the black mesh bag. Looked around, but Pete was asleep and Dr. Kim off stirring her cauldron, or something.

With one hand locked to a bulkhead strap, John got the bag open and pulled out his beeping, vibrating communicator. Of all the damn… Penelope.

He kept to audio, and hit the respond key.

"Yeah… John Tracy. Go ahead, Penny."

Took maybe forty-five minutes for her recordedmessage to unzip, but he got a chance to nap while waiting. Not a bad time-passer, though what came next baffled him completely.

"John, darling," her voice, all cultured softness over sharpened ice, woke him again. "I find myself in possession of information vital to the well-being of yourself, certainly… and that of others, as well."

She paused briefly, as though thinking.

"Naturally, you'll be most anxious to receive this intelligence, but it cannot be safely transmitted over the comm. I should feel secure only in delivering this information to you, John, at a place and time of your choosing."

Another, longer pause, during which he could make out what sounded like airplane engines and radio chatter.

"It may be, Darling, that I've seemed a trifle… distracted… of late, but I hasten to assure you that nothing between us has changed. I look forward with warmest anticipation to your return, and to our partnering with one another to nullify this threat."

(A small, nervous laugh followed this statement.)

"Actually, to partnering in general, as it were. At any rate, please reply, as I am… not to put too fine a point on it, Dear… facing immediate difficulty. I… our relationship has always been something that I've deeply cherished, John, and I would far rather resolve the present contretemps with you, rather than… rather than against you. Do come home, swiftly so, and meet with me. I remain, hopefully, you own loving Penelope. Farewell, Dear, until I've the opportunity to prove all that I've said."

Well… shit. Overhead, Pete McCord coughed, mumbling something in his sleep to a long-gone lady friend. John put the wrist comm away.

What the hell was he supposed to do now, over 40 million miles away from helping anybody?