Longevity -- Fiction; Older people -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space flight -- Fiction
Tim jumped up and pulled open the top drawer of the built-in
wall-chest, ripped out a handkerchief and hair brush and had a
tourniquet on Wyckoff's upper arm before the man in the bunk could make
a movement.
Holding the hair brush tight in his right hand, Tim reached across the
bunk and lifted Wyckoff's other hand. There was no blood there. He sat
back on the edge of the bunk.
"You meant to do this, Sam?" Daneshaw's voice was reproachful.
"I guess so ... I don't know."
"I don't think you do know. Because you're not a coward, Sam. You're
not really afraid to do your share for the rest of us on this trip. We
need all of us."
"Oh, I'm not very important."
"We can't spare you," Tim replied positively. "But we can talk about
that in a few minutes. Can I trust you to hang on to this brush?"
"I guess so."
Tim released his grip when he felt Wyckoff's firm hold on the handle.
He darted into the tiny laboratory and opened the medicine cabinet. The
bulb in the interior glowed softly through the few plastic articles on
the shelves. Tim rummaged among the soapaks and found a small glass
bottle of aspirillin tablets. Grasping it by the neck, he struck it
smartly against the monel basin, shattering it into the basin and
onto the floor. He dropped the neck among the tablets in the basin
and went back to the top drawer of the chest where he found another
handkerchief. Back at the bunkside, he sopped up as much blood as he
could with the cloth, then took it back to the lavatory and wrung out
a little on the floor, wadded the handkerchief and tossed it into the
basin.
Approaching Wyckoff, who had sat up in the bunk, he pushed him down
again gently. "You push your button for the steward and get the doctor
right away. Tell him you dropped the aspirillin bottle and got cut by a
piece of flying glass. I'm going to wait in the darkroom next door and
come back for a long talk after the doc is done. Hear me?"
"Yes."
"Because if the doctor doesn't come in five minutes, I'm going for him
and the psychiatrist, too. But I think you'd rather not have this get
out any more than I would."
"No."
"All right, then. Push the button."
Daneshaw waited while Wyckoff pushed the button in the wall above his
right elbow. Then he hurried out of the cabin and into the next door,
the darkroom where the biological photographer would do his work after
the landing on Venus until the building was completed. He left the door
open a crack and waited for the approach of the steward and doctor.
He leaned noiselessly, suddenly weary, against the wall of the
darkroom. Here was the problem of the hospital all over again. Was it
his fault somehow? The trip had been a great victory, seemingly, over
the sagging spirits of his friends, his "army." (He heard the steward
go in and come out.) His head seemed full of whirring thoughts without
meaning. What fear, what despair had got into the man? What was it ...
how did the words go?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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