E.C Tubb - Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

The bulkheads quivered to the force of her wordless ululations.

The disc before which she knelt was not an idol but a focus for her thoughts. The incense was a sacrifice blessed by tradition. Her prayers were to inform Lars of her condition, to prepare him for her coming if that was to be. To wake him to intercede on her behalf. Not to be saved, for death was inevitable, and to live beyond the allotted span a sin, but to die bravely. So let there be no pain. Let her face and figure escape further ravishment, not for the sake of pride but for the dignity a man expected in his mate.

Soon now, soon-if God willed, they would be together.

In the engine room the handler and the engineer sat at their board playing endless games of chess, snarling at any who came to close. Firm in a limited area of isolation, they ate food from cans and drank from bottles sealed with heavy gobs of wax. Nurtured stores bought with past gains; small luxuries which normally would have been doled out a little at a time, now used with wanton extravagance for a double reason. Sealed they would be uncontaminated, used they would not be wasted.

Dephine remained in her cabin, taking endless mist-showers, anointing her body with salves Charl provided, adorning herself with the gems they had found.

She turned as Dumarest entered the cabin, tall, sparkling with jewels and precious metal. Her hair, dressed, provided a cradle for the tiara. The earrings fell from her ears to almost touch her shoulders. At throat and wrists reflected light shone with the lurid glow of trapped fires, green and red, amber and azure, the clear blue of sapphires, the splintered glow of diamonds.

Slamming the door he said, "You fool!"

"Why? Because I like what we found?" She turned before him, her dress stained, the jewels making her appear tawdry and, somehow, cheap.

"What if someone else had come into the cabin?"

"They wouldn't. I had it locked."

"You didn't."

"Then I forgot. But who would dare to walk in like you did? No one owns me, Earl. Not even you."

He said, cruelly, "The Lady Dephine de Monterale Keturah. A woman who comes from a family which values pride above all. Isn't that what you told me?"

"So?"

"They should see you now. Not even the cheapest harlot would dress herself like that."

"You bastard!"

He caught her hands as they rose towards his face, halting the nails as they stabbed towards his eyes, his fingers hard around her wrists, tight against the bone. She strained, spat into his face, jerked up a knee in a vicious blow to the groin. He twisted, taking it on the thigh, then pushed her back and away to slam hard against the far wall.

"Do that again and you'll regret it," he said coldly.

"You'd do what-slice off my fingers?" Her sneer turned to trepidation as she looked at his face, saw the cold eyes, the mouth grown suddenly cruel. "You'd do it," she said. "You'd really do it."

He said nothing, wiping the spittle off his cheek.

"Earl!" Afraid now, she was contrite. "I-you shouldn't have said what you did. You had no right."

"Look at yourself, woman!" Catching her shoulder he turned her to face the full-length mirror. "Dressed in gems looted from the dead. Have you no sense?"

"They didn't come from the dead! Earl, you know that! They were in a separate cache. I-" She broke off, a hand lifting to touch the tiara. "You don't think that girl wore this before she died? Some cultures destroy personal possessions with the dead. Earl?"

"No." To frighten her further would serve no purpose and the damage, if damage there was, had been done. "Get rid of those things. Hide them."

Slowly she removed the gems, letting them fall into a glittering heap on the bunk.

"Fren Harmond was talking, Earl. He can't understand why Remille doesn't return to Hoghan. They could have a vaccine there by now. He wanted Charl to join him in a deputation."

"He's wasting his time."

"Maybe, but Remille's only human and what good is a ship to a dead man? He might decide to take a chance on the penalties. If he does we're in trouble, Earl. Kan Lofoten would have spilled his guts about what we did. If they ever got us they would kill us. Atlmar's Legion isn't noted for being gentle." Pausing she added, "They could even follow us. Have you thought of that?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"You don't tell a captain to change course unless you have good reason," said Dumarest. "I've tried and he isn't interested. He needs more than words."

Fren Harmond provided it. He sat in his cabin, his bandaged leg supported before him, his face seamed and graven with lines of pain. A stubborn man, refusing the drugs Dumarest had offered which would have eased his anguish. A fanatic who believed that the body would heal itself if left alone.

"It's killing me!" The leg twitched as he moved it, beads of sweat dewing his forehead. "The pain-Earl, help me!"

Charl Tao stood at the other side of the sick man. Meeting Dumarest's eyes he shrugged.

"My friend, I have done my best, but what use is skill when dealing with a fool? I've offered him the surcease of dreams. I have a salve which will knit bone and abolish scars, add muscle and strengthen tissue if used in the correct manner. I-"

"You're not in a market now, Charl. Be serious." Dumarest touched the flesh above the bandages. It was febrile, the skin scabrous to the touch. "How did you do this?"

"I was out climbing. I slipped and hurt the ankle. Yield to a small pain and it will get worse so I made my way back home. The ship was due and I had to get to the field. A local man applied the bandage."

"A doctor?"

"A tradesman-he had the cloth."

"And it hurt then as it does now?"

"It hurt, but not as badly. Pain is the signal that the flesh is healing itself and to be expected in case of injury. But it is getting worse, more than I can bear."

Which should mean, following the man's own logic, that the injury was almost well. An anomaly which Dumarest didn't mention as he removed the bandages.

Charl Tao sucked in his breath at the sight of the wound.

"Harmond, my friend, you have a problem."

A bad one. The flesh around and above the ankle was puffed and streaked with ugly strands of red, parts of it so purple as to be almost black. A broken place oozed a thick, yellow pus and the wound held a sickly stench. The result of infection, gangrene, poisons, carried into the broken skin from stale clothing. The cause no longer mattered.

"Earl?"

"It's bad. Does this hurt? And this?" Dumarest pressed his fingers along the length of the leg. "Have you a swelling in the groin? Yes?" His fingers touched the spot through the clothing, meeting a hard node of swollen tissue in the crease between the leg and stomach. One of the major lymph glands acting as a defense against the poisons. "That will have to be lanced to ease the pressure. A drain fitted. The ankle needs to be cauterized-you've dead tissue there which must be burned away."

"No!" Harmond shook his head. "Not the use of drugs and fire. Not the touch of iron. The body will heal itself given the chance."

"You asked me to help you."

"Yes, to change the dressing, to ease the pain in some way. Some have that power. By the touch of their hands they can bring peace."

"Earl is one of them," said Charl dryly. "But the peace he gives is permanent. He does it like this." His hands reached for the sick man's throat; thick fingers pressed sharply and lifted as the head lolled. "Quickly, Earl! Give him the drugs before he recovers!"

Dumarest lifted the hypogun and blasted sleep-inducing drugs into the unconscious man's throat. Changing the setting and load of the instrument he fired it around the wounded ankle, heavy doses of antibiotics coupled with compounds to block the nerves and end the transmission of pain.

"Help me get him on his bunk," he ordered. "Strip and wash him and then you can operate."

"Me?"

"You have the skill," said Dumarest. "And the knowledge. The way you put him out-a trick taught to the monks of the Church of Universal Brotherhood. A pressure on sensitive nerves, as good as an anesthetic if applied with skill. You've had medical training, Charl. You deny it?"

The plump man shrugged. "A few years in a medical school, Earl, in which I gained a few elementary facts and some basic knowledge. Then something happened-a woman, but there is no need to go into detail. Just let me say that it became imperative to travel." He looked at his hands. "But I have never operated since that time."

"Then it's time you began. Tell me what you need and I'll see if it's in the ship. If it isn't you'll have to make out the best you can."

"You'll help me?"

"No, I'm going to see the captain."

* * * * *

Crouched like a spider in its lair, Captain Remille sat in his great chair and dreamed. Around him the web of electronic, impulses searched space and hung like a protective curtain about his ship. From an outside viewpoint the shimmering field of the drive would have turned the scarred vessel into a comet-like thing of beauty but inside where he sat only the glow of tell-tales, the brilliant glory of the screens, relieved the gloom.

A buzz and he tensed, a click and he relaxed. The warning had been taken care of. The ship had made a minute correction in its headlong flight and a scrap of interstellar matter, perhaps no larger than a pea, had been safely avoided.

Sinking back, he looked at the screens. Always he enjoyed the spectacle of naked space, the blaze of scattered stars, the sheets and curtains of glowing luminescence, the haloed blotches of dust clouds, the fuzz of distant nebulae. Stars uncountable, worlds without end, distances impossible to contemplate with the limited abilities of the mind.

Remille didn't try it. More than one captain had been driven insane by contemplation of the cosmos, fantasies born in distorted minds, the product of wild radiations and wilder rumors. Things lived in space, or so it was hinted, great beings with gossamer wings which caught the light of suns and carried them like drifting smears of moonlight across the voids. And other creatures which no one living had ever seen. Ravenous beasts which lurked in space as great fish lurked in seas, waiting to rend ships and men.

The proof had been found in wreckage ripped plates bearing unnatural scars, crews which had vanished without apparent cause, empty hulks which had been gutted and robbed of life. If living entities hadn't done such things then what had?

Questions asked by old men in taverns, echoed by romantic fools. Space, to Remille, was something to be crossed. Dangers to avoid. All he had in life was the ship-he could do without imagination. "Captain?"

"What is it?" Remille turned to stare at Dumarest. "Trouble?"

"A man is sick." The truth even though Remille must think it other than what it was. "Fren Harmond."

"The one with the bad leg?"

"Yes."

"A fool, one almost as bad as the old woman with her noise." Remille made an impatient gesture. "Well, you know what to do. Complete isolation."

None to get too near to another, a thing he and the navigator had followed from the first hint that disease could be aboard. Haw Mayna was in his cabin now, probably locked in a drugged sleep, there was little for him to do once the course was set.

"I've attended to it," said Dumarest. "Captain, are you still heading for Malach?"

"That's our destination."

"They could be waiting. Word could have been sent ahead, but you must have thought of that. Do you think they will permit us to land?"