THE FIVE HELLS OF ORION-7
653 Words
HERRELL MCCRAY WAS a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the guesses of his “common sense.” When Jodrell Bank, hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position check, common sense was a liar. Light bore false witness. The line of sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after—sometimes not even then—and it took computers, sensing their data through instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into a position.
If the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio’s message implied; but it was not necessary to “believe,” only to act.
McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report of his situation and his guesses. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, since I was unconscious for a time. However, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication—” he swallowed and went on—“I’d estimate I am something more than five hundred light-years away from you at this moment. That’s all I have to say, except for one more word: Help.”
He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to consider what to do next.
He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm.
Very warm, he thought tardily; and more than that. The halogen stench was strong in his nostrils again.
Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps that pained him, uncontrollable. Chlorine or fluorine, one of them was in the air he had been breathing. He could not guess where it had come from; but it was ripping his lungs out.
He flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could, daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. After a long time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears.
He could see the fumes in the room now. The heat was building up.
Automatically—now that he had put it on and so started its servo-circuits operating—the suit was cooling him. This was a deep-space suit, regulation garb when going outside the pressure hull of an FTL ship. It was good up to at least five hundred degrees in thin air, perhaps three or four hundred in dense. In thin air or in space it was the elastic joints and couplings that depolymerized when the heat grew too great; in dense air, with conduction pouring energy in faster than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down.
McCray had no way of knowing just how hot it was going to get. Nor, for that matter, had the suit been designed to operate in a corrosive medium.
All in all it was time for him to do something.
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AMONG THE DEBRIS ON the floor, he remembered, was a five-foot space-ax, tungsten-steel blade and springy aluminum shaft.
McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the man who holds it, and McCray was grateful for this one. With something concrete to do he could postpone questioning. Never mind why he had been brought here; never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could, do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned oven.
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- Writer
