Hidden Variables (17 page)

Wenig and I watched on our screens for a long, long moment, until the computer on
Merganser
counted off the last microsecond and switched on the drive again. If the life-capsule was free to move along its column, the computer would now begin the slow climb out of HC-183's gravity well. No action was needed from the passengers. When we completed our own orbit we hoped we would see the other ship out at a safe distance, ready for the long trip home.

And on board the ship? I wasn't sure. If the encounter had lasted too long, we might find no more than two limp and broken sacks of blood, tissue and bone.

* * *

It was another long day, waiting until we had been carried around in our orbit and could try to rendezvous the two ships. As soon as we were within radar range, Nina Velez appeared on the com screen. The drive was cut back, so we could get good visual signals. My heart sank when I saw the expression on her face.

"Can you get over to this ship—quickly?" she said.

I could see why all the professors at the Institute had lost their senses. She was small and slight, with a childlike look of trust and sad blue eyes. All a sham, according to everything I'd been told, but there was no way of seeing the strong personality behind the soft looks. I took a deep breath.

"What's happening there?" I said.

"We're back under low gee drive, and that's fine. But I haven't been able to wake him. He's breathing, but there's blood on his lips. He needs a doctor."

"I'm the nearest thing to that in thirty billion miles." I was pulling a suit towards me, sick with a sudden fear. "I've had some medical training as part of the Master's License. And I think I know what's wrong with McAndrew. He lost part of a lung lobe a couple of years ago. If anything's likely to be hemorrhaging, that's it. Dr. Wenig, can you arrange a rendezvous with the mass plates at maximum separation and the drives off?"

"I'll need control of their computer." He was pulling his suit on, too. I didn't want him along, but I might need somebody to return to the
Dotterel
for medical supplies.

"What should I be doing?" Thank heaven Nina showed no signs of panic. She sounded impatient, with the touch of President Velez in her voice. "I've sat around in this ship for weeks with nothing to do. Now we need action but I daren't take it."

"What field are you in now? What net field?"

"One gee. The drive's off now, and we've got the life-capsule right out at the end of the column."

"Right. I want to you stay in that position, but set the drive at one gee acceleration. I want McAndrew in a zero-gee environment to slow the bleeding. Dr. Wenig, can you dictate instructions for that while we are rendezvousing?"

"No problem." He was an irritating devil, but I'd choose him in a crisis. He was doing three things at once, putting on his suit, watching the computer action for the rendezvous, and giving exact and concise instructions to Nina.

Getting ourselves from one ship to the other through open space wasn't as easy as it might sound. We had both ships under one gee acceleration drives, complicated by the combined attraction of the two mass plates. The total field acting on us was small, but we had to be careful not to forget it. If we lost contact with the ships, the nearest landing point was back on Triton Station, thirty billion miles away.

Nina in the flesh was even more impressive than she was over the video link, but I gave her little more than a cursory once-over. McAndrew's color was bad and even while I was cracking my suit open and hustling out of it I could hear a frightening bubbling sound in his breathing. Thank God I had learned how to work in zero gee—required part of any space medicine course. I leaned over him, vaguely aware of the two others intently watching. The robodoc beside me was clucking and flashing busily, muttering a faint complaint at McAndrew's condition and the zero-gee working environment. Standard diagnosis conditions called for at least a partial gravity field.

I took the preliminary diagnosis and prepared to act on it while the doc was still making up its mind. Five cc's of cerebral stimulant, five cc's of metabolic depressant, and a reduction in cabin pressure. It should bring Mac up to consciousness if his brain was still in working order. I worried about a cerebral hemorrhage, the quiet and deadly by-product of super-high gees. Ten minutes and I would know one way or the other.

I turned to Wenig and Nina who were still watching the robodoc's silent body trace. "I don't know how he is yet. We may need emergency treatment facilities ready for us as soon as we get back to the System. Can you go over to
Dotterel
, cut the drive and try to make contact with Triton Station? By the time you have the connection we should have the full diagnosis here."

I watched them leave the ship, saw how carefully Wenig helped Nina to the transfer, and then I heard the first faint noise behind me. It was a sigh, with a little mutter of protest behind it. The most wonderful sound I ever heard in my life. I glanced over at the doc. Concussion—not too bad—and a little more bleeding than I wanted to see from the left lung. Hell, that was nothing. I could patch the lung myself, maybe even start the feedback regeneration for it. I felt a big grin of delight spreading like a heat wave over my face.

"Take it easy, Mac. You're doing all right, just don't try and rush yourself. We've got lots of time." I secured his left arm so that he couldn't disturb the rib cage on that side.

He groaned. "Doing fine, am I?" He suddenly opened his eyes and stared up at me, "Holy water, Jeanie, that's just like a medic. I'm in agony, and you say it's a little discomfort. How's Nina doing?"

"Not a mark on her. She's not like you, Mac, an old bag of bones. You're getting too old for this sort of crap."

"Where is she?"

"Over on
Dotterel
, with Wenig. What's the matter, still infatuated?"

He managed a faint smile. "Ah, none of that now. We were stuck on
Merganser
for more than two weeks, locked up in a three meter living sphere. Show me an infatuation, and I'll show you a cure for it."

The com-link behind me was buzzing. I cut it in, so that we could see Wenig's worried face.

"All right here," I said, before he had time to worry any more. "We'll be able to take our time going back. How are you? Got enough water?"

He nodded. "I took some of your reserve supply to make up for what we threw at you. What should we do now?"

"Head on back. Tell Nina that Mac's all right, and say we'll see you both back at the Institute."

He nodded again, then leaned closer to the screen and spoke with a curious intensity. "We don't want to run the risk of having a stuck life capsule again. I'd better keep us down to less than ten gee acceleration."

He cut off communication, without another word. I turned to McAndrew. "How high an acceleration before you'd run into trouble with these ships?"

He was staring at the blank screen, a confused look on his thin face. "At least forty gee. What the devil's got into Wenig? And what are you laughing at, you silly bitch?"

I came over to him and took his right hand in mine. "To each his own, Mac. I wondered why Wenig was so keen to get here. He wants
his
shot at Nina—out here, where nobody else can compete. What did
you
tell her—some sweet talk about her lovely eyes?"

He closed his eyes again and smiled a secret smile. "Ah, come on Jeanie. Are you telling me you've been on your best behavior since I last saw you? Gi' me a bit of peace. I'm not soft on Nina now."

"I'll see." I went across to the drive and moved us up to forty gee. "Wait until the crew on Titan hear about all this. You'll lose your reputation."

He sighed. "All right, I'll play the game. What's the price of silence?"

"How long would it take a ship like this to get out to Alpha Centauri?"

"You'd not want this one. We'll have the next one up to a hundred gee. Forty-four ship days would get you there, standing start to standing finish."

I nodded, came back to his side and held his hand again. "All right, Mac, that's my price. I want one of the tickets."

He groaned again, just a bit. But I knew from the dose the doc had put into him that it wasn't a headache this time.

AFTERWORD: MOMENT OF INERTIA.

It's not hard to reconstruct McAndrew's reasoning when he developed the specifications for designing the
Dotterel
and the
Merganser.
It must have run as follows:-

Consider a thin flat circular plate of material, uniform in composition. Suppose its mass is M and its radius R, so that the mass density (σ) per unit area is σ = M/πR
²
.

At a point P on the axis of the disc, distance z from its center, the gravitational potential is given by:

where G is the gravitational constant ■

The acceleration at P towards the disc is then:

and the tidal effect (rate of change of acceleration) is:

If we require that the rate of change of acceleration (i.e. the tidal effect) should be one gee per meter when the acceleration is 50 gee, from (2) and (3) we have:

thus