“I’ll be over in a moment.” Shelton switched off the phone. “Steady now!” he said to the girl.
He slipped off his stained smock and wrestled into his coat. As he stepped to the door, he found her waiting to go along.
“You’d better stay,” he admonished gently.
“I must go,” she insisted nervously. “No matter what it means, if Hugh’s one of them, I must see him.”
Shelton nodded. They stepped out into the hall and wound their way through the busy corridors, arriving at their destination a few minutes later. The hospital ward, in which ailing men from the bio-conditioning process were looked after, was spacious and modern, second to none on Earth.
Director Beatty greeted Shelton, a scowl of worry on his face. A physician with a stethoscope and puzzled eyes was going over the bodies, lying in a row of beds. One of the two men who had come back alive from Iapetus stood on one side, haggard from days of sleepless driving across space. But his eyes lighted up suddenly.
“Rod! Rodney Shelton!” he exclaimed, striding forward eagerly. “Your old roommate at Edison College. Remember me?”
Shelton stared at the gigantic young man blankly for a moment.
“Mark Traft!” he cried, in recognition, a broad grin spreading over his face.
“Pilot Mark Traft,” informed the tall man. “In the Planetary Survey. I went to the training docks, when we graduated. I remember you went back for research. I’d heard you were here at ETBI, but never had the chance to drop in. You’re a sight for sore eyes, Rod.”
They stared at each other for a moment, their minds crowding with renewed memories of college days.
“Good to see you again, Mark,” said Shelton. “But we’ll talk later. Right now—”
He turned to watch Myra Benning. Her eyes had flicked over the seven still figures. She had stood stiffly, then, breathing hard. Now she ran up and grasped the big pilot’s arm, squeezing with frantic fingers.
“My brother—Hugh Benning,” she cried. “Another man came back alive. Was it Hugh?”
Traft’s face instantly became sorrowful.
“No, Miss Benning,” he said softy. “One man was lost on Iapetus—”
He shifted his feet awkwardly, tried to go on, but the words stuck. The girl’s eyes dilated. Her lips trembled. Shelton wished the news had been broken to her less abruptly, but it was too late now.
“Hugh—” she choked. But suddenly she straightened up, shaking herself slightly. “I’m all right,” she said firmly. “Tell me what happened up there on Iapetus—about Hugh.”
As briefly and sympathetically as he could Traft gave the details to Shelton and the girl.
“Seeing we couldn’t revive them ourselves,” he concluded, “we decided to get the men to ETBI as soon as possible. We refueled at Titan, took on two men as engine crew, and ripped for Earth, triple-acceleration all the way.” He waved a hand. “Here we are. Greeley, my co-pilot, went to report to our superiors. I came here with the bodies. I had a hunch all along they weren’t—dead.”
Shelton stepped to the nearest bedside, touched a hand to the forehead of the still man who lay there.
“Cold,” he whispered. “Cold as death.”
The examining physician straightened.
“Medically,” he pronounced, “they are dead. They don’t breathe, their hearts have stopped, and their blood has cooled. Yet there is no rigor mortis.”
To demonstrate, he raised a limp arm of one of the men and let it fall. There was no stiffness apparent.
“Well, what’s your final diagnosis?” demanded Director Beatty impatiently.
“Death, without rigor mortis,” returned the physician stubbornly. “That is, academically.”
The director grunted. “What would you call it, Shelton?”
“Suspended animation,” Shelton replied reluctantly. “The first clear case in medical history. It means arrested life processes, without decomposition. Zero metabolism.” He looked at the bodies as though still unwilling to believe.
“Suspended animation,” muttered Director Beatty, though he had not been surprised. “All right, revive them,” he ordered the physician. “Get the whole staff on the job, if you have to.”
“I don’t think ordinary methods are going to work,” said Shelton grimly. “However, let them try.”
The ordinary methods did fail. They knew, an hour later, that such methods were futile. Even an injection of adrenalin directly into the heart of one of the men had failed to start the slightest flutter of pulse. Director Beatty became the picture of baffled dismay.
“We’ve got to revive those men,” he ground out finally. “The reputation of ETBI is at stake. You’re the best damned biologist on Earth today, Shelton”—he spoke challengingly—“and we’re up against the best damned problem that’s reared out of the spaceways yet. I’m putting you in complete charge. If it takes a day or a year, get these men up and around.”
“I think adaptene is the answer,” Shelton exclaimed, and went on rapidly to explain: “In a sense, these bodies have been thrown into an environment without air, heat, or any of the normal things. They’re ‘adapted’ to those extreme conditions. We can adapt them right back to ours.”
Director Beatty nodded. “Try it,” he said, and left. Other pressing duties claimed his attention. When he had sent the worn-out Traft for a rest Shelton called the hospital staff and gave them orders. The group galvanized into action. In a few minutes the seven limp forms were in combination fever machines and iron lungs. Small doses of the miracle substance, adaptene, were injected. It remained to be seen whether it could bring metabolism up from a zero point as well as simply shift it in degree.
“This must work,” Shelton said hopefully to Myra. “But it’ll probably be a wait of hours.”
He saw her red-rimmed eyes and suggested she take a rest.
“No.” She shook her head, and went on tonelessly: “There’s more work to do. I’ll help you.”
The puzzle of it all cropped to the fore in Shelton’s mind. “Just what caused the suspended animation?” he murmured. “What queer, unknown gas—at least they spoke of gas. Is it in the Iapetus air? I wish I knew, but Traft forgot to bring back a sample, in all the excitement.” His eyes suddenly lit with a thought. “There’s one man who might know—the Space Scientist.”
He whirled and strode toward the Institute’s main opti-phone exchange room, beckoning the girl to follow.
“The Space Scientist,” she reiterated in astonishment. “Do you know him—talk to him?”
“I did once,” Shelton said shortly.
CHAPTER IV
The Space Scientist
In the exchange room, the half-dozing male operators jerked to attention at sight of Shelton.
“Call long-distance radio central,” Shelton ordered rapidly, “and have them send out a full-power call for the Space Scientist, on micro-wave Nine. When an answer comes, give me a private line.”
“Yes, Dr. Shelton.”
The attendant plugged in radio-central, the most powerful Earth radio station,