“Procalamine!” For an instant the shock was all I could feel—the shock, and the overwhelming revulsion at the telepathic touch. There was no hesitation or apology in it now, for the Theradin was fighting for his life. Again the sharp, furious command came: “Give me procalamine!”
And with a start of dismay I realized that most nonhumans needed the drug, which was kept on all spaceships to enable them to live in free—fall.
Few nonhuman races have the stubbornly persistent heart of the Terrans, which beats by muscular contraction alone. The circulation of the Theradin, and similar races, is dependent on gravity to keep the vital fluid pulsing. Procalamine gives their main blood organ just enough artificial muscular spasm to keep the blood moving and working.
Hastily I propelled myself into the “bathroom”—wiggled hastily through the diaphragm, and unscrewed the top of the bin marked FIRST AID. Neatly pigeonholed beneath transparent plastic were sterile bandages, antiseptics clearly marked HUMAN and—separately, for the three main types of nonhuman races, in one deep bin—the small plastic globules of vital stimulants.
I sorted out two purple fluorescent ones—little globes marked procalamine— and looked at the warning, in raised characters on the globule. It read: FOR ADMINISTRATION BY QUALIFIED SPACE PERSONNEL ONLY. A touch of panic made my diaphragm catch. Should I call the Vesta’s captain, or one of the crew?
Then a cold certainty grew in me. If I did, Haalvordhen wouldn’t get the stimulant he needed. I sorted out a fluorescent needle for nonhuman integument, pricked the globule and sucked the dose into the needle. Then, with its tip still enclosed in the plastic globe, I wriggled myself back to where the alien still lay loosely confined by one of the inner straps.
Panic touched me again, with the almost humorous knowledge that I didn’t know where to inject the stimulant, and that a hypodermic injection in space presents problems which only space—trained men are able to cope with. But I reached out notwithstanding and gingerly picked up one of the unmittened “hands.” I didn’t stop to think how I knew that this was the proper site for the injection. I was too overcome with strong physical loathing.
Instinct from man’s remote past on Earth told me to drop the nonhuman flesh and cower, gibbering and howling as my simian antecedents would have done. The raw membrane was feverishly hot and unpleasantly slimy to touch. I fought rising queasiness as I tried to think how to steady him for the injection.
In free—fall there is no steadiness, no direction. The hypodermic needle, of course, worked by suction, but piercing the skin would be the big problem. Also, I was myself succumbing to the dizziness of no—gravity flight, and realized coldly that if I couldn’t make the injection in the next few minutes I wouldn’t be able to accomplish it at all. For a minute I didn’t care, a primitive part of myself reminding me that if the alien died I’d be rid of a detestable cabin mate, and have a decent trip between planets.
Then, stubbornly, I threw off the temptation. I steadied the needle in my hand, trying to conquer the disorientation which convinced me that I was looking both up and down at the Theradin.
My own center of gravity seemed to be located in the pit of my stomach, and I fought the familiar space voyaging instinct to curl up in the foetal position and float. I moved slightly closer to the Theradin. I knew that if I could get close enough, our two masses would establish a common center of gravity, and I would have at least a temporary orientation while I made the injection.
The maneuver was unpleasant, for the alien seemed unconscious, flaccid and still, and mere physical closeness to the creature was repellent. The feel of the thick wettish “hand” pulsing feebly in my own was almost sickeningly ultimate. But at last I managed to maneuver myself dose enough to establish a common center of gravity between us—an axis on which I seemed to hover briefly suspended.
I pulled Haalvordhen’s “hand” into this weight—center in the bare inches of space between us, braced the needle, and resolutely stabbed with it.
The movement disturbed the brief artificial gravity, and Haalvordhen floated and bounced a little weightlessly in his skyhook. The “hand” went sailing back, the needle recoiling harmlessly. I swore out loud, now quite foolishly angry, and my own jerky movement of annoyance flung me partially across the cabin.
Inching slowly back, I tried to grit my teeth, but only succeeded with a snap that jarred my skull. In tense anger, I seized Haalvordhen’s “hand,” which had almost stopped its feverish pulsing, and with a painfully slow effort—any quick or sudden movement would have thrown me, in recoil, across the cabin again—I wedged Haalvordhen’s “hand” under the strap and anchored it there.
It twitched faintly—the Theradin was apparently still sensible to pain—and my stomach rose at that sick pulsing. But I hooked my feet under the skyhook’s frame, and flung my free arm down and across the alien, holding tight to the straps that confined him. Still holding him thus wedged down securely, I jabbed again with the needle. It touched, pricked—and then, in despair, I realized it could not penetrate the Theradin integument without weight and pressure behind it.
I was too absorbed now in what had to be done to care just how I did it. So I wrenched forward with a convulsive movement that threw me, full—length, across the alien’s body. Although I still had no weight, the momentum of the movement drove the hypodermic needle deeply into the flesh of the “hand.”
I pressed the catch, then picked myself up slowly, and looked around to see the crewman who had jeered at me with his head thrust through the lock again, regarding me with the distaste he had displayed toward the Theradin, from the first. To him I was lower than the Theradin, having degraded myself by close contact with a nonhuman.
Under that frigid, contemptuous stare, I was unable to speak. I could only silently withdraw the needle and hold it up. The rigid look of condemnation altered just a little, but not much. He remained silent, looking at me with something halfway between horror and accusation.
It seemed years, centuries, eternities that he clung there, just looking at me, his face an elongated ellipse above the tight collar of his black leathers. Then, without even speaking, he slowly withdrew his head and the lock contracted behind him, leaving me alone with my sickening feeling of contamination and an almost hysterical guilt. I hung the needle up on the air, curled myself into a ball, and, entirely unstrung, started sobbing like a fool.
It must have been a long time before I managed to pull myself together, because before I even looked to see whether Haalvordhen was still alive, I heard the slight buzzing noise which meant it was a meal—period and that food had been sent through the chute to our cabin. I pushed the padding listlessly aside, and withdrew the heat—sealed containers—one set colorless, the other set nonhuman fluorescent.
Tardily conscious of what a fool I’d been making of myself, I hauled my rations over to the skyhook, and tucked them into a special slot, so that they wouldn’t float away. Then, with a glance at the figure stretched out motionless beneath the safety—strap of the other skyhook, I shrugged, pushed myself across the cabin again, and brought the fluorescent containers to Haalvordhen.
He made a weary, courteous noise which I took for acknowledgment. By now heartily sick of the whole business, I set them before him with a bare minimum of politeness and withdrew to my own skyhook, occupying myself with the always—ticklish problem of eating m free—fell.
At last I drew myself up to return the containers to the chute, knowing we wouldn’t leave the cabin during the entire trip. Space, on a starship, is held to a rigid minimum. There is simply no room for untrained outsiders moving around in the cramped ship, perhaps getting dangerously close to critically delicate equipment, and the crew is far too busy to stop and keep an eye on rubbernecking tourists.
In an emergency, passengers can summon a crewman by pressing a call—button. Otherwise, as far as the crew was concerned, we were in another world.
I paused in midair to Haalvordhen’s skyhook. His containers were untouched and I felt moved to say, “Shouldn’t you try to eat something?”
The flat voice had become