And during all these evolutions and until their return to ground the rescuers themselves would remain inertialess. Ordinarily such visitors left the ship, inerted themselves, and came back to it inert, under their own power. But now there was no time for that. They had to get Kinnison to the hospital; and besides, the doctor and the nurse—particularly the nurse—could not be expected to be space-suit navigators. They would all take it in the net, and that was another reason for haste. For while they were gone their intrinsic velocity would remain unchanged, while that of their present surroundings would be changing constantly. The longer they were gone the greater would become the discrepancy. Hence the net.
The net—a leather-and-canvas sack, lined with sponge-rubber-padded coiled steel, anchored to ceiling and to walls and to floor through every shock-absorbing artifice of beryllium-copper springs and of rubber and nylon cable that the mind of man had been able to devise. It takes something to absorb and to dissipate the kinetic energy which may reside within a human body when its intrinsic velocity does not match the intrinsic velocity of its surroundings—that is, if that body is not to be mashed to a pulp. It takes something, also, to enable any human being to face without flinching the prospect of going into that net, especially in ignorance of exactly how much kinetic energy will have to be dissipated. Haynes cogitated, studying the erect, supple young back, then spoke:
“Maybe we’d better cancel the nurse, Lacy, or get her a suit . . . .”
“Time is too important,” the girl herself put in, crisply. “Don’t worry about me, Port Admiral; I’ve been in the net before.”
She turned toward Haynes as she spoke, and for the first time he really saw her face. Why, she was a real beauty—a knockout—a seven-sector callout . . . .
“Here she is!” In the grip of a tractor the speedster flashed to ground in front of the waiting five, and they hurried aboard.
They hurried, but there was no flurry, no confusion. Each knew exactly what to do, and each did it.
Out into space shot the little vessel, jerking savagely downward and sidewise as one of the pilots cut the Bergenholm. Out of the air-lock flew the Port Admiral and the helpless, unconscious Kinnison, inertialess both and now chained together. Off they darted, in a new direction and with tremendous speed as Haynes cut Kinnison’s neutralizer. There was a mighty double flare as the drivers of both space-suits went to work.
As soon as it was safe to do so, out darted an armored figure with a space-line, whose grappling end clinked into a socket of the old man’s armor as the pilot rammed it home. Then, as an angler plays a fish, two husky pilots, feet wide-braced against the steel portal of the air-lock and bodies sweating with effort, heaving when they could and giving line only when they must helped the laboring drivers to overcome the difference in velocity.
Soon the Lensmen, young and old, were inside. Doctor and nurse went instantly to work, with the calmness and precision so characteristic of their highly-skilled crafts. In a trice they had him out of his armor, out of his leather, and into a hammock; perceiving at once that except for a few pads of gauze they could do nothing for their patient until they had him upon an operating table. Meanwhile the pilots, having swung the hammocks, had been observing, computing and conferring.
“She’s got a lot of speed, Admiral—most of it straight down,” Henderson reported. “On her landing jets it’ll take close to two G’s on a full revolution to bring her in. Either one of us can balance her down, but it’ll have to be straight on her tail and it’ll mean over five G’s most of the way. Which do you want?”
“Which is more important, Lacy, time or pressure?” Haynes transferred decision to the surgeon.
“Time.” Lacy decided instantly. “Fight her down!” His patient had been through so much already of force and pressure that a little more would not do additional hurt, and time was most decidedly of the essence. Doctor, nurse, and admiral leaped into hammocks; pilots at their controls tightened safety belts and acceleration straps—five gravities for over half an hour is no light matter—and the fight was on.
Starkly incandescent flares ripped and raved from driving jets and side jets. The speedster spun around viciously, only to be curbed, skilfully if savagely, at the precisely right instant. Without an orbit, without even a corkscrew or other spiral, she was going down—straight down. And not upon her under jets was this descent to be, nor upon her even more powerful braking jets. Master Pilot Henry Henderson, Prime Base’s best, was going to kill the awful inertia of the speedster by “balancing her down on her tail.” Or, to translate from the jargon of space, he was going to hold the tricky, cranky little vessel upright upon the terrific blasts of her main driving projectors, against the Earth’s gravitation and against all other perturbing forces, while her driving force counteracted, overcame, and dissipated the full frightful measure of the kinetic energy of her mass and speed!
And balance her down he did. Haynes was afraid for a minute that that intrepid wight was actually going to land the speedster on her tail. He didn’t—quite—but he had only a scant hundred feet to spare when he nosed her over and eased her to ground on her under-jets.
The crash-wagon and its crew were waiting, and as Kinnison was rushed to the hospital the others hurried to the net room. Doctor Lacy first, of course, then the nurse; and, to Haynes’ approving surprise, she took it like a veteran. Hardly had the surgeon let himself out of the “cocoon” than she was in it; and hardly had the terrific surges and recoils of her own not inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five pounds of mass abated than she herself was out and sprinting across the sward toward the hospital.
Haynes went back to his office and tried to work, but he could not concentrate, and made his way back to the hospital. There he waited, and as Lacy came out of the operating room he buttonholed him.
“How about it, Lacy, will he live?” he demanded.
“Live? Of course he’ll live,” the surgeon replied, gruffly. “Can’t tell you details yet—we won’t know, ourselves, for a couple of hours yet. Do a flit, Haynes. Come back at sixteen forty—not a second before—and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Since there was no help for it the Port Admiral did go away, but he was back promptly on the tick of the designated hour.
“How is he?” he demanded without preamble. “Will he really live, or were you just giving me a shot in the arm?”
“Better than that, much better,” the surgeon assured him. “Definitely so; yes. He’s in much better shape than we dared hope. Must have been a very light crash indeed—nothing seriously the matter with him at all. We won’t even have to amputate, from what we can see now. He should make a one hundred percent recovery, not only without artificial members, but with scarcely a scar. He couldn’t have been in a space crack-up at all, or he wouldn’t have come out with so little injury.”
“Fine, Doc—wonderful! Now the details.”
“Here’s the picture.” The doctor unrolled a full-length X-ray print, showing every anatomical detail of the Lensman’s interior structure. “First, just notice that skeleton. It is really remarkable. Slightly out of true here and there right now, of course, but I believe it’s going to turn out to be the first absolutely perfect male skeleton I have ever seen. That young man will go far, Haynes.”
“Sure he will. Why else do you suppose we put him in Gray? But I didn’t come over here to be told that—show me the damage.”
“Look at the picture—see for yourself. Multiple and compound fractures, you notice, of legs and arm; and a few ribs. Scapula, of course—there. Oh, yes, there’s a skull fracture, too, but it doesn’t amount to much. That’s all—the spine, you see, isn’t injured at all.”
“What d’you mean, ‘that’s all’? How about his wounds? I saw some of them myself, and they were not