Blood and Fire (24 page)

“Sixty volunteers? That's two-thirds of the crew.”

“Yes, Captain. They're setting up now in the mess room. They raided cargo for the extra supplies; they can do ten at a time. It's going to be close, but the more blood we get now, the less we'll need later, when time gets critical.”

“Right.” Parsons turned forward and shifted her tone. “
Now hear this.
” The captain's voice was immediately amplified throughout the starship. Everybody heard it—and stopped what they were doing. The Black Hole Gang. The Farm Team. Cookie and the mess attendants. Maintenance. Security. “This is the captain speaking. We need blood donors to help save the lives on the Norway. We need sixty volunteers—” She paused to correct herself. She would be the first. “Excuse me, fifty-nine. Dr. Williger assures me that it doesn't hurt—but it sure as hell will help. Volunteers report to the mess room on the double.
That is all
.” She glanced to Tor. “Commander Brik, you have the conn. Commander Tor, did I just hear you volunteer?” And with that, the captain headed aftward, her astrogator following in her wake.

By the time they arrived, there was already a lineup in the corridor—men and women waiting to donate blood. Including Reynolds. The captain took her place in line behind him and noted his presence with a nod. “Good to see you here, crewman.”

Reynolds nodded back. “You'll have your sixty pints of blood. The union guarantees it.”

“I never doubted it,” the captain replied.

The call for blood donors worried Korie. He'd had some experience with primitive medical procedures; he knew how risky they were. He had HARLIE show him the view of the mess room, where ensigns Duane and Morwood had arranged an emergency blood bank. The patients were stretching out on the table-tops, with rolled-up towels as pillows.

The procedure had been worked out by HARLIE. Duane went from table to table, setting up the IV lines and blood bags and directing donors to lie down. Morwood followed behind her, applying nanite-leeches to the bare arms of the donors. The leeches were connected to the IV lines and the blood ran smoothly down transparent tubes into plastic bags clipped to the side of the table. It took only a few moments for each bag to fill. By the time Duane had finished setting up the last table, the patient on the first table was finished. Now she followed the same path, disconnecting each patient and handing the full bag to Morwood, who checked the bag's control-display for blood type and Rh factor before hanging it on a rack. When the rack was full, the Martian—small, ugly, efficient—wheeled it quickly out to the forward airlock.

The donors were dismissed to the other side of the mess room where Cookie had laid out thick sandwiches and vitamin-augmented fruit drinks. Duane laid out fresh IV lines, pointed a donor to the table and moved on to the next position. Morwood started the donor and followed, one step behind. They were producing a fresh pint of blood every four minutes. It was fast—but wasn't quite as fast as the artificial blood was being used up at the Forward Airlock Reception Bay.

It didn't look to Korie as if they would produce enough blood before the treatment for the last person on the
Norway
could be started. It would be close. “All right,” he decided. “I'll go last. I'll take the risk.”

“Mr. Korie?” Brik's voice in his helmet.

“Yes, Brik?”

“Have you been looking over the information that HARLIE is decoding?”

“Um, yes—” Korie lied. He didn't want to admit he'd been monitoring the speed with which the blood was being collected. Brik would understand why immediately. In that, Korie realized, he was becoming
something like a Morthan—only admitting what he was willing to have others know. He touched the controls on his display, going back to the decrypted data clusters. “What is it you wanted me to see?”

The display in front of Korie cleared, then lit up again to show the same pictures that Brik was looking at. It showed a glass beaker with a single red bloodworm in it. In the beaker, the creature looked harmless enough.

“This is from Blintze's medical log,” said Brik.

The image showed a technician putting the beaker inside a high-intensity medical scanner. She turned on a suppressive resonance field, then set the scanner at its lowest setting and activated it. The readings from the scanner scrolled up the side of the image.

“Brik? This can't be right. I'm no doctor, but no creature can live like this—the act of eating uses up more energy than it produces. The bloodworm runs up a ferocious energy debt that never gets paid.”

“As impossible as that seems, it appears to be an accurate assessment. The creature eats, but it doesn't make use of what it eats, except to fuel its own appetite. So the more it eats, the more it wants.”

“Well ...” Korie wished he could scratch his head through the helmet. “That explains a lot. Very effective as a weapon—but not as a lifestyle. I wonder what would happen if it could metabolize what it eats?”

Abruptly, in the display, the creature in the scanning box exploded in a cloud of wavicles.

Brik's voice. “I found this in Blintze's notes ...” A pause and then Blintze's voice: “The natural form of the plasmacyte is the wavicle spore. The wavicle is essentially harmless. The bloodworm is an aberrant form—a deliberate mutation. You can't kill a bloodworm, you can only shatter it, producing more wavicles. Shooting them produces the same result. Even scanning is dangerous. The plasmacytes are
not
a disease—they
have
a disease—a disease that makes them profoundly dangerous to all other life forms. A cure would involve reversing the mutation.”

“That's a very interesting piece of information,” said Korie.

“There's more. HARLIE's still decoding. He may have found it. But it's beyond my area of expertise. At the moment, I am increasingly concerned about ... the intention of this research.”

“I hear you, Brik.” Korie felt a knot forming in his stomach. Something he hadn't wanted to acknowledge for a while. “And ... I share your concerns. Will you discuss this with Captain Parsons? ASAP. In private.”

“I was already planning on it. But I wanted to confer with you first.”

“I appreciate that.”

On the Bridge of the
Star Wolf
, Brik signed off just as Captain Parsons and Commander Tor reentered from “Broadway.” Brik stood up. That was enough to get the captain's attention. She gave him a questioning look. He inclined his head toward the Officer's Mess. She nodded, but held up a finger in a
wait-one-moment
gesture. “HARLIE, status?” she asked.

HARLIE responded: “All of the Norway survivors are aboard and in recovery. Bach is now being transfused. Shibano is about to be transferred. Easton and Berryman are next. Commander Korie will be the last one out.”

Parsons nodded.

“And the repulsor field on the
Norway
is failing rapidly.”

Parsons looked to Brik, then to Tor. All of their expressions were grim. “Commander Tor, take the conn,” she said. She exited back the way she had entered, Brik following.

On the
Norway
, in the Cargo Bay, Korie, Berryman and Easton watched as the gurney carrying Shibano rolled toward the airlock. As the hatch popped shut behind it, they became aware of the not-quite-silence in the chamber. The
Norway
repulsor fields sounded more unstable every moment, their notes fluctuating uncertainly. There was one empty gurney, waiting for the next patient. “All right,” said Berryman. “Starsuits off. Come on, come on,” he urged. “We're running out of time.” He turned to Easton and started unsealing his partner's helmet. “You too, sir,” he said to Korie. “Danny, help me out of my suit. I won't be able to do it myself when it's my turn—”

And that's when the argument began.

As the three men helped each other out of their starsuits, the tone of their voices became increasingly tense. By the time they were down to their undersuits, the temperature of the discussion was more than heated, more than volatile. It had become a plasma.

“Paul,” Easton said, “They need you on the
Wolf
. I'll go last.”

“Danny,” Berryman pointed to the gurney. “Lie down!”

“Paul, I know how to do this, I've watched you enough times. The whole process is automated—”

“Danny—
will you just please let me do my job?
”

“Will you let me do mine?
I'm
security. I'm supposed to take the risk.”

“I hate it when you get like this.”

An empty gurney came rolling out of the airlock. Now there were two.

“
Norway,
” Williger's voice. “Start the next one.”

“Can you take two at once?” Berryman asked.

A pause. Then, “Yes, we can take two at once.”

Easton turned to Korie. “Would you order him, sir?”

“Actually,” said Korie. “I'm going last.”

“With all due respect, sir—” Berryman looked both frustrated and angry—“I'm the only one here who knows how to monitor the process. If anything goes wrong, I'm the only one who knows what to do. You and Easton
have
to go next.”

Easton shook his head. “They'll monitor me from the Bridge. I'm security. It's my responsibility to go last.”

“I'm the ranking officer,” said Korie. “It's
my
responsibility—”

“Oh, the hell with this—” said Berryman. He turned to Easton and pushed the pressure injector up against his arm—a soft hiss—and then, without waiting, he whirled to Korie and did the same thing. Another soft hiss. Easton looked to his partner with a betrayed expression.

“There!” said Berryman. “The argument's over. Lie down.” To Korie. “You too, sir.”

Berryman turned back to Easton. “
Lie down, Danny
. You're going to start feeling weak any second now, and I don't want you falling and hurting yourself.” He grabbed Easton by the arm and forced him down onto the gurney.

Easton protested all the way. “That was not fair. You haven't heard the end of this, Paul!”

“Fine. You can bawl me out back on the
Wolf
.” He glanced over at Korie. “
You too, sir
!”

Korie, startled at Berryman's tone of voice, started to say something in response, then, feeling the first wave of dizziness flooding up, he thought better of it. He found his way to the second gurney and sank down onto it.

From the gurney, Easton was still protesting. “I mean it, Paul!”

“Shut up and let me win one for a change.” Berryman was already applying clamps and injector hoses. “It's going to be close enough as it is.” As if to underscore his concern, the sound of the repulsor field dipped abruptly. “Okay, that's the last one—there—the board is green.” Berryman ducked below to check the state of something on the gurney's undercarriage, then came back up again. “All right, sweetheart—” He touched Easton's cheek tenderly, then impulsively, bent over and kissed him quickly on the lips. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Easton whispered back.

Berryman switched on the suppressive resonance field. “Let me start Korie, I'll be right back.”

As Berryman applied the pressure clamps, Korie looked up at him. “You're very decisive. I like that in an officer.”

“Thank you. But I'm not an officer yet.”

“You're an ensign. Technically, you're an officer.” Korie was starting to feel a little detached from his body, but he was still conscious.

“Thank you, sir.” Still working, Berryman added, “All I ever wanted was to serve in the Fleet. My grandfather served on the ‘Big E' in her glory days.”