Takeoff! (27 page)

Well, that was easily solved. With the box still held upside down, he shoved down hard, and then stopped the box. The powder, with its inertia undiminished, went on out, moving toward the hull. It hit—and splashed!

Like a liquid, the powder sprayed out in all directions, enveloping Drake in a white cloud.

He tried to back away from it, but instead of backing, he jumped. His boots came loose from the hull. He was drifting, weightless, in a cloud that was as impenetrable as heavy fog. His helmet light illuminated the particles a few feet in front of his face, but beyond that, there was nothing.

For a moment, nausea threatened to further complicate matters, but he forced it down. “Mac,” he said steadily into his phone, “I think I’ll need a little help.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

Drake told him.

“Have you still got the box?” MacDonald asked.

“Yes.”

“O.K.” There was a feeling of stifled laughter in MacDonald’s tone. “I’ll go back to the lock and pull you in on the nylon rope.”

A minute or so later, Drake felt a slight tug on his rope. And that was all. Just the first slight tug, then nothing. Had his rope broken?

“Mac!” he yelled frantically. “I think my rope broke! I’m lost!”

“Take it easy, Doc; take it easy. You’re O.K. I just gave enough pull on the rope to get you started in this direction. You’ll drift on in. I’m taking up slack now.”

Drake didn’t feel as though he were moving. “Taking up slack? Are you sure? Why don’t you keep pulling?” His voice sounded strained, and it boomed loudly inside the helmet.

“If I kept pulling, I’d accelerate you. I don’t want to brain you or something. Ahhh! Here you come!”

The white cloud was thinning, now, soon Drake could see that he was, indeed, drifting toward the air lock.

He moved in near MacDonald. The engineer reached out, grabbed his legs and pushed them down toward the hull. The boot magnets grabbed hold.

“Let’s get inside,” MacDonald said. “This suit is beginning to itch.”

“Itch? Hell, this is the first time I’ve been comfortable in five weeks!”

“Yeah? W ell, I itch. Say—how come you walked out into the middle of that to dump the box? That won’t settle for days.”

“It looked higher out in the middle—I thought that’s what you had been doing.”

“Naw! I walk up to the edge and give the box a shove. The stuff slides along the hull plates and piles up in just about the middle. Didn’t you see the drift marks?”

Drake nodded. “Sure, but I thought it was just the wind—” He stopped and felt his face going a bright red.

How stupid can you get? Wind? In space?

But MacDonald only said: “Boy, will I be glad to get this suit off and scratch.”

The next day, MacDonald was sick. His eyes were swelled almost shut, and his skin was covered with red, blotchy patches that itched like fire.

While Dumbrowski and Devris labored over the feeding and the cleaning, Drake labored over MacDonald. The man was feverish and miserable. The high temperature and the humidity hadn’t helped any.

Dumbrowski, worried, got the ducks fed in short order and hurried up to MacDonald’s cabin as fast as a one-point-five gee would let him.

Drake had pumped several shots into the engineer’s blood system, and sprayed his skin with a soothing semi-anaesthetic lotion. The swelling was beginning to go down a little.

Dumbrowski stood at the door, waiting for him to finish; when he was, the captain motioned with his hand.

“What’s the matter with him? Is it contagious?”

Drake shook his head. “No. Simple allergy reaction, that’s all. He’ll be all right.”

“Something he ate?”

“No—he’s allergic to duck feathers.”

Dumbrowski leaned against the wall, and said nothing for a long moment. “I think I could cry,” he said after a bit. “I honestly think I could cry. Can’t cure him, I suppose?”

“Not with what I have on board. All I can do is keep the reaction down. He’ll have to stay away from the ducks from now on.”

Dumbrowski looked at Drake. “You know,” he said philosophically, “when this trip is over, I think I shall apply for a vacation in the Martian uranium mines. I understand it’s very pleasant.”

Drake listened to the scrape, scrape, scrape of the shovel as , Dumbrowski pushed it over the deck. It was a good thing the decks were covered with plastic; it would have been impossible to keep bare steel clean by scraping alone.

The doctor had put a small amount of the sterilized grit into a test tube and added hydrochloric acid. He held it up to look at it. Behind him, he could hear Dumbrowski’s heavy breathing.

“No bubbles,” Drake said. “No lime.”

“What?” the captain asked wheezily.

Drake turned around. “There’s no lime left in the grit. It’s supplied in the form of crushed oyster shell; the birds need it for bone formation now and egg formation later. It dissolves slowly, so most of the oyster shell is excreted intact. But this grit has been reprocessed so many times that there’s no lime left.”

Devris pushed open the door and trundled in a can of feed on the improvised wheelbarrow. He listened for a moment to the gasping breath of the captain and watched the worried look on Drake’s face. “How much of this can the human system stand?” he asked, of no one in particular. “Mac has eczema, the skipper is coming down with asthma, Drake has ducks, and I have the galloping heebie-jeebies.”

Dumbrowski ignored him. “What about this lime, Doc? Can they do without it?”

“Not at this stage of the game; it’d kill them to go without it for very long.”

“I will gladly sacrifice my useless bones to be ground up for duck food,” Devris volunteered. “Or, if that seems drastic, we can all pull each other’s teeth.”

“Very funny,” said Drake sarcastically.

“It isn’t so funny, at that,” Dumbrowski told him. “We haven’t got any lime on board. Why didn’t you think of this before?”

“It’s never come up before,” Drake said, irritated. “We know how much oyster shell to give them, but the amount that’s actually absorbed has never been computed because there’s no necessity for it, usually.”

“Well, you still should have mentioned it before now”‘ Dumbrowski’s voice was tight.

“Hey! Hey!” Devris interrupted. “Don’t go flying off the handle, you two! That fire hose, you know, still works.” He set the can of feed gently on the floor, shooing ducks out of the way.

“You know the trouble with you two guys?” he continued. “You, Doc, know everything about ducks and nothing about spaceships. And the skipper knows everything about spaceships and nothing about ducks. And neither of you knows which bit of information is vitally necessary for the other. And you both think the other is playing it dirty by withholding information.”

“You’re right,” said Dumbrowski, cooling perceptibly. “I’m sorry, Doc; now, let’s think about this.

“Lime, you say. I’m not much of a chemist; isn’t that calcium oxide?”

“Not in this case. ‘Lime’ can be calcium oxide, or calcium hydroxide, or calcium phosphate, or calcium carbonate, depending on who’s doing the talking. In this case, it’s the carbonate.”

“You couldn’t use calcium chloride, I suppose. We’ve got plenty of that in the emergency air purifiers.”

“I’m afraid not. It’d have to be the carbonate.”

“Hey!” Devris said suddenly. “I’m no chemist, either, but couldn’t we add carbon dioxide to it or something?”

“Not unless we had plenty of sodium hydroxide or the like—”

“We do!” said Dumbrowski. “We’ve got that in the air purifiers, too! It takes the CO
²
out!”

“Then we’ve got it!” Drake was excited. “We run enough carbon dioxide through it to make sodium carbonate; then we mix the calcium chloride with it! The calcium carbonate formed will drop to the bottom because it’s insoluble, leaving sodium chloride in solution! It’s perfect!”

Then his face fell. “But we can’t tamper with the air purifiers, can we?”

Devris and Dumbrowski both grinned. The navigator said: “That proves my point—you don’t know enough about spaceships.”

Dumbrowski said: “These are the emergency purifiers. As long as the electronic purifiers work, we don’t use the chemicals—too inefficient. We only have ‘em aboard in case the electronics go out—and they’re in good condition. Besides, we shouldn’t have to use all the chemicals. About how much would you need?”

“I’ll have to figure it out from the lime removed from the grit, but it shouldn’t be too much.”

“Good! We’re all set, then.”

More weeks passed. The brooders were taken outside to make more room as the birds increased in size and need for living space. By the end of the sixteenth week, the Constanza was full of ducks. From engine room to control dome, there were nothing but ducks-ducks that waddled and quacked and flapped their way freely through the huge ship. All the doors were left open now, except those which sealed off the engines and the control rooms and the sleeping compartments. Everywhere else, there were ducks. Thousands of ducks.

It had been hard work, but the pressure was beginning to let up a little as the hour of their rescue approached. N one of the men had had too much sleep, and all had lost weight. Even Dumbrowski was beginning to look hollow-cheeked.

To Drake, everything was fine; his ducks were in fine fettle, all of them. The tanks that had been built and flooded for swimming purposes were being used as the older ducks taught the young ones to swim. Everything was fine except for one thing—he still didn’t understand the odd aloofness that concealed Dumbrowski’s anger. Why should the captain be sore at Drake before the accident happened? The remark about “Drake and his harem of ducks” still rankled.

He didn’t understand it until one evening when Devris broke into song. Durnbrowski was not in the little common room when it happened; he was in his own cabin.

Devris was singing: “Old MacDonald had a ship, E,I,E,I,O! And on this ship, he had some ducks, E,I,E,I,O! With a
Quack! Quack!
here and a
Quack! Quack!
there, here a
Quack!
there a
Quack!
everywhere a
Quack! Quack!
Old MacDonald had a ship, E,I,E,I,O-O-O-O!”

When he’d reached the part where he said “here a Quack!” he’d indicated Drake with a thumb. The doctor grinned good-humoredly. MacDonald was laughing uproariously.

Devris had started with the second verse: “Old MacDonald got the itch, E,I,E,I,O!”

“That’s a lie!” bellowed Dumbrowski’s voice from the door. They all stopped and looked at him. It was quite obvious that he had been hitting the Irish bottle.

“No it isn’t, skipper,” Devris said. “He does have the itch.”

“I mean about the ship! This is my ship! It ain’t Old MacDonald’s ship, or Drake’s ship, or the ducks’ ship! It’s my ship, and I’m captain here!” He swung around to Drake. “You understand that, Quack?”

Drake didn’t mind Devris calling him that, but when Dumbrowski did, it made him see red. He stood up. “What makes you think I care who runs this dirty tub?”

“Dirty tub! Who made it dirty? You! You and your
carte blanche
orders from the Commission!”

MacDonald and Devris were both on their feet, moving to block off the captain.

But Drake said: “Wait a minute! What’s all this about? What
carte blanche?
I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Dumbrowski said something foul. Then he added: “And I don’t care what the Commission does, either! I’m captain here! See!” He turned back into his cabin and came out again with two sheets of flimsy. “Here!” He threw them at Drake. Then he slammed the door, leaving the three men alone.

Drake picked up the papers and read them.

“What does it say, Doc?” MacDonald asked.

Drake looked up slowly. “He must have got this before takeoff. It says that Dr. Rouen Drake is entirely responsible for the cargo, and that any orders pertaining to the cargo should be obeyed.”

Devris whistled softly. “Wow!”

“No wonder he’s been sore!” MacDonald said.

Drake swore, borrowing some of Dumbrowski’s vocabulary. “How stupid can they get! I swear to you, I didn’t ask for any such thing. I thought I was just bucking the skipper’s bullheadedness. I wonder why he didn’t say something about this before?”

“He probably assumed you knew,” Devris said. “He should have said something about it though.”

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Drake said softly. “I’ve learned a lot in the past eight and a half months.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was so stupid then that I might have tried to give orders.” Drake’s voice was very low.

The captain of the cargo ship
Stramaglia
looked out of his control blister at the mass ahead.

“It most certainly does not look like the
Constanza
,” he said, “I wonder what those things are sticking out allover it? And why is it painted white?”

“Mayas well find out,” said his engineer. He held his helmet globe under his arm. “Jones and I will go over and take a look.”

Captain Dumbrowski and his crew were waiting for the men from the
Stramaglia
as soon as they came in from the air lock, their spacesuits coated with white powder.

Martin, the engineer, and Jones, the navigator of the rescue ship, were confronted by three tired-looking, almost emaciated men. The newcomers found one-point-five gees difficult to bear, but the men from the
Constanza
seemed to be used to it.

“Don’t take your helmets off just yet,” Dumbrowski said. “The air pressure in here is pretty high. Let it leak in”.

“O.K.,” said Martin. “By the way, what is that white stuff we got all over us. ?” At the same moment he cracked his helmet just a little, and a hissing jet of the ship’s atmosphere hit him in the face. He flinched. “And what’s that smell?”

“Duck excrement,” said Dumbrowski, answering two questions with two syllables.

“These two men are Lieutenant Devris, my navigator, and Dr. Drake, in charge of ducks. My engineer, MacDonald, is confined to quarters for being allergic to ducks.”

“Uh...I...uh, yeah. Sure. Are you ready to start work on the control systems?”