More than anything now, he wanted to get Dad to Kilcoole and Clodagh. Petaybee had messed his dad up and now Petaybee could damn well cure him, like it had Yana!
It was, as Diego had hoped, slack time in the ward. Dad was sitting up in his chair, and dressed, which might have been a battle. Diego had stuffed another parka under his own, a real drag with the heat so high. Even his dad was sweating a bit. Diego got (he wheelchair and, for the benefit of the other men in the ward, started his chatter.
“Dad, you wouldn’t believe the weather out today, so I’m goin’ to take you for a little stroll. See if we can’t chase the cobwebs out of your head. Here now, easy, you just sit tight, huh?”
His father, as usual, didn’t acknowledge his words with so much as a lifting of the eyes.
Diego wheeled him out of the ward, down the hall, and onto the ramp outside the infirmary.
For the first time he became acutely aware of how noisy it was at SpaceBase, of the change in the temperature and the air. Snocles that had once zipped down the snowy paths between buildings were racing their engines to escape being mired in slushy, melting snow. New vehicles, forklifts and track-cats, toiled to move the tons of equipment freshly delivered to the loading docks. One of the smaller track-cats was trying to shift a snocle entrenched in a snow bank.
Suddenly the ground bucked, the boardwalk collapsed at one end, and the wheelchair jerked from Diego’s grasp and rolled down onto the ground.
Diego jumped down and caught it before it turned over and dumped his dad in the slush. People ran past him, ducking for cover, as another jarring crash from somewhere nearby shook the ground. When he looked up, he saw that both the track-cat and the mired snocle, engines still running, had been abandoned by their drivers. The track-cat was just a few yards away, but the wheelchair was stuck in the slush.
“Come on, Dad, you’re going to have to help me,” Diego said, his fingers fumbling to unstrap the wheelchair’s safety belt. He placed his father’s arm around his own shoulders and tried to haul him to his feet, but Francisco was dead weight. Diego looked from the aged, uncomprehending face to the alluring track-cat.
He changed tactics. He slid his father back into the chair and darted for the track-cat. It couldn’t be much different from driving anything else, and he already knew how to drive hovercrafts and had watched Bunny drive her snocle. He released the tow chain and flung himself into the driver’s seat, fumbling for the throttle.
After a little experimentation, he managed to get it into reverse and backed it over to where his father sagged in the chair. Leaving the snocle idling, he hopped down beside his dad, pulling the limp and unresponding arm back across his shoulders and attempting to hoist the older man up once more. This was hopeless! Dad just hung limply and could do nothing. In another minute the driver would return, or someone would pass by and see them, and then this perfect chance would be lost.
“What the hell are you trying to do?” someone said suddenly behind him.
Diego nearly jumped out of his skin, then recognized Steve’s voice just as his father’s partner stepped in front of him.
“I’ve been searching all over for you. I heard the explosions …”
“We’re fine,” Diego said hotly. “And we’d have been even finer if you hadn’t caught us. I’ve got to get Dad out of here and I will somehow.” He raised his chin defiantly and stared Steve straight in the eye.
Steve stared back, looking at Diego as if he were crazy; then all of a sudden he shrugged. “Okay, Diego, it’s your call. But I go, too.” And he picked Diego’s dad up in his arms as if the stricken man were a baby and climbed up on the companion seat in the track-cat.
Diego scrambled into the driver’s seat and, after a try or two, shifted the cat into forward gear and headed toward the village.