I wanted to escape, but it was too late, and I was rooted to the spot. Rheya was breathing convulsively, her dishevelled head drumming against my chest. Before I could put my arms round her to hold her up, Rheya collapsed.
Avoiding the ragged edges of the broken panel, I carried her into the room and laid her on the bed. Her fingertips were grazed and the nails torn. When her hands turned upwards, I saw that the palms were cut to the bone. I examined her face; her glazed eyes showed no sign of recognition.
“Rheya.”
The only answer was an inarticulate groan.
I went over to the medicine chest. The bed creaked; I turned round; Rheya was sitting up, looking at her bleeding hands with astonishment.
“Kris,” she sobbed, “I . . . I . . . what happened to me?”
“You hurt yourself trying to break down the door,” I answered curtly.
My lips were twitching convulsively, and I had to bite the lower one to keep it under control.
Rheya’s glance took in the pieces of door-panel hanging from the steel frame, then she turned her eyes back towards me. She was doing her best to hide her terror, but I could see her chin trembling.
I cut off some squares of gauze, picked up a pot of antiseptic powder and returned to the bedside. The glass jar slipped through my hands and shattered – but I no longer needed it.
I lifted one of Rheya’s hands. The nails, still surrounded by traces of clotted blood, had regrown. There was a pink scar in the hollow of her palm, but even this scar was healing, disappearing in front of my eyes.
I sat beside her and stroked her face, trying to smile without much success.
“What did you do that for, Rheya?”
“I did . . . that?”
With her eyes, she indicated the door.
“Yes . . . Don’t you remember?”
“No . . . that is, I saw you weren’t there, I was very frightened, and . . .”
“And what?”
“I looked for you. I thought that perhaps you were in the bathroom . . .”
Only then did I notice that the sliding door covering the entrance to the bathroom had been pushed back.
“And then?”
“I ran to the door.”
“And after that?”
“I can’t remember . . . Something must have happened
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you remember?”
“I was sitting here, on the bed.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, got up and went over to the shattered door.
“Kris!”
Walking up behind her, I took her by the shoulders; she was shaking. She suddenly turned and whispered:
“Kris, Kris . . .”
“Calm yourself!”
“Kris, if it’s me . . . Kris, am I an epileptic?”
“What an extraordinary idea, my sweet. The doors in this place are rather special . . .”
We left the room as the shutter was grinding its way up the window; the blue sun was sinking into the ocean.
I guided Rheya to the small kitchen on the other side of the dome. Together we raided the cupboards and the refrigerators. I soon noticed that Rheya was scarcely better than I was at cooking or even at opening tins. I devoured the contents of two tins and drank innumerable cups of coffee. Rheya also ate, but as children eat when they are not hungry and do not want to displease their parents; on the other hand, she was not forcing herself, simply taking in nourishment automatically, indifferently.
After our meal, we went into the sick bay, next to the radio-cabin. I had had an idea. I told Rheya that I wanted to give her a medical examination – a straightforward check-up – sat her in a mechanical chair, and took a syringe and some needles out of the sterilizer. I knew exactly where each object was to be found; as far as the model of the Station’s interior was concerned, the instructors had not overlooked a single detail during my training course. Rheya held out her fingers; I took a sample of blood. I smeared the blood on to a slide which I laid in the suction pipe, introduced it into the vacuum tank and bombarded it with silver ions.
Performing a familiar task had a soothing effect, and I felt better. Rheya, leaning back on the cushions in the mechanical chair, gazed around at the instruments in the sick bay.
The buzzing of the videophone broke the silence; I lifted the receiver:
“Kelvin.”
I looked at Rheya; she was still quiet, apparently exhausted by her recent efforts.
I heard a sigh of relief.
“At last.”
It was Snow. I waited, the receiver pressed close to my ear.
“You’ve had a visit, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you busy?”
“Yes.”
“A little auscultation, eh?”
“I suppose you’ve got a better suggestion – a game of chess maybe?”
“Don’t be so touchy, Kelvin! Sartorius wants to meet you, he wants all three of us to meet.”
“Very kind of him!” I answered, taken aback. “But . . .” I stopped, then went on: “Is he alone?”
“No. I haven’t explained properly. He wants to have a talk with us. We’ll set up a three-way videophone link, but with the telescreen lenses covered.”
“I see. Why didn’t he contact me himself? Is he frightened of me?”
“Quite possibly,” grunted Snow. “What do you say?”
“A conference. In an hour’s time. Will that suit you?”
“That’s fine.”
I could see him on the screen – just his face, about the size of a fist. For a moment, he looked at me attentively; I could hear the crackling of the electric current. Then he said, hesitantly:
“Are you getting on all right?”
“Not too bad. How about you?”
“Not so well as you, I dare say. May I . . . ?”
“Do you want to come over here?”
I glanced at Rheya over my shoulder. She was leaning back, legs crossed, her head bent. With a morose air, she was fiddling mechanically with the little chrome ball on the end of a chain fixed to the arm-rest.
Snow’s voice erupted:
“Stop that, do you hear? I told you to stop it!”
I could see his profile on the screen, but I could no longer hear him although his lips were moving – he had put his hand over the microphone.
“No, I can’t come,” he said quickly. “Later perhaps, in any case, I’ll contact you in an hour.”
The screen went blank; I replaced the receiver.
“Who was it?” asked Rheya indifferently.
“Snow, a cybernetician. You don’t know him.”
“Is this going on much longer?”
“Are you bored?”
I put the first of the series of slides into the neutron microscope, and, one after another, I pressed the different-colored switches; the magnetic fields rumbled hollowly.
“There’s not much to do in here, and if my humble company isn’t enough for you . . .”
I was talking distractedly, with long gaps between my words.
I pulled the big black hood round the eye-piece of the microscope towards me, and leaned my forehead against the resilient foam-rubber viewer. I could hear Rheya’s voice, but without taking in what she was saying. Beneath my gaze, sharply foreshortened, was a vast desert flooded with silvery light, and strewn with rounded boulders – red corpuscles – which trembled and wriggled behind a veil of mist. I focused the eye-piece and penetrated further into the depths of the silvery landscape. Without taking my eyes away from the viewer, I turned the view-finder; when a boulder, a single corpuscle, detached itself and appeared at the junction of the cross-hairs, I enlarged the image. The lens had apparently picked up a deformed erythrocyte, sunken in the centre, whose uneven edges projected sharp shadows over the depths of a circular crater. The crater, bristling with silver ion deposits, extended beyond the microscope’s field of vision. The nebulous outlines of threads of albumen, distorted and atrophied, appeared in the midst of an opalescent liquid. A worm of albumen twisted and turned beneath the cross-hairs of the lens. Gradually I increased the enlargement. At any moment, I should reach the limit of this exploration of the depths; the shadow of a molecule occupied the whole of the space; then the image became fuzzy.
There was nothing to be seen. There should have been the ferment of a quivering cloud of atoms, but I saw nothing. A dazzling light filled the screen, which was flawlessly clear. I pushed the lever to its utmost. The angry, whirring noise grew louder, but the screen remained a blank. An alarm signal sounded once, then was repeated; the circuit was overloaded. I took a final look at the silvery desert, then I cut the current.
I looked at Rheya. She was in the middle of a yawn which she changed adroitly into a smile. “Am I in good health?” she asked.