For the third time,” shouted the Monitor, “what the blazes is going on in there?”
O’Mara muttered something which was unintelligible even to himself. Then Caxton joined in.
“There’s something fishy going on, and I bet it involves the kid! I’m going over to see- “No wait!” said O’Mara desperately. “Give me six hours… “I’ll see you,” said Caxton, “in ten minutes.” “Caxton!” O’Mara shouted, “if you come through my airlock you’ll
kill me! I’ll have the inner seal jammed open and if you open the outer one you’ll evacuate the place. Then the Major will lose his prisoner.”
There was a sudden silence, then:
“What,” asked the Monitor quietly, “do you want the six hours for?”
O’Mara tried to shake his head to clear it, but now that it weighed three times heavier than normal he only hurt his neck. What did he want six hours for? Looking around him he began to wonder, because both the food sprayer and its connecting water tank had been wrecked by the fall of tackle from the ceiling. He could neither feed, wash, nor scarcely see his patient for fallen wreckage, so all he could do for six hours was watch and wait for a miracle.
“I’m going over,” said Caxton doggedly.
“You’re not,” said the Major, still polite but with a no-nonsense tone. “I want to get to the bottom of this. You’ll wait outside until I’ve spoken with O’Mara alone. Now O’Mara, what… is.. . happening?”
Flat on his back again O’Mara fought to gain enough breath to carry on an extended conversation. He had decided that the best thing to do would be to tell the Monitor the exact truth, and then appeal to him to back O’Mara up in the only way possible which might save the infant-by leaving him alone for six hours. But O’Mara was feeling very low as he talked, and his vision was so poor that he couldn’t tell sometimes whether his eyelids were open or shut. He did see someone hand the Major a note, but Craythorne didn’t read it until O’Mara had finished speaking.
“You are in a mess,” Craythorne said finally. He briefly looked sympathetic, then his tone hardened again. “And ordinarily I should be forced to do as you suggest and give you that six hours. After all, you have the book and so you know more than we do. But the situation has changed in the last few minutes. I’ve just had word that two Hudlarians have arrived, one of them a doctor. You had better step down, O’Mara. You tried, but now let some skilled help salvage what they can from the situation. For the kid’s sake,” he added.
It was three hours later. Caxton, Waring and O’Mara were facing the Major across the Monitor’s desk. Craythorne had just come in.
He said briskly, “I’m going to be busy for the next few days so we’ll get this business settled quickly. First, the accident. O’Mara, your case depends entirely on Waring’s corroboration for your story. Now there seems to be some pretty devious thinking here on your part. I’ve already heard Waring’s evidence, but to satisfy my own curiosity I’d like to know what you think he said?”
“He backed up my story,” said O’Mara wearily. “He had no choice.”
He looked down at his hands, still thinking about the desperate sick infant he had left in his quarters. He told himself again that he wasn’t responsible for what had happened, but deep inside he felt that if he had shown more flexibility of mind and had started the pressure treatment sooner the kid would have been all right now. But the result of the accident enquiry didn’t seem to matter now, one way or the other, and neither did the Waring business.
“Why do you think he had no choice?” prodded the Monitor sharply.
Caxton had his mouth open, looking confused. Waring would not meet O’Mara’s eyes and he was beginning to blush.
“When I came here,” O’Mara said dully, “I was looking out for a secondary job to fill my spare time, and hounding Waring was it. He is the reason for my being an obnoxious type, that was the only way I could go to work on him. But to understand that you have to go a bit further back. Because of that power pile accident,” O’Mara went on, “all the men of his section were very much in Waring’s debt-you’ve probably heard the details by now. Waring himself was a mess. Physically he was below par-had to get shots to keep his blood-count up, was just about strong enough to work his control console, and was fairly wallowing in self-pity. Psychologically he was a wreck. Despite all Pelling’s assurances that the shots would only be necessary for a few more months he was convinced that he had pernicious anemia. He also believed that he had been made sterile, again despite everything the doctor told him, and this conviction made him act and talk in a way which would give any normal man the creeps-because that sort of thing is pathological and there wasn’t anything like that wrong with him. When I saw how things were I started to ridicule him every chance I got. I hounded him unmercifully. So the way I see it he had no other choice but to support my story. Simple gratitude demanded it.”