The Throne of Saturn, page 72
“Thanks, pal. Can you put me on Special-1 to Bob for a minute?… Hi, Bob. Things looking a little clearer at the moment, I think. Jazz has a wound and I’m going to get it cleaned up now, disinfect it, and put on a bandage. Then I’m going to see if I can get a little food down him, followed by a sleeping pill, and I think he’ll be coming along all right. Are any of the doctors around, and do they concur?”
“Chuck here, Connie. Can’t you tell us the nature of the wound? It would help.”
“Not yet, Chuck, sorry. That will have to wait for Mayflower. I think I can handle it. If I find I can’t I’ll get back to you so fast it will make your head spin, never fear about that.”
“Well … O.K.”
“Trust me, Chuck.”
“We have to, Connie. What else can we do?”
“Roger, I guess that’s right. Special-1, over and out.”
“You’re a hard-nosed bastard,” Jazz remarked. “And,” he added, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“We know what we’re doing,” Connie corrected. “You can call him any time you don’t agree.”
“I agree. Let’s get to it.”
“O.K.,” Connie said. “Sit still and try to think about something else.”
“I have a better idea than that,” Jazz suggested quietly. “Tell me about Pete and I’ll tell you about Jayvee.”
Connie hesitated for a second. Then he nodded.
“All right,” he said with equal quietness. “I think that is a good idea.”
And while he found the necessary supplies in the medical bay; carefully cut away the blood-soaked suit; gently probed for the impacted piece of cloth, found it and drew it out; staunched the newly flowing blood with towels until it stopped; sprinkled the ugly opening heavily with penicillin powder, placed a heavy bandage over it and strapped it in place across Jazz’ back—he talked as clearly and impersonally as he would later at home about the events that had occurred when Adventurer reached the Moon. True to his training, his powers as an observer, and his own inclination, he made it strictly narrative, no personalities, and no quotes.
It was at least partial catharsis for him, and it certainly served its purpose as operational therapy for Jazz: he listened attentive and fascinated, not even wincing under Connie’s ministrations until the moment came to remove the fragments of the impacted cloth, when he fainted again and had to be revived. His only comment came at the point of Pete’s death, when he said again how sorry he was. Connie confined his response to, “Thanks,” and hurried on.
Jazz’s own narrative was, for the most part, equally impersonal, though he could not refrain from showing some bitter anger toward the end. Connie warned him against this and he agreed it was unwise.
“Maybe you and I had better rehearse each other,” he suggested, not altogether facetiously; and after thinking a moment, Connie said, “Yes, I think probably we should. After you’re up and around a bit.”
When he had finished, he offered Jazz food again, but again, though he did not vomit, he was unable to get down more than a couple of mouthfuls of bread and perhaps a tablespoonful of hot bouillon.
“That’s all right,” Connie said calmly, for Jazz looked a little worried for a moment. “You’ll feel better after some sleep.”
“I hope so,” Jazz said. He managed a small smile. “I sure don’t feel so hot right now.”
“Two of these magic NASA antibiotics,” Connie said cheerfully, tipping them into his hand “and a couple of sleeping pills, and you’ll be set for as long as you want to go. Take this water gun and get ’em down.”
After Jazz complied, Connie helped him into Nina and got him bedded down in one of the hammocks, lying on his left side and strapped in tightly so he would not float out of position. He took his temperature, found it to be 99.8 but was not unduly alarmed under all the circumstances, and gave his left hand an encouraging squeeze.
“Take it easy, now, and go to sleep. I’m going to check out everything and then I’ll be back and join you. I’m exhausted.”
“Do that,” Jazz murmured drowsily. “Call on me if you need anything.”
“I’ll do that,” Connie said with a smile. “Good night.”
“Good … night.”
He waited until Jazz’s breathing became steady and even. Then he ate a substantial meal himself; returned to Santa Maria, checked the controls; set them for thermal control mode, felt the slow, steady rotation begin; listened with a practiced ear to the quietly humming computers, found no anomalies; glanced back at the receding Moon, glanced forward at the oncoming Earth; sighed heavily with premonitions he could not entirely define but knew were beginning to weigh upon him more than he liked; and returned to Nina.
Jazz was sleeping soundly.
He crawled into the hammock alongside, strapped himself in, and in three seconds was also asleep.
Piffy One streaked on toward home.
At home, the welcoming chorus grew for Piffy One.
But for two more days he was to be spared the caterwaulings of his countrymen and the carpings of the jealous world. It was just as well, for he had other things on his mind.
Mechanically the flight was as close to perfection as the flight out had been, even though its success now depended entirely upon him as the only member of the crew still functioning. The management of the spacecraft presented no problems, for he had done everything ten thousand times before, during his previous flights and during his endless hours in the simulators. His only personal problem was getting sufficient sleep and he managed to pace himself adequately enough on that until the last twenty-four hours. By then he was near enough home so that he could stand it.
With a combination of guile, vagueness, and the help of his friends on the ground, he managed to maintain the fiction that they were all coming back. The administrator and Bob Hertz had reached the decision that until they could talk to Connie, they must protect him; and word had been quietly passed to the key people in the medical, flight control, and public affairs staffs. This violated all of NASA’s principles, but they felt the situation justified it: obviously some great and calamitous emergency had occurred, and since Connie refused to talk, they had no choice but to support him. The comments from and to Houston on S-band remained chatty and apparently normal:
“This is Mission Control at 120 hours, 36 minutes into the mission. Planetary Fleet One is now 18,243 nautical miles from the Moon, traveling at a velocity of 4426 feet per second. We haven’t heard anything from the crew in the past ten hours, and since everything is nominal and GO on the return trip so far, the flight controllers haven’t bothered them. The doctors report crew members sleeping soundly, with the regular emergency watch. Before long we should be getting word from them as they awake and come back on duty. All systems appear to be GO, Planetary Fleet One is coming home after this first successful test phase of the flight to Mars. We’ll be having some more direct broadcasts for you when the sleep period is over …
“Hello, Houston, this is One” … “Good morning, One. You’re looking real good. Did everybody get a good night’s sleep?” … “Fine, thank you. Jazz snored a little, but otherwise all O.K.” … “Roger, don’t let him get away with that stuff. If you’re ready to go, we’d like you to do a CO2 filter change and have the H2 purge line heater on 20 minutes before the O2 and H2 purge. Then we’d like you to initiate a charge on Battery A and leave the charge on until we notify you further. Two hours, wastewater dump to 10 percent. I’ve also got your consumables updated. Are you ready to copy?” … “Roger, understand, will readback on purges, then copy consumables and give you our readings here” … “Roger, standing by for purge data and consumables updates …
“This is Mission Control at 130 hours, 19 minutes Ground Elapsed Time. Planetary Fleet One has passed across the imaginary line that divides the Moon’s sphere of influence from Earth’s sphere of influence. At that time, the spacecraft were approximately 33,800 nautical miles from the Moon and 174,000 nautical miles from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 3994 feet per second with respect to the Earth. From this point on Planetary Fleet One will continue to accelerate steadily as it nears the Earth. Earth’s influence is now the dominant factor in the return of the spacecraft from this first test phase of the mission to Mars …
“Hello, One, this is Houston with midcourse correction burn pad. You are now GO on that for 140 GET. Are you ready to copy?” … “Roger, ready to copy …”
“This is Mission Control at 150 hours, 23 minutes GET. After successful completion of the midcourse burn, which you heard shortly after 140 hours, Planetary Fleet One has now crossed the halfway mark between Earth and Moon. At that point it was 145,583 nautical miles from Earth at a velocity of 4300 feet with respect to both Earth and Moon. The crew reports everybody aboard in good shape, and all continues to be GO on the homeward journey of Planetary Fleet One …”
What the crew reported on S-band about everybody aboard, however, was not what the crew reported on Special-1. Behind the hearty words of Mission Control and the smooth, familiar exchanges which he managed to carry on with necessary blandness, he was having an increasingly difficult time with his wounded partner.
Things had begun to get worse roughly twelve hours after they left the Moon and they had deteriorated steadily since. As they passed midpoint and entered home stretch, he did not honestly know whether he would arrive with a live crewmate or the third tragic exaction of the flight of Piffy One.
The uncertainty produced a rapid and drastic revision of what he now saw had been a rather high-handed treatment of the medical staff in Houston. When Jazz finally awoke after almost ten hours of sleep, he stirred, mumbled, rolled over, cried out in pain, and instantly fainted again. Shaken, Connie revived him, took his temperature, found it to be 101.2. He went immediately into Santa Maria and asked for help.
“Hello, Houston, activate Special-1 please. Hello, Bob?”
“Here, Connie”—without the slightest hint of reproach, only a calm and reassuring confidence—“what’s your problem?”
“Jazz is running a temperature of 101.2,” Connie said crisply, “as the result of a gunshot wound—”
“Gunshot wound?” Bob exclaimed. Connie did not stop to explain but only interpolated dryly, “Not caused by me—entering right middle back laterally and apparently traversing upward toward approximately one o’clock, impacting and probably shattering portions of right shoulder. Bullet still in place, bleeding profuse at first but successfully staunched, wound cleaned, dusted with penicillin, bandaged—I believe I told you anticipated treatment earlier. Two antibiotics, two sleeping pills given ten hours ago, heavy sleep since then. Great pain on awakening, fainted, I revived him and took his temperature as stated. He has had almost nothing to eat in approximately fifteen hours; vomited when I first tried to feed him prior to sleep period, was able to manage only a couple of mouthfuls on second attempt. In good spirits but weak and worried. So am I. Not weak, but worried. Advise, please. Over.”
“Thank God you’re not weak, Connie,” Bob said, “that would be too much.”
“Call me Iron Man. Is Chuck there?”
“Hi, Connie. Is the wound clean?”
“I swabbed it out very thoroughly, I think, and also extracted some fragments of uniform that had impacted into it.”
“I think you’d better keep on with the antibiotics—you have that all-purpose one, don’t you, and the penicillin powder. Keep up the internal doses if he can keep them down. I wouldn’t disturb the wound again unless you think it’s absolutely necessary—”
“You’re the doctor.”
“I’m the consulting physician. You’re the doctor. I’d take a look at it pretty soon, if I were you, and if there’s any spreading of discoloration or any sign of abnormality, clean it and douse it with powder again and put on a new bandage.”
“Shall I try to cauterize it? We have knives and things I might be able to use.”
“No, I don’t think you’d better try. Let’s just put our faith in antibiotics for the time being and see if we can’t get him back to Mayflower, and then we can put him on the shuttle right away and get him down here and we’ll take over.”
“How about food?”
“He’s got to have some, obviously. Try him again, and if that doesn’t work, you’ll have to put him on intravenous. You have that equipment, too, of course. It’s relatively simple.”
“Roger, we had quite a lot of emergency medical during training, so I think I can manage that, all right. How it will work in zero G and in pitch and yaw, I leave you to imagine, but I’ll do my best.”
“O.K. You may have to work out some sort of pump for it. Just be sure there’s a steady flow and not too fast. Give him about half an hour at a time, a full bottle every four hours.”
“And run the spacecraft with the other hand.”
“And run the spacecraft with the other hand. I’m sorry as hell, Connie, but—”
“Oh, I’m not griping. That’s the way the mission crumbles. And by God, it has crumbled. What about temperature?”
“Keep taking it at regular intervals and keep me advised. Talk any time. I’ve had a cot brought in. I’ll be here until you get home.”
“Bless you, and bless everybody down there. I’ll be talking to you. Special-1, over and out … And now, Jazzbo,” he said half-aloud to himself as he started back into Nina, “let’s see what we can do for you.”
“What’s that mumbling out there?” Jazz asked weakly as he reached his side. “Are you beginning to talk to yourself? Am I traveling with a loony?”
“You may be, yet, buddy. I keep hearing little voices saying, ‘How about two tickets to the World Series? How about two tickets to the World Series?’”
He placed his hand on Jazz’s forehead, took it away after a moment and looked thoughtful. It was still burning.
“What did Chuck say?” Jazz asked. “Does he think I’m going to live?”
“Think you’re going to live!” Connie exclaimed. “Who said an ornery bastard like you could do anything else? The Lord doesn’t want you to die, Jazz, you’d raise too much hell in heaven. Yes, he thinks you’re going to live, providing nurse here can get you through. Which,” he added firmly, “nurse intends to do. First of all, we try some food.”
“I’m not sure I—” Jazz began, but Connie ignored him and went blandly on.
“I won’t describe how NASA’s special regummified Chateaubriand for two looks to the naked eye, I shall simply prepare it out of your sight, place a blindfold over your eyes, hold your nose and tell you to gulp it down. O.K.? It’s the only way.”
“I’ll try,” Jazz promised gamely, not looking very optimistic.
He made a valiant attempt, but his apprehensions speedily proved correct.
“All right, my boy,” Connie said after he finished mopping up, “Chuck says you go on intravenous.”
“But it won’t flow, will it?” Jazz asked, and for the first time a trace of real fear came into his eyes.
“I’ll make it flow,” Connie assured him. “As soon as I get through copying the pad for the midcourse correction burn. Let me get that out of the way and then I’ll be back and we’ll give her a try. Rest easy, meantime.”
After he had chatted for a while with Houston, his voice calm, impersonal, and efficient as it came over the loudspeakers to the pressroom and the curious globe, he returned to his medical chores.
First, he removed the bandage as slowly and gently as he could, frowned with dismay as he saw the discoloration beginning to spread around the wound, disinfected it carefully again, dusted it once more with penicillin, put on a clean bandage. Jazz groaned and cursed and sweated but did not lose consciousness again, though his protests seemed to be generally weaker. The flavor of Jazz was still there but diluted.
Increasingly worried, Connie got the bottle of glucose solution, the tube, and the needle. He hung the bottle on the wall above Jazz’ hammock. He got one of the plastic squeeze bottles that had contained carrots or spinach at some previous meal, unscrewed the top, put it in the electronic washer, pushed the button, extracted it clean two seconds later. He screwed the top back on, punctured the tube between the glucose and the needle, forced the needle and tube through the squeeze bottle, in the one-way valve to admit water and out the one-way valve to emit food. He gave it a preliminary squeeze or two, applying a firm, steady pressure. The glucose solution entered the squeeze bottle and began to travel slowly out again toward the needle.
Jazz, watching drowsily, remarked, “You’re pretty damned clever.” Connie replied cheerfully, “I think so.”
He inserted the needle in Jazz’s arm, taped it in place, made himself comfortable in the adjoining hammock and spent the next half hour slowly and steadily operating the squeeze bottle. The liquid dropped approximately one-fourth before he stopped to rest. Jazz, reassured in an almost childlike way by his air of competence, drifted off to sleep before he finished. Connie made sure he was securely strapped in, left everything in place, and went back to report on his medical triumph over Special-1. Everyone was very pleased and he felt very satisfied; except for the look of the wound when he had dressed it, and Jazz’s temperature, which instead of dropping had risen to 101.8 when he took it again.
But for the time being, he decided, and Houston concurred, the best thing was to leave Jazz alone and let him rest.
“So,” he said, sounding relaxed and in good spirits, “with your permission, I shall stop playing nurse and go back to being an astronaut. Midcourse correction burn coming up, and I’d better get ready for it.”
He verified the spacecraft attitude by sighting through the sextant the star Houston designated, ran tests on the guidance control system and the reaction control system, received his GO from the ground.
The burn lasted 10.0 seconds, the reaction control system thrusters made a change of velocity retrograde of 4.8 feet per second, the flight path angle was adjusted for re-entry into Earth orbit preparatory to rendezvous with Space Station Mayflower. He was at that time approximately 169,000 nautical miles out, traveling at a velocity of 4075.6 feet per second.
