Wolfgang Gibbs closed his eyes and leaned his head forward to touch the cool metal of the console. His face was white, and shone with sweat. After a few seconds he swallowed hard, sat upright, took a deep breath, and made another try. He hit the key sequence for a coded message, waiting until the unit in front of him signalled acceptance.
"Well, Charlene"—he had to clear his throat again—"I promised you a report as soon as I could get round to it. I've just screwed up the transmission sequence three times in a row, so if this one doesn't work I'll call it a day. I originally thought I'd be sending to you right after I got here—shows what an optimist I am! Still, here we go, one more time. If you hear puking noises in the middle of the recording, don't worry. That's just me, losing my liver and lungs again."
He coughed harshly. "Hans says that only one person in fifty has as bad a reaction to freefall as I do, so with luck you'll be all right. And they say even I should feel better in a couple more days. I can't wait. Anyway, that's enough moaning, let me get to work.
"Most of the trip up was a breeze. We had everything tied down tight, so nothing could shake loose, and Cameron had all the animals souped up to their eyebrows with sedatives. Pity he couldn't do the same for me. When we hit freefall everything was all right at first, though my stomach felt as if it had moved about a foot upward. But I was coping with it, not too bad. Then we began moving the animals into their permanent quarters here. They didn't like it, and they showed their annoyance the only way they could. I'm telling you, we'd better not move again in a hurry. They don't pay enough for me to wallow along through a cloud of free-floating animal puke and animal crap every day of the week. Wall-to-wall yucky. It was about then that I started to feel I was going to lose my breakfast. And then I did lose it—then the previous day's lunch and dinner, and I still feel as though I'll never eat again.
"Okay. I guess that's not what you want to hear. Let me get back to the real stuff. I'll dress it up properly for the lab reports, but here's where we stand."
Wolfgang paused for a moment as another wave of nausea swept over him. He had made his way to the outermost corridor of Spindletop, where the effective gravity was highest, and a quarter gee was almost enough to bring his stomach in line; but if he allowed himself to look down, he was gazing out at infinity, standing on a rotating sea of stars that swirled beneath his feet. And that was enough to start him off again.
He looked straight ahead, steadfastly refusing to allow his glance to stray toward any of the ports. The turning knot in his stomach slowly loosened.
"I guess the cats came through in worst shape," he said at last. "They're all alive, but we'll have a hell of a time sorting out how much of their troubles are caused by the trip up here, and how much is progressive deterioration in their experimental condition. We lost a couple of sloths—don't know why yet, but looks like it may be a drug-induced cardiac arrest. Cannon warned about that before we started, but nobody had any bright ideas how to prevent it. The other small mammals all seem in pretty good shape, and we had no real trouble moving them to their quarters. That wasn't true with the Kodiaks, though." He managed to smile into the camera. "They're big mothers. Thank God we don't have any experiments going on with elephants. You had to be here to see what a job we had with old Jinx. Great fat monster. We'd tug and heave on him for a while, and feel he wasn't moving, then after we finally got him drifting in the right direction we'd find we couldn't stop him. I was nearly flattened against one of the walls. It's a good thing the people on the station are used to handling big masses in space, or I never would have made it.
"I'll cut out the tales of woe. We finally got him in place, 'nuff said, up near the hub of Workwheel. It's a horrible place—no gravity to speak of. I don't know how low, but less than a hundredth of a gee for sure. Hans says that in a month or two I'll enjoy it there, but now just thinking about it makes me sick. I'll say one thing for the crews here, they know how to build. All the tanks and the supporting equipment we asked for were ready and in place—and it all worked. A couple of hours ago I gave Jinx the treatment, and I have him stabilized now in Mode Two hibernation pattern. You'll get the detailed logs with the official transmission, and all the video, too. But I thought you'd like to see something at once, so I'm going to run a clip for you right in with this. Here, see what you think of Jinx."
Wolfgang took a long, deep breath and pressed the calling sequence. He did it slowly and painfully, with the fragile and exaggerated care of an old, old man. His fingers stumbled several times, but at last he had a correct pattern entered. He leaned back and massaged his midriff as a copy of the recorded video was displayed before him and simultaneously sent down as a signal to Earth.
Jinx was shown at center screen. The bear was sitting upright on a bed of soft shavings, sniffing curiously at a massive chunk of fish protein held in his front paws. His long black tongue came out and licked tentatively at the flaky surface. The bear's movements were a little jerky, but well-controlled and accurate. Wolfgang watched with approval as Jinx took a neat bite, chewed thoughtfully, then placed the rest of the protein block down on the shavings. When the mouthful was swallowed Jinx yawned and scratched peacefully at a fur-free patch on his left side. The implanted sensors there lay close to the surface of the skin, and it was still a little sensitive. After a few seconds more he picked up the fishy slab and the monstrous jaws began to nibble around it contentedly.
"Looks good, eh?" said Wolfgang. "You'll see more when you get the full coverage later, but let me give you the bottom line now. We saw the first signs of this in those last experiments in Christchurch, and what JN had been predicting all along seems to hold up exactly. We hit the correct drug protocols right away this time. Jinx's body temperature was seven degrees above freezing in that segment of video. His heart rate was one beat per minute—and still is. I estimate that his metabolic rate is down by a factor of about eighty. He's slow, but he's sure as hell not hibernating—look at him chew on that slab. What you're seeing is speeded up, by a factor of sixty-eight over real time. The trickiest piece so far was finding something that Jinx is willing to eat. You know how picky he is. Seems like things feel different to him now, and he doesn't like it. We got the consistency right after about twenty tries, and he seems to be feeding normally."
Wolfgang rubbed ruefully at his midsection. "Lucky old Jinx. That's more than I can say for myself. Best of all, his condition seems to be completely stable. I checked all the indicators a few minutes ago. I think we could hold him there for a month if we had to, maybe more."
He cut back from the picture of the bear to real-time transmission. "That's the report from this end, Charlene. Now I can relax. But I can't wait for you and the others to get up here. I don't know how biased the news coverage is that comes here to Salter Station, but we hear of trouble everywhere back on Earth. Cold wars, hot wars, and mouthing off in all directions. Did you know it hit sixty-two Celsius yesterday in Baluchistan—that's nearly a hundred and forty-four Fahrenheit. They must be dying in droves. And did you get the reports from the U.N. Security Council? There's talk of closing all national air space, and Hans is having real problems scheduling flights up—not just the usual red tape, either. He's meeting blank walls. He's been told there will be an indefinite suspension of all flights, from all spaceports, until the Earth situation normalizes again. And who knows when that will be? Wherry's experts say the changes are here to stay—we've caused them ourselves with the fossil fuel programs."
His hand moved toward the key that would end transmission, then paused. He looked uncertainly at the screen. "Hey, Hans told me one other thing I really didn't want to hear. Dammit, I wish I knew just how secure this line is, but I'll say it anyway. If it's not common knowledge down at the Institute, Charlene, please keep it to yourself. It's about JN. Did you know that she's been taking a whole battery of neurological tests over at Christchurch Central? CAT scans, radioisotope tracers, air bubble tracers, the works. They've been probing her brain sixteen different ways. I hope she didn't do something crazy back there, like using herself as a test subject for Institute experiments. Maybe you can check it out? I'd like to be sure she's all right. Don't ask me how Hans knew all this—the information they have up here about Earthside doings amazes me. I guess that's all for now."
Wolfgang pressed the key carefully and leaned back. Transmission terminated, and the circuit was broken.
He closed his eyes. That hadn't been as bad as he expected. It definitely helped to have something good to concentrate on, to take your thoughts away from feeling nauseated. Think of something good. A sudden and startling memory of Charlene came to his mind, her long limbs and willowy body bending above him, and her dark hair falling loosely about her forehead. He grunted. Christ! If he could have thoughts like that, he must definitely be on the mend. Next thing you know he'd be able to face food again.
Maybe it was time for another test.
Wolfgang slowly steeled himself, then turned his head and looked out of the port. Now Spindletop was pointing down toward Earth, and he was facing an endless drop to the sunlit hemisphere beneath. Salter Station was flying over the brown wedge of the Indian subcontinent, with the greener oval of Sri Lanka just visible at its foot.
He gasped. As he watched the scene seemed to spin and warp beneath him, twisting through a strange and surrealistic mapping. He gritted his teeth and held on tight to the console edge. After thirty unpleasant seconds he could force himself to a different perspective. It was earth's blue-and-white surface, mottled with brown-green markings, that was airy and insubstantial; Salter Station was real, tangible, solid. That was it. Cling to that thought. He was slowly able to relax his grip on the table in front of him.
It would be all right. Everything was relative. If Jinx could adapt to his new life, comfortable with a body temperature down near freezing, surely Wolfgang could become at ease with the much smaller changes produced by the move to Salter Station. Better forget self-pity, and get back to work.
Ignoring the twinges from his long-suffering stomach, Wolfgang forced himself to look out again as the station swept toward the Atlantic and the majestic curve of the day-night terminator.
Three more days, then the Institute staff would be on their way here. And if the news reports were correct, it would be just in time. In their fury and endless feuding, the governments of earth seemed all set to block the road to space itself.