Blood and Fire by David Gerrold

Author:David Gerrold [Gerrold, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781935618690
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2003-12-02T05:00:00+00:00

Bedside Manner

A blue-white dwarf and a red giant circled each other off-center, a stately gavotte—but the dwarf was feeding off the giant, pulling long strands of fire out of its partner, wrapping them around itself in a spiral veil of flame. Distorted by its smaller partner’s gravity, the crimson monster had flattened into an oblate spheroid, pulled outward in a teardrop shape.

Much smaller—much harder to find, were two tiny starships also linked together. Plunging toward the tongues of flame, they echoed the partnership of the stars—one of the vessels was trying to pull the fire out of the other—

Closer now—inside the Cargo Bay of the Norway, everything was suffused with the multiple deep tones of the repulsor fields—the uneven low warble of the Norway’s failing barriers and the darker chords of the Star Wolf’s multiple barriers.

Two robot-gurneys had come rolling across the link between the two ships, hatches slamming open before them, slamming shut behind them every meter of the way. They rolled into the Star Wolf airlock, into the transfer tube, through the repulsor fields, into the Norway’s airlock and finally into the Norway’s Cargo Bay.

Berryman knew what to do; Easton moved to help him. He ran a quick readiness-check on the gurney, just to satisfy himself that the trip through the repulsors hadn’t altered any of its parameters. By then, the second gurney had come through the hatch, and he moved to check that one too. Before he had completed his status checks, Yonah Jarell was already climbing onto the first cart. Blintze stood, waiting uncomfortably by the second.

Berryman kept his feelings to himself. He patted the cushioned surface and said, “All right—get on.” He turned back to the first medtable. The display there showed the level of Jarell’s infection. Not as bad as it could have been. The man must have been in a protected area longer than the others. Berryman didn’t wait for permission. He pulled open Jarell’s tunic and began slapping monitors onto his chest, arms, neck and forehead. He picked up a surgical scissors and—ignoring Jarell’s protests—methodically cut slits in the arms and legs of his jumpsuit. “You should have taken this off,” he said as he worked. His expression was deadpan. Behind him, Easton was quietly helping Blintze undress and echoing Berryman’s application of monitors. Additional sensors went on each man’s belly, groin, legs and ankles.

“All right,” said Berryman, blandly. He began strapping pressure clamps around Jarell’s arms and legs and a brace around his head and neck as well. “Let’s see if this works. This particular process has never been tested on human beings before. Thanks for volunteering to be the guinea pigs.”

“The process works,” said Jarell insistently but without total certainty.

“Whatever,” Berryman replied, smiling and maintaining a courteous demeanor throughout. He unclipped a set of flexible hoses from beneath the table; each terminated in a pressure injector. “If it doesn’t, we’ll know soon enough.” Berryman connected two pressure injectors to each of the clamps, then checked to make sure that all the tubes were free of kinks.

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