Only One Winner: Science Fiction Mystery Tales by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781434443229
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2013-08-05T07:00:00+00:00

NONENTITY

Somebody didn’t mind murdering in order to survive—who?

The lifeshell was a tin can with stores and a radio, an air conditioner and some accumulators, seven hundred cubic feet of space, a single direct vision port—and nothing else. It couldn’t change course, land, orbit, or spin. It couldn’t do anything but drift, send out a radio signal, and hope that some ship would receive it and come to the rescue. It had been designed to hold five people at maximum and now it held seven. It was the slow route to hell with a preview thrown in for free.

The officer was a young man with a uniform ripped and soiled as though he had wallowed in muck and crawled through a hedge. One shoulder sagged lower than the other, his left arm was twisted and tucked inside his belt, and his face was taut with the pain from his broken bones. He sat on the stool before the radio equipment, his legs gripping the stem in a futile effort to remain in position, and stared at the six lives which, technically speaking, were in his charge.

“Would any of you be a doctor?”

They looked at each other, the three men, the two women, and the boy, and their silence gave their answer.

“Know anything about first aid then?” The officer bit his lips against his agony. “There’s a medical kit…drugs…if you could dope me up?”

Again the looks, the blank expressions, the dragging silence as each waited for the other to move. Then the elder of the two women moved quietly towards the injured man.

Henley watched her, staring at her worn features, the lank hair, the body ruined by neglect and overwork. He knew her, a widow returning to Earth after wasting her life with a man who had been fated to fail before he started, then let his eyes flicker to the one stranger in the compartment.

The boy could have been no more than twelve, a pale, huge-eyed youth with the thin features and wasted appearance of those born in space. He huddled in a corner, one thin hand gripping a stanchion to hold him in position, and, staring at him, Henley wondered just who and what he was. An orphan probably, almost certainly now if not before, a waif, uprooted by war and flung among strangers. Idly he wondered how the boy came to be in the shell—the rest had all belonged to the same section—then forgot the boy as Rosina drifted towards him.

“Think he’ll live?” It didn’t take the jerk of the head to know whom she meant.

“Why not? We’re in free fall and a man can live a long time with serious injuries. Worried?”

“You kidding?” She licked her lips with a quick, almost feral gesture, and stared directly into his eyes. “We’re in trouble, buster, and don’t you make any mistake about it. If pretty boy dies, who’s going to call for help?”

“Automatic radio call,” he said mildly. “We don’t really need him.” He kept his face blank at her expression of relief.

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