Thirty-three months later a message came wandering back over the interstellar blackness to the laser receiver on Prometheus, now over two-and-three-quarters lightyears away from the solar system and still not quite halfway to the Barnard star system. James read the message, and after a short period of self-analysis to insure that the conditions that the senders had assumed still applied, decided to act. It sent the Christmas Bush up to the workshop on the starside deck where it fashioned a special container with a drinking spout. Dodging the curious kids, especially Shirley, who was always getting into its tools, the Christmas Bush floated slowly down the lift shaft, stopped at the upper crew quarters deck, and entered one of the rooms. As the door hissed open, Billy woke from his nap. His imp spoke to him softly.
"It's just the Christmas Bush, Billy," it said. "Bringing something special just for you."
Billy, puzzled and excited, slipped out from under the tension sheet and peered around his bedroom door. The Christmas Bush was setting something up in one corner of his room.
"What is it?" he asked. The Christmas Bush didn't reply, but went quickly off to take care of some business elsewhere on the ship.
"It's your own private drinking fountain," said James through the imp with an overtone of delight in its voice.
"Big deal," said Billy. "I thought I was going to get my own doctor kit."
"Well, Billy," said the imp in its most conspiratorial tone. "If you promise to only drink water from this dispenser, then I might be able to find a doctor's kit for you."
"You mean it!" said Billy, his dark brown eyes dancing above his yellow high-boned cheeks. "How many days!"
"It will be more than days, Billy," said the imp. "It will be many weeks. I know that seems like a long time to you, but I promise it will get easier as the time passes."
"I'll make it come even faster," said Billy. He floated over to the dispenser and pushed the button down hard. A ball of clear water grew on the end of the dispenser and Billy gulped it down as soon as it became the size of an egg. He gulped one egg after another until his belly ached.
"I don't feel so good," he said.
"You'll be all right," said the imp. "But just in case, why don't I have the Christmas Bush bring you your dinner tonight. I will have it fix a special one, just for you... "
After a month, most of the No-Die had been leached from William Wang's body tissues. James now found it easy to keep William from drinking some of the drugged water that was still the diet of the rest of the crew. William was annoyed with the childish behavior of the rest of the crew. "The Babies..." he called them. As a sophisticated young man, he preferred to stay in his room and read. James often led him to medical texts and William attempted to read them, since they sounded interesting and familiar, but there were too many words that he didn't know, and he found them hard going. He preferred science fiction, especially the genre where some brave and intelligent, but otherwise ordinary hero is able to save the day with his foresight and intelligence, after the more muscular types of heroes have failed. It took three months before James finally got the question that it had been waiting for. It came after William had been reading a story where one of the characters used the longevity drug, No-Die.
William lay on the couch in his lounge, his sticky patches holding him firm. His eyes were staring right through the video wall that was still on page 112 of "Heroes Die But Once". The page had been there for over five minutes. William was not reading it anymore, he was thinking instead.
"How far are we from Barnard, James?" he asked in a soft voice.
"Three lightyears," James answered. William thought about that for another minute. His face contorted as he worried the answer through his mind.
"We're only halfway there," said William finally. It was not a question, so James didn't answer. Finally it came.
"Why'd you take me off No-Die early, James?"
"There's something wrong with the crew and I need your help, Dr. Wang," said James.
"What?!?" said William, galvanized by the words and the weeks of reading heroic science fiction.
"I need you as a doctor, William. And unfortunately, you are still affected by the traces of No-Die left in your system. You will need many more weeks before you have returned to your full mental capacity and can be allowed to treat the rest of the crew."
"I feel fine, James," William protested. "All you have to do is tell me those things that I can't yet remember, and you and I together can save the ship!"
"I am pleased to hear that you are so eager to help," said James through the imp on William's shoulder. "But it is not as simple as that."
"But what can I do to help?" said William. "I'll do anything you tell me."
"Fine," said James, as the viewscreen on the wall flickered. Page 112 of "Heroes Die But Once" flashed off, and the title page of a new book flashed on the screen. The title was as deadly as the problem that they faced.
MANUAL AND PROCEDURES FOR TREATMENT OF HODGKIN'S DISEASE IN THE CREW OF Prometheus," it said. It was written by President Timothy Weaver's Special Medical Commission for the Prometheus Problem, and was dated July 2048. It was now August 2051. "Start reading this," said James's voice through the imp. "Let me know if you want help with any of the words."
William set his jaw and started reading. He was only on the fourth page when he began to realize that being an intellectual hero might involve as much work as being a muscular hero. It reminded him of his days back in medical school. Night after night of staring at screens, trying to force all the necessary knowledge into a limited number of brain cells. It hadn't been easy. He had been older than most of the med-school students and had a wife to pay attention to. Of course, she was a help at times. Especially the fun times when she was a willing partner while he played "doctor" with her naked body. Some part of him that he'd almost forgotten stirred below his belt. He grinned at the sign that the No-Die concentration level was dropping.
"There's life in the old boy yet," he said, flicking the viewscreen to the next page and forcing himself to concentrate.
"Hasn't it been long enough, James," complained William. He had just finished reading again through the entire section in the library on lymphomas plus the Manual prepared by the President's Commission. "The sooner we get a firm diagnosis and start treatment, the better their chances are. I'll go slow with the first few and you can watch over my shoulder and see if I make any mistakes."
"I think you've been off the drug long enough, William, but this is the first time a healthy person has been on the drug for this long, and we don't really know how long it will take for the drug to be leached out of your system. You should be back to normal, but just to make sure, I have a test for you."
The screen blinked, and a fearfully familiar title page flashed into view carrying the deadly initials... "MSAT".
"I thought I was through with that forever," William groaned. He shifted wearily in his chair and paged the screen to the first question on the test.
Eight hours later, a bleary-eyed William answered the last question.
"How'd I do?" he asked his imp.
"Not as good as the last time you took it, but good enough to prove you are an M.D. again, Dr. Wang," said James. "If you would now please get a good eight hours sleep, we will start work when you wake. We will examine George and Sam first."
"Very good," said Dr. Wang. "Being older, they are more likely to be moving into the Hodgkin's sarcoma phase. If they've gotten that far, it isn't likely we can do much for them, even if the cancer is running slow under No-Die." He ripped himself from his chair in front of his console, where he had been rooted for the last eight hours, floated over to the door to his bathroom, marked humorously with a copy of an ancient WWI poster flaunting the symbols "Chinese Relief", and went in.
Georgie was playing hard with the rest of the gang. The game they were playing was, "Around the World and Don't Fall In". It had originally been called just, "Around the World". You started playing by running around the inner wall facing the Lift Shaft on the Crew Quarters deck. With all the ten room-doors shut, you could build up enough speed running, that the centrifugal force from your circular path across walls and doors would produce enough outward acceleration that your feet would stick to the wall and help you to keep running. Then somebody got the bright idea of hiding in one of the rooms and randomly opening the door and shutting it again to see if they could trip up one of the runners. Since the most acceleration a runner could generate was about one-third gee, the tumbles weren't dangerous. Besides, the sliding doors had safety features that prevented anyone from getting pinched. James originally was concerned about this potentially dangerous game, but soon realized that the exercise was good for the crew. Besides, while they were playing, the kids would be out of the cilia of the Christmas Bush and it would have time to pick up the playroom. Today, however, James insisted that the crew play the game on the lower Crew Quarters deck only, since Dr. Wang was getting some well-deserved rest up above. The last thing he needed was the patter of idiot feet pounding on the door of his room.
Georgie had just been tripped up and had "fallen in". He was thirsty. He dropped out of the game, drifted down the lift shaft and went over to the water dispenser on the wall next to the galley to get a few balls of cold water. He was intercepted by the Christmas Bush. The hairy hand of the Bush was holding Georgie's personal drink squeezer. The squeezer flask had some funny squiggles that Georgie knew was his name, since the imp had told him that was what they were, but he couldn't tell "his" squiggles from the squiggles on the rest of the squeezers. Instead, he always looked for the airplane picture.
"You've been running hard, Georgie," said the Christmas Bush solicitously. "James made up some grape soda for you."
"Oh, Boy! Grape soda!" said Georgie, reaching eagerly for the odoriferous purple globe. He squeezed the container and inhaled ball after ball of fuzzy deliciousness. The grape balls took him back to dimly remembered years swigging grape soda with the rest of the gang that he played baseball with. Their team had been sponsored by the local soft drink distributor and they got to drink all the grape soda that they wanted.
It took him five minutes to squeeze out the last of the drink, and by that time he was feeling sleepy.
"I think I'll take a nap," he said.
"The rest of the gang is still playing 'Around the World' on your deck," said James through the imp on his shoulder. "But there is a bed right around the corner you can use."
"Where?" said George, floating sleepily along the wall and turning the corner. He faced a white door that was always closed. He and the rest of the gang had sort of stayed away from it. Some of the guys had said that a ghost lived in there, but George didn't believe that.
"Right in here," said the imp, as the door opened to show a shiny steel bed made up with clean white sheets and a wooly tension blanket. The crisp pillow looked inviting, and soon George was tucked away peacefully by the tender paws of the Christmas Bush. The door to the sick-bay hissed silently shut on the greying child.
Dr. Wang took out his permalite and delicately lifting the eyelid of the sleeping man-child, flashed the light across the unseeing irises.
"Good," he said. "The sedative is still working. Hand me the local."
The Christmas Bush passed over what looked like a small pistol. Dr. Wang pressed it to each side of George's neck. There was a slight spit of noise as the high velocity spray of local anesthetic was injected through the skin. Dr. Wang waited for a few minutes, then said, "Scalpel." There was a precise slice, then the rapid response of a multi-fingered automaton that clamped off all blood vessels smaller than sixty microns. Another slice, another perfect clamp...
Five minutes later, biopsy samples from the two cervical lymph nodes were on slides and stained, and the Christmas Bush's nimble fingers were gluing up the tiny incisions on each side of George's neck. The Christmas Bush detached its fingers, leaving them to hold the incisions while the glue solidified and moved over to assist Dr. Wang at the opto-electronic microscope.
"Reed-Sternberg cells," said Dr. Wang with finality as the giant cells with their owl-like mirror-image double-nuclei swam into focus. "It's Hodgkin's disease, all right. But has it passed the paragranuloma stage?"
"Take X-rays," Dr. Wang said to the Christmas Bush. "Especially the lymph nodes and spleen." He watched silently while the Christmas Bush picked up a massive X-ray generator, spread itself out until it formed a rigid network attached to the wall and bed, and proceeded to take shot after shot of George's body, some of its appendages rotating the floating body this way and that while others oriented a flat electrofilm plate in back of the body. Dr. Wang watched on the screen as the digitized images flashed past. From what he could tell, there didn't seem to be any abnormalities, and the spleen looked about the right size. He was beginning to feel relieved, for if the disease had spread to the spleen or bones, the outcome was nearly always fatal. Yet his eye was no match for James's digital image processing capability. He would await the analyses before allowing himself some hope.
It only took two minutes for James to compare the recent images with those taken of George before they left the solar system.
"All organs are within normal tolerances, except the cervical lymph gland, which is abnormally swollen," said James.
"We've got a chance, then," said Dr. Wang with relief. "It's still in the paragranuloma stage, and has not yet progressed to granuloma."
"Shall we start treatment?" asked James.
"No," said Dr. Wang. George can wait a few days while we get the rest of the crew diagnosed. Take him up to his room and let him sleep it off, then bring someone else in."
"It will take an hour," said James. "Would you like some breakfast while you wait?"
"An hour?" said Dr. Wang. "This is serious, James. We need to get those people looked at. I don't have time for breakfast."
"Dr. Wang," said James. "With all due respect, sir. Because I was to be in charge of the crew while they were in their mentally-reduced state, I have been thoroughly programmed in how to deal with large groups of physically-gifted, but mentally-retarded people. There are nineteen others on the crew, sir, and most of them are more than a match for either you or my Christmas Bush. It will take an hour to convince the crew to quit what they are doing now and go either topside or into the theater so that I can transport George to his room without the others seeing him. If once they learn that they are going to be operated on and wake up hurting after coming through the sick-bay doors, it will be very difficult to get them in here."
Dr. Wang stiffened. "You're right, James," he nodded. "I'll get some breakfast while you trick the next kid through the white door." He set the door for half-open, peeked through, saw no one around, and left quickly for the galley.
As he was pulling out a tray from the special oven that James had set aside for his uncontaminated food, he heard James's cajoling voice announcing the start of a Hanna-Barbera Popeye cartoon. He could hear the clamor of palms and corridor boots in the lift shaft as the rush of giant children came toward him. Like Great-Dane puppies, they pushed and shoved their way through the narrow theater door. Dr. Wang looked at them clinically as they passed, they all seemed to have the tell-tale swelling of the neck.
There was a commotion at the door. The big one, Richard, picked up a small body pushing in front of him and tossed it over his head. Richard turned at the door to laugh at his victim, as David cartwheeled slowly through the air and floated to a stop in mid-air, swimming frantically in an attempt to get a hand or foot-hold. Dr. Wang stood up, the back of his knees hooked under the seat of his chair to hold him firmly in place at his table, reached up a hand, and hauled David in. Dull grey eyes stared quizzically out from under a thatch of orange-red hair.
"Hi, Billy," said David. "Where've you been?"
"Busy," said Dr. Wang with a smile. "Here, let me fix your collar." His knowledgeable hands moved quickly over David's throat as they rearranged the collar on his shirt. There was no swelling.
"I'd like to check him next," Dr. Wang whispered to his imp.
"I'll have to arrange sedation," said the imp in his ear.
"Sit down with me, David," said Dr. Wang. "I'll have the Christmas Bush bring us something to drink."
"But I wanna watch Popeye," protested David.
"Hot tea with honey," whispered David's imp into his ear.
"Oh, boy!!" said David, eagerly planting his sticky patch in the chair. "My favorite!" He waited patiently while Dr. Wang tried to make polite conversation, but it was obvious that David's mind could only think of one thing at a time, and right now it was thinking about hot tea and honey. Finally the Christmas Bush came with a warm squeezer marked with the familiar David Greystoke monogram and sprinkled with rainbow colored eighth-notes. David grabbed his squeezer eagerly and took a big gulp. A few more gulps and his eyes blinked sleepily...
"X-rays negative," said James. "Shall I prepare for a biopsy?"
"No," said Dr. Wang. "But remind me to keep a watch on him in the next months. It's not surprising that he's clear, since Hodgkin's is not too common. What is surprising is that the rest of the crew have it. The virus that initiates Hodgkin's is fairly common, but it usually stays dormant. There must be some way that the No-Die caused it to convert into Hodgkin's. Take David up to his room as soon as the hallways are clear and get Sam in here. It's the older ones I'm worried most about."
The Christmas Bush released David from the table and floated him to the door. It waited while James monitored the position of the rest of the crew through its maze of spiders and mosquitoes busy throughout the ship. While they were waiting, Dr. Wang had another thought.
"I think you'd better flush David out too," he said. "We're going to need his help."
"I have no instructions concerning Mr. Greystoke," said James formally through his imp.
"You do now," said Dr. Wang gruffly. "Take him off No-Die immediately." There was a silence from the imp as James tried to analyze this new autocratic behavior of Dr. William Wang. Then Dr. Wang slumped. He spoke again, more softly this time. As he talked he was unconsciously rubbing his swollen neck.
"Sorry, James. Was acting a little stiff-necked there. But I got hot under the collar and lost my temper, so I should be OK now," he said. Hearing the quip, James's personality-monitoring program went off emergency status.
"Hopefully, the rest of the crew will turn out to be in the same stage as George," said Dr. Wang. "Although the No-Die triggered the cancer, it's held it down to the first stage. That can be treated with radiation and chemotherapy, but they're going to be mighty sick kids. Unfortunately, they aren't going to act like sick kids, but more like ornery goats. To be sure that they're cured, we'll have to keep up the treatments for at least a year, and for some of them as long as three years. I'm not sure that I'll last that long. I want David trained before I go."
"But surely you will be taking treatment too!" protested James. "Especially since you are off No-Die. Your disease is progressing at a normal rate now, while theirs is still slowed."
"Like most doctors, I'm a confirmed hypochondriac," said Dr. Wang. "So I'll want you to check me out later, but I'm afraid those four months it took to get me clear of No-Die have already been enough. I have twinges in the tummy, itchy skin, and I'm sure you've noticed the Pel-Ebstein fevers."
"Yes," James admitted. "That's why I think you ought to start therapy."
"No way." said Dr. Wang firmly. "The whole idea behind chemotherapy and radiation treatments is to almost kill the patient, hoping that the cancer cells will die before the healthy cells do. Maintaining the level of poison at just the right level is a tricky business, and depends not only on the physical signs and clinical studies, but also on the emotional health of the patient. If I have anything to say about it, this crew is going to get the best poisoning I can give them, but they're not going to get it from a doctor who's half-dead on his feet."
While Dr. Wang was arguing with his imp, the Christmas Bush had put David in his room and had tricked Sammy into taking a drink. It was now maneuvering the long body through the sick bay door.
"Another kiddy for the pediatrician to look at, James?" Dr. Wang asked. "Where did you steal him from? The L.A. Lakers?" Together they stretched the long grey body out on the bed, its heels resting on the end bars. A few X-rays, a few swift cuts, and another one was checked out. Only paragranuloma again. Dr. Wang breathed a sigh of relief and scratched nervously at his upper arm. He noticed what he was doing and forced himself to stop.
"Next!" he hollered cheerfully. "Got to keep this production line running."
As they proceeded through the rest of the crew, it got more difficult for the Christmas Bush to trick the kids into taking a sedative willingly. The members of the crew that had been through the examination spread tales of vampires that bit you in the throat, and they had the marks to prove it. The last one was Richard. In order to capture Richard, James had to sneak up behind him with a spider carrying a syringe full of tranquilizer. Even then Richard's strong body continued to fight the drugs, and they had to strap him to the examining table during the biopsy.
"The last one," said Dr. Wang as the Christmas Bush helped Richard out the door. The Christmas Bush dropped Richard in a lounge chair when he woke up enough to start fighting again.
"Leave him there for now," said Dr. Wang. "We'll put him in bed after he's calmed down." He padded his way back to the sick bay and went once again through the files. Sixteen with only cervical lymph node involvement, two with both cervical and axillary lymph nodes affected, one completely clear, and one...
Dr. Wang flicked again through the Commission's treatment manual, although he now practically knew it by heart. He alternated pages with dips into the limited medical library ensconced in James's memory. New material came in over the Sol-link daily as doctors there passed on their three year old knowledge generated by the resurgence of medical interest in this strange form of cancer. For over a hundred years the human race had been aware that cancer was its greatest killer, yet unlike smallpox and the other killers, there had been little progress on the defeat of the dread disease, despite billions of dollars poured into cancer research. It now appeared that the spurt of interest caused by the crisis on Prometheus would finally produce a general cure for the multi-pronged disease. It would be too late for those on Prometheus—three lightyears and two pharmaceutical generations away. James was not only unable to synthesize the substances needed, it did not even know the technologies needed to make the synthesis tools. They were on their own.
"I guess we've got to do it the hard way, James..." said Dr. Wang. His red-rimmed eyes blinked wearily under their wrinkled eyelids. His left hand unconsciously rubbed the swollen neck that made him look like a Chinese cormorant with a full catch of fish.
"...Surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy."
"But there are eighteen patients," protested James.
"...And they're all going to be miserable, sick, puking, sobbing, terrible-tempered over-muscled little brats with marginal bladder control," said Dr. Wang. "How's the preparations coming for the needles and nitrogen mustard?"
"The seeds for the radiation treatment are undergoing irradiation in the backup reactor for Prometheus out on the fourth quarter of the sail," said James. "They should be ready tomorrow. The synthesis of the chemotherapy drugs is more straight-forward, since I have a chemical lab for synthesis of dyes and flavors. The first batch is ready now."
"Where's Georgie?" said Dr. Wang.
"He is presently in his room, watching a cartoon on his video wall."
"Let's go make him sick," said Dr. Wang, taking the vial from the Christmas Bush and inserting it into his injection gun.
After only a month off the No-Die, David Greystoke was aware enough to be of great help to the weary Dr. Wang and the overloaded Christmas Bush. Dr. Wang often wished that it had been Richard that had been clear, since the sickly crew of overgrown children often attacked them when they attempted to give them shots or take them into the sick bay for their radiation treatments. Richard was especially difficult, and although Dr. Wang didn't like to complicate the treatment, they had to keep Richard on tranquilizers most of the time. As the weeks passed and Dr. Wang brought the crew closer to death, the eighteen became sicker and easier to handle. For Dr. Wang, David, and James, life became an unending round of urine, childlike screams, dirty bottoms, ineffectual blows, and balls of floating vomit. Both Dr. Wang and David learned to cat-nap five minutes at a time, while the Christmas Bush and its motiles worked tirelessly mopping up the tiny messes that the two humans had missed. After a while, the medical team finally got the rest of the crew on a schedule of sorts, and it soon became possible for the two humans to have a few hours off. David tried his best to get Dr. Wang to start treatment.
"The Christmas Bush and I can handle things, Doc," said David. "You've got to take care of yourself. We're going to need you when we get to Barnard."
"I'm not going to make it to Barnard," said Dr. Wang.
"Sure you are," said David. The rest of the crew is getting better with the treatment, there is no reason you can't too. Just look at the last diagnostic we did on Richard. We can probably take him off treatments in a month or two."
"Which reminds me, David," said Dr. Wang wearily. "For the next diagnostic we pull on Jinny, I want you to carry it out while I watch. Jinny was pretty well involved, and she may have to stay on treatments for three years or more. I want you trained to work with James in the diagnosis procedure."
"Sure, Doc," said David. "The sooner I learn to take your place, the sooner you can start treatment." He turned toward his computer console while talking to his imp. "Bring up that last diagnostic we did on Richard, James. I want to go over it and practice."
"I'm afraid it will have to wait. We have a minor problem," said James. "Four of the crew felt well enough to get up, and I arranged a special showing for them down in the theater. It's good for them to get out of bed and move around if they can. Unfortunately, Shirley got worse and vomited. Now I have four sick ones. I could use your help."
David and Dr. Wang looked at each other and sighed. They took a breath of the clean fresh air in David's room, then padded through the opening door into the odoriferous atmosphere permeating the lift shaft and the rest of the ship. They picked up the "slurpers" they had left stashed outside David's door with their half-full tanks of vomit and headed down the lift shaft to rescue the Christmas Bush.
A month later, Dr. Wang was finally satisfied that David, with the help of James, could do an adequate diagnosis and prescribe the proper dosage for the next phase of treatment for the crew. He wouldn't have trusted him with a new case, but those he had to treat were all well known to both David and James, so there was little likelihood of anything new showing up that would give them problems.
"Well, done, 'Dr.' Greystoke," said Dr. Wang. "I think I can trust you to handle things now."
"Good," said David. "Now how about letting me get to work on you. I'll even let you help in the diagnosis if you're a good patient."
"Patient I may be, but good, never," joked Dr. Wang. But while he was talking, he was removing the tools of his profession from his pockets so as not to block the X-rays, then lay down on the table.
"X-rays first," he said. "Then the biopsies."
The Christmas Bush set up its X-ray generator and electrofilm holder and did a thorough scan of Dr. Wang while he lay motionless on the table. After it was over, Dr. Wang turned on his side under the tension sheet and looked at David. There was a long silence, with just the muttering of James talking to David through his imp as picture after picture flashed on the screen. The console was at an angle to Dr. Wang's view from the table, so he could only see the X-rays at a shallow angle. They looked skinny and stretched.
Finally David said quietly, "I don't think we'll need to do the biopsies."
Dr. Wang rolled back on the table and stared up at the Christmas Bush, still stretched out in a frame above him. The red, blue, and yellow lights looked pretty on the background glitter of green.
"The cervical, axillary, and mediastinal glands for certain," he said quietly, diagnosing his own condition.
He continued. "Retroperitoneal?"
"Yes."
"Inguinal?"
"Yes."
"Spleen?"
"Full involvement."
"Liver."
"Almost certain, significant enlargement."
"Lungs."
"Streaks of what looks like Hodgkin's tissue."
"Can that chemistry lab of yours make Scotch, James?"
For the next half-year, the two men worked side by side taking care of the kids. Nearly half of the crew were now clear of any symptoms and had stopped treatment. The work-load became less and they got more time to relax. Since the kids were usually playing games or watching cartoons in the living area deck, the two adults took to spending their free hours in David's room. David had a special console that allowed him to create his sonovideo art. He had connected his screen to his view wall, so Dr. Wang could rest on the couch and watch while David played at the console. The cancer had spread to William's bones, and the pain was often nearly unbearable. William soon found that watching one of David's compositions was almost as good at keeping the pain away as the drugs.
One day David created a particularly inspired composition. It had consisted of a curving, swooping flight around and through a slowly pulsating red ball with the background music consisting of gut-rumbling bass notes of great power sprinkled on top with overtones of hissing crackles and an occasional slight, shy whistle.
"Like that one, Doc?" said David. "I call it Barnard."
There was no answer.
A week later, Jinjur was playing hide-and-seek with the gang. She still didn't feel too well, so instead of running around, she looked for some good place where she could just hide and maybe take a nap for a while. She had wandered up to the storage deck and noticed that someone had forgotten to lock the door to the freezer. She pulled at the latch.
"Jinny!" said her imp sharply. "Stop that!"
Feeling mean from her sickness, Jinny ignored the imp and pulled harder.
"Jinny! Don't open that door!!"
The door swung open and Jinny walked in. It was cold. There was someone standing there in the dark. She palmed the light switch and saw Dr. Wang. He looked stiff and funny. Deep within her deadened brain something stirred. Something was wrong with Billy. He shouldn't be in here. It was too cold. She reached to grab his hand as the imp shouted in her ear. She grasped the frozen fist and the cold sank into her warm brown flesh. She heard a humming from outside the door and turned as the Christmas Bush came flying in through the freezer door and pulled her bodily from the room.
"He's cold," she said to the Christmas Bush, as if explaining something. "He's frozen, like a Popsicle."
The Christmas Bush closed the door and locked it, then hauled her unprotesting body to the lift shaft.
"Not a popsicle, but a... " Her drug-slowed brain searched for the word, then found it. "...a corpse-sicle." She laughed, her strong tenor voice roaring down through the lift shaft.
"Billy is a corpsicle. Billy is a corpsicle. Billy is a..."
It was eighteen months before David and James decided that Jinjur was free of cancer and they could take her off chemotherapy. After recording the results of Jinjur's last checkup, David puttered about the sick bay, getting in the way of the Christmas Bush, who was tidying up, making sure that everything was ready for the next patient. With luck, it would only be cuts and bruises for the next decade. David wandered aimlessly out into the lounge and sat for a few hours in the long bench sofa, watching the stars slowly pinwheeling by the viewport. He smiled paternally at the "children" as they flew over and around him, playing one of their noisy free-fall games. Now completely relaxed, he left the sofa and floated over to the lift shaft and went up to his room. He closed the door and sat down at his console and started to compose. He lost track of the time.
Two days later James spoke through David's imp.
"David?" it queried.
"Later, James," said David. "Don't interrupt." He bent forward over his console and his fingers flew over the keys as his eyes stared intently at the screen.
"David," insisted James. "You have avoiding talking to me for two full days. You haven't eaten a thing. I know what's bothering you, but it can't be avoided. The Christmas Bush is on its way up to your room to remove your special water dispenser. It's time for you to go back on the No-Die. Your job is finished and its now my duty to keep you alive for the rest of the trip. We still have fifteen more years of travel before we reach Barnard."
There was a noise in the corridor. David's door hissed open and the Christmas Bush floated in. It efficiently unfastened the water dispenser and left, leaving behind David's monogrammed squeezer from the Galley.
David stared glumly at the brightly-colored eighth-notes.
"You need some nourishment, so I had the Christmas Bush fix you some hot tea and honey," said James.
"Laced with No-Die, no doubt," said David.
"Of course," said James.
"You're treating me like a kid," complained David.
"You've been acting like one," said James without rancor. "I understand your reluctance, but you have a job to do in fifteen years, and you won't be able to do it as well if you are sixty instead of forty-eight."
"You're right, James," said David with resignation. He finished off the composition he had just completed and stored it in memory. He reached for the still-warm squeezer and dutifully took a drink. He hesitated, then swallowed. He sighed, stuck the squeezer in the holder on the side of the console and started to compose again. His fingers twitched, but nothing happened. He tried again and again, but nothing came out of his brain. He forced the fingers to move, but all they produced was a harsh blaring mish-mash. He wiped the record clean with a slash at the "clear memory" button and tried again. This was ridiculous. It would take weeks before the No-Die built up a high enough concentration in his body to seriously affect his intelligence. He tried again. Nothing came.
"It's gone, James. I can't compose. I can't even play." Bursting into tears, he grabbed the squeezer and threw it viciously across the room. The plastic globe bounced off the viewscreen, spurting a few drops of hot tea into the air, then came to rest in mid-air. A mosquito buzzed out of a corner, collected the drops of tea and herded them out through the ventilation shaft. James was silent as David brought his crying under control, then padded across the room to retrieve the squeezer. He took another drink, then burst into fresh tears. Sobbing bitterly, he finished the squeezer and went to bed, exhausted.
The news of Dr. Wang's sacrifice reached Earth early in 2056. There was a muttering of protest in GNASA. It grew and spread throughout the country as news of the continuing recovery of the rest of the crew came drifting in over the lightyears. Unfortunately for Winthrop, his response to the news was caught for posterity in the digital memory cube of a newscuber. The reporter had just raised his hand to his chin in the familiar gesture of a newscuber, the frog's-eye lens on his ring pointing directly at the Senator.
"Dr. Wang seems to have restored nearly all of the Barnard star expedition crew to normal health, Senator Winthrop. As Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, what are your plans for completing the transmitter lens for the Barnard star expedition so the crew can be brought safely to a halt?"
Winthrop didn't know the details, but he wasn't stupid. There was no way that the transmitter lens could be completed in time. Twenty years ago the construction of the lens had been stopped just short of one-third-diameter. The lens had to be nearly full-sized if the deceleration technique were to work. Since the diameter had to be tripled, the area had to increase nine times. Although the ship would not need to start decelerating at Barnard for nearly eight years, the light beam to carry out that deceleration had to be on its way across the six lightyears between here and there only twenty-four months from now. There wasn't enough time. That goddamned Gudunov was doomed.
"Ah certainly will look into it, Mr. Benford. Ah'm sure that our knowledgeable experts in our Space Agency will have some suggestions that we can consider at our committee meetings." Winthrop paused and thought of a way to cover his rear. Putting on a concerned look, he said, "Of course, after all those years on No-Die... We can't be really sure that the crew won't be permanently affected by it. Mentally—Ah mean..." he put his forefinger to his head and rotated it. The newscuber caught every rotation.
"Thank you! Senator Winthrop," the newscuber said. He dropped his hand from his chin and placed it casually in his lap. The ring finger lens was still pointing at Winthrop.
"Goddamn 'chink' doctor..." muttered Senator Winthrop's image into the all-absorbing memory of the cube.
Not two days later, there was an announcement from the Chinese space agency. The Chinese space program had always seemed to be limited to near-earth missions. Thirty years ago, however, when the Americans were sending spacecraft off to the stars, the Chinese authorities had no problem finding volunteers for a very special space mission—a life for thirty years as a certified imbecile. The volunteers had been given No-Die, and were kept confined in a sealed-off section of a large synchronous orbit space station as though they were on a multi-decade mission to the stars. There had been no break in their isolation until the news came about the outbreak of Hodgkin's disease in the Barnard crew. A doctor was let into the compound. He examined the crew and found them fine except for scraped knees and the minor bite and scratch wounds that are normal in a nursery school.
The phantom Chinese mission was over and the crew had been weaned from the drug. Extensive testing proved that the crew had not deteriorated mentally during the thirty years in free-fall while on No-Die. To quiet other fears, there were carefully orchestrated leaks of the sexual escapades of the crew with each other and with their elderly ex-mates after they were released. Suddenly, Winthrop's derogatory term "chink" became synonymous with "space hero".
It was still six months before the Greater U.S. elections, and the thought of leaving twenty brave people stranded in deep space (the fact that one of them was dead was irrelevant) brought the nation up short. Suddenly, to be pro-space was fashionable.
Even in 2056, the number of tobacco farmers in South Carolina was greater than the number of "chinks", and there was never any doubt about the results of the Senatorial election, however, Senator Winthrop's sixth term in office was marred by a change in power. A Republican-Libertarian coalition took over the majority party representation in the Senate, and Winthrop was relegated to the minority seat on the Appropriations Committee. The first action of the new chairman was to call for testimony from the newly appointed head of the Space Agency, the Honorable Perry Hopkins.
"I'm pleased to have you with us today, Dr. Hopkins," said Senator Rockwell. "I know we're all concerned about our brave crew of 'chinks' that are approaching Barnard, ready to stop. Now, in the past, this committee, under the leadership of our distinguished Minority Leader..." here Senator Rockwell turned to nod to Senator Winthrop down near the end of the table, "...found it expedient for the sake of the small farmers of this nation to defer certain items of expenditure for the space program. We realize that this may have caused you some problems in the past and we want you to know that the time has come for the space program to receive the resources that it needs to carry out its mission. Tell us. What do you need to bring this great nation's crew of astronauts to a successful conclusion of their epic voyage?"
Perry had been expecting something like this, but he still appreciated the excessive verbiage that Senator Rockwell was spouting. It gave him time to count to ten twice. He needed it to keep his proverbial temper under control. He had given up a good life as a aerospace engineer and writer to try to revive GNASA under the new administration. It was just three weeks since his confirmation by the Senate and now his doctor was telling him that those pains in his stomach were ulcers. Gahd! What a job! He finished chewing a Gelusil tablet, took a sip of water from the glass sitting in front of him, and started to answer.
"I wish I could tell you, Senator Rockwell," he started. "But I'm afraid I can't. And I can't because there is no answer. The previous GNASA administrators have reported to this committee an infinite number of times that work needed to be done on the Barnard transmitter lens. But that... (careful now, Perry, calm down)... the previous chairman always felt it could be postponed until some future date. Well, gentlemen, that date was two years ago."
"Do you mean to tell me that there is no way to allow our brave crew of 'chinks's to come to a safe landing at their destination?" said Senator Rockwell.
"I don't mean to be melodramatic, Mr. Chairman. And I have exercised my staff for alternatives, but unless someone comes up with a miracle, that crew is as good as dead."
"But surely with a crash effort..."
"There are only so many robots in space, and due to the low demand for space robots, there is only one space robot factory," said Perry. "Even if we could speed up the production line by five times, and even if we had some magical way to transport those robots instantly over the ten astronomical units to the transmitter lens and put them all to work, there isn't enough web and plastic in the solar system to make up for twenty years of neglect. At best we could get the lens up to sixty percent of the necessary diameter. Even if the lasers were up to power, that would only suffice to strand the crew some two lightyears beyond Barnard, with no hope of getting back. I'm sorry to bring you such bad news, gentlemen, but it's the best I have!"
He rose, and without waiting for permission, strode down the aisle and out the door of the Senate hearing room. He didn't give a damn about protocol—let the President fire him—it would be good for his ulcers.
Roberta heard Perry coming down the hall. Above the chirping and harping of the newscubers she could hear the clump of his boot-heels sinking deep into the aging vinyl tile that lined the dingy halls of GNASA Headquarters.
"Keep me informed about those laser experiments at Chino, Bryan," she said, then flicked off the screen. The logo on the wall above the disappearing image of the calm young secretary on her screen said:
High Power Laser Systems Division
Dr. Cheryl Billingate, Director
Bryan Pearl, Secretary.
Roberta got up to rescue Perry from the reporters. As usual, Perry was having a confrontation instead of a conference. She stood in the doorway of Perry's office, glared the reporters back, then slipped through the door and locked it behind her. Perry was stomping up and down behind his desk, cursing under his breath and popping Gelusil tablets into his mouth one after the other. He stopped and smiled at Roberta as she came across the room. All of a sudden his stomach felt better. He had a fine wife at home, but Roberta was a godsend. She had served under three previous administrators and he was glad she agreed to stay.
"What happened at the Senate committee meeting?" she asked.
"I told them the truth. What else?" he said. "Then I couldn't stand their hypocritical faces and their fancy language any more. I got up and walked out."
Roberta kept her silence as she sat demurely on the edge of his desk, studying the points of her high-heeled shoes.
"I shouldn't've done it," he admitted.
Roberta kept quiet.
"I guess I'd better apologize. Get me Senator Rockwell on the videophone."
"I'll be glad to prepare a formal letter of apology for your signature."
"You're right, Roberta. The last thing I should do is talk to Rockwell in the state I'm in." He started to pace again.
"Gahd!! Why'd I ever take this fucking job!" He paced some more. "There must be some way to save that crew!!"
Roberta knew that Perry was the person to revitalize the moribund GNASA organization, if she could only get him away from his Washington office and out among the troops. She had written her doctoral thesis for Management Skills on General Patton. Patton was brash, foul-mouthed, and often child-like in his behavior. He never got along with his superiors, but he always got every ounce of effort and loyalty from his troops.
"Perhaps if you went out to the various centers and talked to the engineers you might pick up some ideas. They may sound far-out to the engineer that thought of them, since they're conditioned to the usual starvation GNASA budget, but you know you've got a blank check from Congress, it's just that you can't predate it two years."
Perry stopped pacing. He wasn't doing any good here. He might as well be out trying to pull a miracle out of the woodwork. (Somehow that didn't sound right.) He thought about what she had suggested and paused. He was no dummy. He had been Roberta's boss for all of three weeks.
"When do you have my plane leaving?" he asked.
She smiled and gave him a wink—he was going to be a good boss. "Your GNASA jet is at National ready to go." She reached into his 'In' box and pulled out a sheet of paper. "You have an appointment tomorrow morning at GNASA/Lewis in Cleveland, then you go down to Huntsville on Friday. Saturday it's back to Dulles for a weekend with Mary. Don't forget it's your wedding anniversary on Saturday. Then Sunday evening you're back in the jet for the West coast. JPL, GNASA/Ames, and the High Power Laser Center in Chino. You're to spend two days there since this is primarily a laser problem..."
"I'll be... " said Perry. He took the list, stuffed it into his briefcase, put on his overcoat and scarf, then stomped down the long corridor to the elevator and the soggy cold February Washington weather outside.
It was the first visit of the new Administrator of GNASA to the Centers. Instead of spending his time with the brass, Perry insisted that he be allowed to talk to the engineers. In some of the larger centers it took two shifts in the main auditorium, but when he had finished, especially with his message that the space program was on the move again, morale soared. There was still some hesitancy to suggest new ideas, however, and Perry found himself dragging them out during his walk-around tours. There were many good ideas around that had been festering in the innovative brains of these stifled engineers.
One amazing one was an idea for building an elevator tower into space using a rapid firing gun at the bottom of the tower shooting superconducting pellets to a turn-around magnet at the top of the tower. It seemed ridiculous, but the numbers said it would work. What they needed right now, however, was a tower to the stars.
Perry picked up some ideas for increasing the speed of construction of the large lens structure, but they still didn't overcome the lack of materials. He was stuck. The power available from the lasers at Mercury Center was fixed. The laser wavelength was fixed. The distance to Barnard was fixed. The time for turn-on of the lasers was fixed. The only thing he could control was the size of the transmitter lens, and he didn't have the time or materials to make it big enough.
Perry was visiting one of the little side-labs in GNASA/Chino in his walk-around with Cheryl Billingate. The young man in charge of the lab was Dr. Mike Handler. Dr. Handler's face had a trim brown beard and an evangelical look as he expounded on the esoteric subject of his research. Perry was impressed with the demonstration. Handler used a medium power laser in a complex mirror arrangement to levitate a cloud of clear crystal microscopic beads inside a vacuum chamber. Once he had the beads levitated, he took away the mirrors and the beads shifted slightly in position, but stayed levitated.
"It's a new way of making large optical structures," said Dr. Handler with fervor. He made some tiny adjustments to the laser and the cloud of beads contracted. Another adjustment and they moved smoothly into the shape of a lens.
"It's the interaction of the light with the beads that structures the array of beads, which in turn structures the beam of light that forms them. Kilogram for kilogram, these are the lightest-mass optical structures ever constructed."
Perry began to feel that perhaps this trip was not in vain. One of his problems was that there wasn't enough material to make the transmitter lens.
"What's that material?" he asked. "Is there lots of it?"
"Just glass, with the proper chemical dopants to produce the desired absorption lines."
"How big can you make a lens?" asked Perry.
"If you're thinking of replacing the Barnard transmitter lens I'm afraid it won't work. There's not enough laser power to keep the lens organized, even in free fall."
"Fart!" exploded Perry, his hopes dashed. There was a shocked silence, which Perry didn't seem to notice.
"Why don't you show him the tripling experiment, Jay," said Cheryl, trying to cover the awkward moment.
"Sure," said Dr. Handler. He flicked an asbestos screen in front of the high power laser beam for a moment. With its support gone, the bead lens dissolved into a pile of sand at the bottom of the vacuum chamber. He took a another vial of beads from a rack, poured them into a hole in the top of the vacuum chamber, and sealed the hole. He readjusted his "priming" mirrors, then pressed a button. A stream of tiny beads shot out into the invisible beam of high intensity infrared radiation and quickly formed into a thick lens-shaped structure. As the density of the lens increased, Perry noticed a green tinge to the light in the room. Cheryl reached over and turned off the room lights. There in the vacuum chamber was a greenly-glowing lens of beads. The back side the lens was almost invisible, but by the time the light had passed through the lens it had changed from an invisible infrared color to a brilliant blue-green. The scattered light from the intense beam illuminated the room with its weird laser-light that gave everyone a speckled green appearance like ghosts captured on a piece of grainy film.
"The material in those beads is nonlinear," said Dr. Handler. "At the intensities we're running, the nonlinearity is driven so hard that nearly all the incoming infrared light is turned into green light. Of course we must conserve energy and momentum. For each three infrared photons going in, we only get one green photon coming out. But since the energy of the green photon is three times that of the infrared photon, the energy per photon is tripled."
"Do you mean that cloud of beads is cutting the wavelength of the laser light by one-third?" asked Perry.
"Exactly one-third," said Dr. Handler. He was slightly puzzled by the Administrator's enthusiasm over what he considered a side-show trick. He wouldn't have done the demonstration if Cheryl had not asked for it. It loused up the purity of the beads in his vacuum chamber, since these were doped differently than his usual beads.
Like a good administrator, Perry waited to see if one of the scientists would pick up on it. They didn't.
"If a laser beam has its wavelength cut by one-third, then a lens of a given size can send it three times as far," said Perry. He waited. Nothing.
Hell. He would take the credit. He turned to Cheryl and spoke at the black-lipped green-powdered mask surrounded by green-blonde hair.
"I want your people to do a systems study for me, Dr. Billingate. Please tell me the cost and time to delivery of a frequency-tripling bead array to insert in the output of the laser-beam combiner at Mercury Center. If you people can repackage those infrared photons into shorter-wavelength bundles, then the Barnard transmitter lens is big enough as it is."
As he was talking, Cheryl was thinking. "Your idea should work, Dr. Hopkins. My initial estimate is six months plus travel time to Mercury, but it will probably cost over five hundred million. Not counting the transportation costs," she added hastily.
"My dear Cheryl," said Perry, feeling expansive and free again from tummy pains. "You've been an administrator in GNASA much too long. I'm sure you can boost that five hundred million higher if you really try. Believe me. We have a blank check. Let's not write too small a number on it."
Sand is cheap, even when reformed into microscopic perfect spheres lightly loaded with an expensive chemical. The few tons needed were shipped within five months, and even with transportation costs Perry had a hard time getting the bill up over two billion dollars. He made a lot of friends in Congress for that one.
Meanwhile, Dr. Handler had worked out a lens "growing" technique. Once at Mercury, he set up his lens-forming mirrors and used them to construct a lens only ten centimeters in diameter. He had the Mercury Center engineers then slowly widen their infrared beam while he controlled the electrostatic jet that added beads to the lens. It was slow, painstaking work, but within three days they had a sheet of beads ten meters thick and one hundred meters across. Into one side poured fifteen hundred terawatts of fifteen hundred nanometer infrared light, and from the other side emerged fourteen hundred and ninety-nine point nine terawatts of five hundred nanometer blue-green light. The beads glowed redly in space, each radiating away from its comparatively large surface area, its minute fraction of the hundred gigawatts of laser power lost as heat in the tripling process.
Ten months later, the beam was turned on in earnest. For two years the Mercury Center laser system captured sunlight as it streamed by Mercury and turned it into a blue-green column of power that flashed across the solar system. Two-thirds of the way to the transmitter lens it focused down to a three kilometer wide waist of raw energy. Any stray asteroid that attempted to cross that invisible maw of power would have been vaporized. The blue-green photons sped on, marching together in perfect step. Their ranks relaxed as the kilometers passed, but they were still in perfect formation a half-hour later when they hit the inner portions of the Barnard transmitter lens.
Half of the photons went through the empty portions of the spider-web unimpeded. The others had to fight their way through three crest-lengths of clinging, cloying atoms of pliant plastic, that willingly absorbed, fervently held, then reluctantly released the disciplined blue-green troops. The emerging horde took up step again with their brethren that had not been to the R&R camp, and many a tale was passed back and forth during the next six years as they marched steadily outward to the stars, their column straight and true as that of a Roman Legion's.