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Lord knows why, but I saw a definite connection between this sick crewman and yesterday's happenings, and the mystery of those events concerned me at least as much as the man's sickness. Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus's stern and invited me into a cabin located next to the sailors' quarters.
Technically, he was a crewman, just as I was a scientist; but actually, he felt more like one of us. Lomax looked surprised. "What samples, Jenny? I haven't seen Hendrix for two weeks." "You " She stopped, bit her lip, and frowned. She swung on me. "Paul, have you seen him?" I shook my head. "Not since last night. He was asking Eve and Walt to wake him up early, then." "That's funny.
Intensity Five, two minutes. Dismissed." The Guesser bowed his head and saluted, then he turned and walked out the door. The sergeant-at-arms didn't need to follow him; he had been let off very lightly. He marched off toward the Disciplinary Room with his head at the proper angle ready to lift it if he met a lesser crewman, ready to lower it if he met an executive officer.
"I don't think they're expecting you with the surface party, General." "Probably not or they'd be here. Earth crew?" "They've been out ten months or so, sir." "We will have colds, then. Would you take me to Mr. Tucker, please?" To the other suited men he said, "Good, fast job." General Shorter followed the crewman up the spiral staircase and along the corridor.
A crewman named Corey moved into an airlock with one of the bags of empty tin cans. Brent watched in a routine fashion through a glass in the lock-door. The pumps began to exhaust the air from the airlock. Corey's space suit inflated visibly. Presently the pump stopped. Corey opened the outer door. He went out, paying plastic rope behind him. An instant later he reappeared and removed the rope.
He wasn't quick enough with the wallet, and the doctor took it from him. "Medical Lobby authorization. If he has any money, it covers my fee and the rest goes to his own Lobby." There were several bills, all of large denominations. He turned the ticket over and began filling in the death certificate. "Arthur Billings. Space Lobby. Crewman.
Joe fiddled with his spoon a moment, and then said: "The crewman I was to have subbed for if he didn't get well he did, didn't he?" Sally answered reluctantly: "Y-yes." Joe said measuredly: "Well, then that's that! I guess it will be all right for me to stick around and watch the take-off?" Sally's eyes were misty. "Of course it will, Joe! I'm so sorry!"
"Well, you know who takes care of his own," the crewman said. "Give me something for effort; I tried hard enough." "No, I'm not going home yet," Nip was answering. "I have hold-room for the wax of another one, if he isn't bigger than ordinary. I'm going to go down on the bottom when the winds start and sit it out, and then try to get a second one." Then he saw me.
But it conveyed such contempt and derision and hatred of all things Mekinese that for months to come men would whisper jokes based on what an Isis crewman had said on Tralee's air. The respect the planet's officials craved would drop below its former low level. Time passed. Bors, of course, could not send a landing-party anywhere, lest it be sniped.
And to the Free Trader it was the extra and invisible crewman on every ship that raised. But there were deaths and deaths And Dane could not forget the gruesome legends Van Rycke collected avidly as his hobby had recorded in his private library of the folk lore of space.
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