Chapter XVII

They were too sick with gasoline fumes to count the passing hours or days. Food was brought to them from time to time, but it tasted like avgas. They could not think for the sick headaches that pounded incessantly behind their eyes. When Lee developed vomiting spasms that would not stop, Charles Orsino pounded on the bulkhead with his fists and yelled, his voice thunderous in the metal compartment, for an hour.

Somebody came at last--Regan. The light stabbed Charles’ eyes when he opened the door. “Trouble?” Regan asked, smirking.

“Miss Falcaro may be dying,” Charles said. His own throat felt as though it had been gone over with a cobbler’s rasp. “I don’t have to tell you your life won’t be worth a dime if she dies and it gets back to Syndic Territory. She’s got to be moved and she’s got to have medical attention.”

“Death threat from the dago?” Regan was amused. “I have it on your own testimony that the Syndic is merely morale and people and credit--not a formidable organization. Yes, there was a mike in here. One reason for your discomfort. You’ll be gratified to learn that I thought most of your conversation decidedly dull. However, the lady will be of no use to us dead and we’re now in the Seaway entering Lake Michigan. I suppose it can’t do any harm to move you two. Pick her up, will you? I’ll let you lead the way--and I’ll remind you that I may not, as the lady said, be a four-goal polo player but I am a high expert with the handgun. Get moving.”

Charles did not think he could pick his own feet up, but the thought of pleading weakness to Regan was unbearable. He could try. Staggering, he got Lee Falcaro over his shoulder and through the door. Regan courteously stood aside and murmured: “Straight ahead and up the ramp. I’m giving you my own cabin. We’ll be docking soon enough; I’ll make out.”

Charles dropped her onto a sybaritic bed in a small but lavishly-appointed cabin. Regan whistled up a deckhand and a ship’s officer of some sort, who arrived with a medicine chest. “Do what you can for her, mister,” he told the officer. And to the deckhand: “Just watch them. They aren’t to touch anything. If they give you trouble, you’re free to punch them around a bit.” He left, whistling.

The officer fussed unhappily over the medicine chest and stalled by sponging off Lee Falcaro’s face and throat. The deckhand watched impassively. He was a six-footer, and he hadn’t spent days inhaling casing-head fumes. The trip-hammer pounding behind Charles’s eyes seemed to be worsening with the fresher air. He collapsed into a seat and croaked, with shut eyes: “While you’re trying to figure out the vomiting, can I have a handful of aspirins?”

“Eh? Nothing was said about you. You were in Number Three with her? I suppose it’ll be all right. Here.” He poured a dozen tablets into Charles’ hand. “Get him some water, you.” The deckhand brought a glass of water from the adjoining lavatory and Charles washed down some of the tablets. The officer was reading a booklet, worry written on his face. “Do you know any medicine?” he finally asked.

The hard-outlined, kidney-shaped ache was beginning to diffuse through Charles’ head, more general now and less excruciating. He felt deliciously sleepy, but roused himself to answer: “Some athletic trainer stuff. I don’t know--morphine? Curare?”

The officer ruffled through the booklet. “Nothing about vomiting,” he said. “But it says curare for muscular cramp and I guess that’s what’s going on. A lipoid suspension to release it slowly into the bloodstream and give the irritation time to subside. Anyway, I can’t kill her if I watch the dose...”

Charles, through half-opened eyes, saw Lee Falcaro’s arm reach behind the officer’s back to his medicine chest. The deckhand’s eyes were turning to the bed--Charles heaved himself to his feet, skyrockets going off again through his head, and started for the lavatory. The deckhand grabbed his arm. “Rest, mister! Where do you think you’re going?”

“Another glass of water--”

“I’ll get it. You heard my orders.”

Charles subsided. When he dared to look again, Lee’s arm lay alongside her body and the officer was triple-checking dosages in his booklet against a pressurized hypodermic spray. The officer sighed and addressed Lee: “You won’t even feel this. Relax.” He read his setting on the spray again, checked it again against the booklet. He touched the syringe to the skin of Lee’s arm and thumbed open the valve. It hissed for a moment and Charles knew submicroscopic particles of the medication had been blasted under Lee’s skin too fast for nerves to register the shock.

His glass of water came and he gulped it greedily. The officer packed the pressurized syringe away, folded the chest and said to both of them, rather vaguely: “That should do it. If, uh, if anything happens--or if it doesn’t work--call me and I’ll try something else. Morphine, maybe.”

He left and Charles slumped in the chair, the pain ebbing and sleep beginning to flow over him. Not yet, he told himself. She hooked something from the chest. He said to the deckhand: “Can I clean the lady and myself up?”

“Go ahead, mister. You can use it. Just don’t try anything.”

The man lounged in the door-frame of the lavatory alternately studying Charles at the wash-basin and Lee on the bed. Charles took off a heavy layer of oily grease from himself and then took washing tissues to the bed. Lee Falcaro’s spasms were tapering off. As he washed her, she managed a smile and an unmistakable wink.

“You folks married?” the deckhand asked.

“No,” Charles said. Weakly she held up her right arm for the washing tissue. As he scrubbed the hand, he felt a small cylinder smoothly transferred from her palm to his. He slid it into a pocket and finished the job.

The officer popped in again with a carton of milk. “Any better, miss?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good. Try to drink this.” Immensely set up by his success in treatment, he hovered over her for a quarter of an hour getting the milk down a sip at a time. It stayed down. He left trailing a favorable prognosis. Meanwhile, Charles had covertly examined Lee’s booty: a pressurized syringe labeled morphine sulfate sol. It was full and ready. He cracked off the protective cap and waited his chance.