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Read Ebook: Patrol by Hamling William L
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Ebook has 142 lines and 6476 words, and 3 pages
"You see?" Cole said, in great agitation. "Something is wrong with him."
As they watched, the stricken Phillips retched and vomited again. MacMartree's nostrils crinkled at the offensive odor of it.
"Throw a disposal over that," he directed Abner. The younger man went to his pack and returned with the disposal unit. One of the disposal wafers took care of the mess Phillips had made.
"What's wrong with him?" Abner asked, completely bewildered.
MacMartree searched his memory for the word. "Sick," he said at last. "Phillips is sick."
"Sick?" Cole echoed.
"What's that?" Abner wanted to know.
"I don't know, exactly. I've only read about it, in my books. A long time ago, men got sick, like this."
"But why?" Abner and Cole said it together.
"I don't know." He bent down over Phillips. "Are you going to do that anymore?" he asked.
Phillips looked up at him dully. "I ... I don't think so," he said, weakly and breathlessly.
"Lie back," MacMartree commanded. "Close your eyes. Sleep if you can. Maybe we can help you."
Phillips nodded, lips bluish and tight, his whole face a ghastly pewter hue. He put his head down, eyelids fluttered shut. MacMartree regarded him in silence for several minutes.
"This could be what you've been wanting," he said at last to Cole and Abner.
"Wanting?"
"Something's happening, isn't it? Something we didn't look for. Maybe there's reason for patrols after all, eh?"
Cole frowned. "You mean...." He didn't finish it. He got up quickly, and strode to the scanner.
"Everything's all right outside," he said, after a moment. "Everything outside the screen is just as it was at sundown."
MacMartree shrugged. "Nothing from out there could do this to Phillips anyway. Nothing gets through the screen."
Cole returned and squatted down with the others. He picked up a handful of pebbles and began flicking them, one at a time, at the force-screen, watching them bounce back into the area.
"There's an explanation for this, of course," MacMartree said, with a tone of confidence he did not feel.
The others nodded. After a time, Phillips' breathing grew more regular and he slept. As they watched, the rest of them saw the color creep back into his face, and sensed that he was better now. But still, it was a puzzling thing. Phillips had been ... what was the word?... Sick. According to MacMartree's histories, no man had been sick for the last thousand years.
They decided to return to their sleep-kits for the remaining hour of darkness, but they never got there.
Rising from his position beside the sleeping Phillips, Abner's long frame lurched suddenly forward. He sprawled at the feet of MacMartree and Cole ... and both men heard the dull snap as Abner hit the ground, his left arm caught beneath his body.
MacMartree cursed. "Blast it, Abner, pick up your feet!" Then to Cole: "Is the bone-mending stuff here, or in the ship?"
Cole started to say that he had brought it along, all right, but he was interrupted by Abner's scream.
The sound of it rasped across their nerves. They stared down at the writhing Abner, their brains numbed by that horrible, entirely unfamiliar sound.
"What is it?" Cole questioned, finding his voice after a moment. MacMartree ignored him, kneeling beside Abner.
Abner's wind sucked into his lungs, and was expelled in another fearful scream. In spite of himself, MacMartree felt a prickling along the back of his neck....
"Abner," he said intensely, "Abner, listen to me!"
But the younger man was doubled in a knot of agony, screaming and screaming and screaming.
MacMartree struck him in the face, with his open palm at first, but when that did no good, with doubled fists, hard. Finally Abner's screams stopped. Then MacMartree tried again.
"Listen, Abner ... can you hear me now?"
Abner's voice came twisting up, thin and quavery.
"I--hear you ... yes, I hear you...."
"Your arm, is that what makes you scream? Your arm?"
"Yes, yes," moaning now ... "yes, my arm ... I want to die ... let me die, please Mac, please...."
"Hurt," Abner echoed. Then he began to croon it, as though there was something soothing in the sound of it: "Hurt, hurt, hurt in my arm...." He made a twisted little hymn of it, singing it over and over again.
MacMartree shrugged, and looked up at Cole, who was still standing helplessly by.
"Fetch the serum," MacMartree said. "I'll try setting the bone...." He grasped the twisted arm as he spoke, and one, tearing, final scream broke out of Abner's throat. Before MacMartree could react, Abner went rigid in every limb, then as suddenly relaxed and was still.
"He's dead," Cole choked. "Abner is dead!"
MacMartree felt for the heartbeat, shook his head.
"Only unconscious. The hurt did that, I suppose." He sat back on his haunches, thoroughly baffled. Cole sat, too, and a few yards away, where they had left him, Phillips stirred. He rolled over on his side and propped himself shakily on one elbow, roused by that last, ringing shriek of Abner's.
"It isn't right," MacMartree said, to neither of them. "The hurt, that went with sickness--a thousand years ago." He looked up at them.
"I read about these things, you see," he told them. "There was hurt, and there was sickness. When they knew enough about the human brain, scientists simply bred into the part of our minds that makes us aware of hurt the power to shut it off, automatically, before we're even conscious it exists. And as for sickness...." He looked at Phillips, shaking his head. "They got rid of that, too, and now...."
Neither of the younger men said anything for a time. They waited, desperately relying on the older man to help them, to bring them through this, whatever it was, into familiar ground again. At length, Cole spoke.
"Mac," he began softly.
MacMartree looked at him, waiting.
"Mac, I ... I feel something ... I don't know ... perhaps it's sickness ... or hurt ... I've never known those things...." He held forth his hands, and they were twitching and trembling.
To keep his mind occupied, he counted off the required minutes for the serum to take effect. Then, when the time had passed, he gave the injured arm an experimental twist.
It flapped loosely at the break, as before, and Abner stirred and moaned behind the veil of his unconsciousness.
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