Part 3

Jordan had anticipated that. He'd swung off the tank and was busy expelling the water from an auxiliary compartment into space. As soon as the compartment was empty, he led a hose from it to the tank.

The pumps sucked and the acid level fell slowly.

Docchi felt the ship lurch familiarly. "Hurry," he called out to Jordan.

The gravital unit was acting up. Presumably it was getting ready to cut out. If it did--well, a free-floating globe of acid would be as destructive to the ship and those in it as a high velocity meteor cluster.

Jordan jammed the lever as far as it would go and held it there. "All out," said Jordan presently, and let the hose roll back into the wall. Done in plenty of time. The gravital unit remained in operation for a full minute.

As soon as she was weightless, Anti rose out of the tank.

In all the time Docchi had known her, he had seen no more than a face framed in blue acid. Periodic surgery, where it was necessary, had trimmed the flesh from her face. For the rest, she lived submerged in a corrosive liquid that destroyed the wild tissue as fast as it grew. Or nearly as fast.

Docchi averted his eyes.

"Well, junkman, look at a real monster," snapped Anti.

* * * * *

Humans were not meant to grow that large. But it was not obscene to Docchi, merely unbelievable. Jupiter is not repulsive because it is the bulging giant of planets; it is overwhelming, and so was Anti.

"How will you live out of the acid?" he stammered.

"How really unobservant some men are," said Anti loftily. "I anticipated our little journey and prepared for it. If you look closely, you will notice I have on a special surgery robe. It's the only thing in the Solar System that will fit me. It's fabricated from a spongelike substance and holds enough acid to last me about thirty-six hours."

She grasped a rail and propelled herself toward the corridor. Normally that was a spacious passageway. For her it was a close fit.

Satellites, one glowing and the other swinging in an eccentric orbit, followed after her.

* * * * *

Nona was standing before the instrument panel when they came back. There was an impressive array of dials, lights and levers in front of her, but she wasn't interested in these. A single small dial, separate from the rest, held her complete attention. She seemed disturbed by what she saw or didn't see. Disturbed or excited, it was difficult to say which.

Anti stopped. "Look at her. If I didn't know she's a freak like the rest of us, the only one, in fact, who was born that way, it would be easy to hate her--she's so disgustingly normal."

Normal? True and yet not true. Surgical techniques that could take a body apart and put it back together again with a skill once reserved for the repair of machines had made beauty commonplace. No more sagging muscles, wrinkles; even the aged were attractive and youthful-seeming until the day they died. No more ill-formed limbs, misshapen bodies. Everyone was handsome or beautiful. No exceptions.

None to speak of, at least.

The accidentals didn't belong, of course. In another day most of them would have been candidates for a waxworks or the formaldehyde of a specimen bottle.

Nona fitted neither category; she wasn't a repair job. Looking at her closely--and why not?--she was an original work as far from the normal in one direction as Anti, for example, was in the other.

"Why is she staring at the little dial?" asked Anti as the others slipped past her and came into the compartment. "Is there something wrong with it?" She shrugged. "I would be interested in the big dials. The ones with colored lights."

"That's Nona." Docchi smiled. "I'm sure she's never been in the control room of a rocket before, and yet she went straight to the most curious thing in it. She's looking at the gravital indicator. Directly behind it is the gravital unit."

"How do you know? Does it say so?"

"It doesn't. You have to be trained to recognize it, or else be Nona."

Anti dismissed that intellectual feat. "What are you waiting for? You know she can't hear us. Go stand in front of her."

"How do I get there?" Docchi had risen a few inches from the floor, now that Jordan had released him from his grip.

"A good engineer would have enough sense to put on magneslippers. Nona did." Anti grasped his jacket. How she was able to move was uncertain. The tissues that surrounded the woman were too vast to permit the perception of individual motions. Nevertheless, she proceeded to the center of the compartment, and with her came Docchi.

Nona turned before they reached her.

"My poor boy," sighed Anti. "You do a very bad job of concealing your emotions, if that's what you're trying to do. Anyway, stop glowing like a rainbow and say something."

"Hello," said Docchi.

Nona smiled at him, though it was Anti that she came to.

"No, not too close, child. Don't touch the surgery robe unless you want your pretty face to peel off like a plastiwrapper."

Nona stopped; she said nothing.

Anti shook her head hopelessly. "I wish you would learn to read lips or at least recognize written words. It's so difficult to communicate with you."

"She knows facial expressions and actions, I think," said Docchi. "She's good at emotions. Words are a foreign concept to her."

"What other concepts does anyone think with?" asked Anti dubiously.

"Maybe mathematical relationships," answered Docchi. "Though she doesn't. They've tested her for that." He frowned. "I don't know what concepts she does think with. I wish I did."

"Save some of that worry and apply it to our present situation," said Anti. "The object of your concern doesn't seem to be interested in it."

That was true. Nona had wandered back and was staring at the gravital indicator again. What she saw to hold her attention was a puzzle.

In some ways she seemed irresponsible and childlike. That was an elusive thought, though: whose child? Not really, of course. Her parents were obscure technicians and mechanics, descendants of a long line of mechanics and technicians. The question he had asked himself was this: where and how does she belong? He couldn't answer.

With an effort Docchi came back to reality. "We appealed to the Medicouncil," he said. "We asked for a ship to go to the nearest star. It would have to be a rocket, naturally. Even allowing for a better design than any we now have, the journey would take a long time, forty or fifty years going and the same length of time back. That's entirely too long for a normal, but it wouldn't matter to a biocompensator."

"Why a rocket?" interrupted Jordan. "Why not some form of gravity drive?"

"An attractive idea," admitted Docchi. "Theoretically, there's no limit to gravity drive except light speed, and even that's not certain. If it would work, the time element could be cut to a fraction. But the last twenty years have proved that gravity drives won't work at all outside the Solar System. They function very poorly even when the ship is as far out as Jupiter's orbit."

"I thought the gravity drive on a ship was nearly the same as the gravital unit on the asteroid," said Jordan. "Why won't they function?"

"I don't know why," answered Docchi impatiently. "If I did, I wouldn't be marooned on Handicap Haven. Arms or no arms, biocompensator or not, I'd be the most important scientist on Earth."

"With a multitude of pretty women competing for your affections," added Anti.

"I think he'd settle for one. A certain one," suggested Jordan.

"Poor, unimaginative boy," said Anti. "In my youth...."

"We've heard about your youth," said Jordan.

"Youth and love are long since past, for both of you. Talk about them privately if you want, but not now." Docchi glowered at them. "Anyway," he resumed, "gravity drive is out. One time they had hopes for it, but no longer. It should be able to drive this ship. Actually, its sole function is to provide an artificial gravity _inside_ the ship, for passenger comfort. So rocket ship it is. That's what we asked for. The Medicouncil refused. Therefore we're going to appeal to a higher authority."

"Fine," said Anti. "How?"

"We've discussed it," answered Docchi. "Ultimately the Medicouncil is responsible to the Solar Government. And in turn--"

"All right, I'm in favor of it," said Anti. "I just wanted to know."

"Mars is closer," continued Docchi. "But Earth is the seat of government. As soon as we get there...." He stopped suddenly and listened.

Anti listened with him and waited until she could stand it no longer. "What's the matter?" she asked. "I don't hear anything."

Jordan leaned forward in his seat and looked at the instrument panel. "That's the trouble, Anti. You're not supposed to hear anything. But you should be able to _feel_ the vibration from the rocket exhaust, as long as it's on."

"I don't feel anything, either."

"Yeah," said Jordan. He looked at Docchi. "There's plenty of fuel."

* * * * *

Momentum of the ship didn't cease when the rockets stopped, of course. They were still moving, but not very fast and not in the direction they wanted to go. Gingerly Docchi tried out the magneslippers; he was clumsy, but no longer helpless in the gravityless ship. He stared futilely at the instruments as if he could wring more secrets than the panel had electronic access to.

"It's mechanical trouble of some sort," he said uneasily. "There's one way of finding out."

Before he could move, Anti was in the corridor that led away from the control compartment.

"Stay here, Anti," he said. "I'll see what's wrong."

She reached nearly from the floor to the ceiling. She missed by scant inches the sides of the passageway. Locomotion was easy enough for her; turning around wasn't. Anti didn't turn.

"Look, honey," her voice floated back. "You brought me along for the ride. That's fine, but I'm not satisfied with it. I want to earn my fare. You stay and run the ship because you know how and I don't. I'll find out what's wrong."

"But you won't know what to do, Anti." There was no answer. "All right," he said in defeat. "Both of us ought to go. Jordan, you stay at the controls."

Anti led the way because Docchi couldn't get around her. Determinedly he shuffled along. There was a trick to magneslippers that he had nearly forgotten. Slowly it was coming back to him--shuffle instead of striding.

It was a dingy, poorly lighted passageway in an older ship. Handicap Haven definitely didn't rate the best equipment that was produced. On one side was the hull of the ship; on the other, a few small cabins. None were occupied. Anti stopped. The passageway ended in a cross corridor that led to the other side of the ship.

"We'd better check the stern rocket tubes," he said, still unable to see around her. "Open it up and we'll take a look."

"I can't," said Anti. "There are handles, but the thing won't open. There's a red light, too. Does that mean anything?"

His heart sank. "It does. Don't try to open it. With your strength, you might be unlucky enough to do it."

"That's a man for you," said Anti sharply. "First he wants me to open it, and then he tells me not to."

"There's a vacuum in there. The combustion cap has been retracted. That's the only thing that will actuate the warning signal. You'd die in a few seconds if you somehow managed to open the lock to the rocket compartment."

"What are we waiting for? Let's get busy and fix it."

"Sure, fix it. You see, Anti, that didn't happen by itself. Someone, or something, was responsible."

"Who?"

"Did you see anyone when we were loading your tank in the ship?"

"Nothing. I heard Cameron shouting, a lot of noise. All I could see was what was directly overhead. What does that have to do with it?"

"I think it has to do with a geepee. I thought they all dropped outside. Maybe there was one that didn't."

"Why a geepee?" she asked blankly.

"In the first place, no man is strong enough to move the combustion cap. But if he should somehow manage to exert super-human effort, as soon as the cap cleared the tubes, rocket action would cease. The air in the compartment would exhaust into space and anyone in there would die."

"So we have a dead geepee in there."

"A geepee doesn't die. Not even become inactive; it doesn't need air." Docchi tried to think the thing through. "Not only that, a geepee might be able to escape from the compartment. The lock would close as soon as the pressure dropped. But a geepee...."

Anti settled down grimly. "Then there's a geepee on the loose, intent on sabotage?"

"I'm afraid so," he admitted worriedly.

"What are we standing here for? We'll go back to controls and pick up the robot on radio. What it damaged, it can repair." She was partly turned around now and saw Docchi's face. "Don't tell me," she said. "I suppose I should have thought of it. The signal doesn't work inside the ship."

Docchi nodded. "It doesn't. Robots are never used aboard, so the control is set in the bow antenna and the ship, of course, is insulated."

"Well," said Anti happily, "we've got a robot hunt ahead of us."

"We do. And our bare hands to hunt it with."

"Oh, come now! It's not as bad as all that. Look, the geepee was back here when the rockets stopped. Could it get by the control compartment without our seeing it?"

"It couldn't. There are two corridors leading through the compartment, one on each side of the ship."

"That's what I thought. We came down one corridor and no geepee was in it. It has to be in the other. If it goes into a cabin, a light will shine on the outside. It can't really hide from us."

"Sure, we'll find out where it is. But what are we going to do with it when we find it?"

"I was thinking," said Anti. "Can you get around me when I'm standing like this?"

"I can't."

"Neither can a geepee. All I need is a toaster, or something that looks like one, and I can drive the robot into the control compartment for Jordan to pick off." Determinedly, she began to move toward the opposite corridor. "Hurry back to Jordan and tell him what we're doing. There ought to be another toaster on the ship. Probably there's one somewhere in the control compartment. Bring it back to me."

Docchi bit his lip and stared at the back of the huge woman. "All right," he answered. "But stay where you are. Don't try anything until I get back."

Anti laughed. "I value my big, fat life," she said. There were other things she valued, but she didn't mention them.

Docchi went as fast as the magneslippers would allow, which wasn't very fast. The strategy was simple, but it didn't follow that it was sound--a toaster for Jordan and one for Anti, if another could be found.

Anti would block the corridor. A geepee might go through her, but it could never squeeze past her. The robot would have to run for it. If it came toward Anti, she might be able to burn it down. But she would be firing directly into the control room. If she missed even partially--

The instruments were delicate.

It wasn't better if Jordan got the chance to bring down the robot. Anti would be in the line of fire. No, that wasn't good, either. They'd have to think of something else.

"Jordan," called Docchi as he entered the control compartment. Jordan wasn't there. Nona was, still gazing serenely at the gravity indicator.

Lights were streaming from the corridor on the opposite side of the compartment. Docchi hurried over. Jordan was just inside the entrance, the toaster clutched grimly in his hand. He was hitching his truncated body slowly toward the stern.

Coming to meet him was Anti--unarmed, enormously fat Anti. She wasn't walking; somehow it seemed more like swimming, a bulbous, flabby sea animal moving through the air. She waved her fins against the wall and propelled herself forward.

"Melt him down!" she cried.

It was difficult to make out the vaguely human form of the geepee. The powerful, shining body blended into the structure of the ship itself--unintentional camouflage, though the robot wasn't aware of that. It was crouched at the threshold of a cabin, hesitating between the approaching dangers.

Jordan raised the weapon and as instantly lowered it. "Get out of the way," he told Anti.

There was no place for her to go. She was too big to enter a cabin, too massive to let the geepee squeeze by her even if she wanted it to.

"Never mind that. Get him," she answered.

A geepee was not a genius even by robot standards. It didn't need to be. Heat is deadly; a human body is a fragile thing. This it knew. It ran toward Anti. Unlike man, it didn't need magneslippers. It had magnetic metal feet which could move fast, and did.

Docchi couldn't close his eyes, though he wanted to. He had to watch. The geepee torpedoed into Anti. And it was the robot that was thrown back. Relative mass favored the monstrous woman.

The electronic brain obeyed its original instructions, whatever those were. It got to its feet and rushed toward Anti. Metal arms shot out with dazzling speed and crashed against the flesh of the fat woman. Docchi could hear the thud. No ordinary person could take that kind of punishment and live.

Anti wasn't ordinary; she was strange, even for an accidental, living far inside a deep armor of flesh. It was possible that she never felt the crushing force of those blows. Amazingly, she grasped the robot and drew it to her. And the geepee lost the advantage of leverage. The bright arms didn't flash so fast nor with such lethal power.

"Gravity!" cried Anti. "All you've got!"

She leaned against the struggling machine.

Gravity. That was something he could do. Docchi turned, took two steps before the surge of gravity hit him. It came in waves, the sequence of which he was never able to disentangle. The first wave staggered him; at the second his knees buckled and he sank to the floor. After that his eardrums hurt. He thought he could feel the ship quiver. He knew dazedly that an artificial gravity field of this magnitude was impossible, but that knowledge didn't help him move.

It vanished as suddenly as it had come. Painfully his lungs expanded. Each muscle ached. He rolled to his feet and lurched past Jordan.

He didn't find the mass of broken flesh he expected. Anti was already standing.

"Oof!" she grunted and gazed with satisfaction at the twisted grotesque shape at her feet. The electronic brain had been smashed, the body flattened.

"Are you hurt?" asked Docchi gently, awed.

She waggled the extremities of her body. "Nope, I can't feel anything broken," she said solemnly. She moved back to get a better view of the robot. "I'd call that throwing my weight around. At the right time, of course. The secret's timing. And I must say you picked up your cue with the gravity well." Her laughter rolled through the ship.

"It wasn't I," said Docchi.

"Jordan? No, he's just getting up. Then who?"

"Nona," said Docchi. "It had to be her. She saw what had to be done and did it. But how she got that amount of gravity--"

"Ask her," said Anti with fond irony.

Docchi grimaced and limped back into the control room, followed by Anti and Jordan. Nona was at the gravity panel, her face pleasant and childlike.

"Gravity can be turned on or off," said Docchi puzzledly, searching her face for some sign. "And regulated, within certain narrow limits. But somehow you doubled or tripled the normal amount. How?"

Nona smiled questioningly.

"Gravity engineers would like to know that too," said Jordan.

"Everybody would like to know," Anti interrupted irritably. "Except me. I'm too pragmatic, I suppose, but I want to know when we start the rockets and be on our way."

"It isn't that easy," sighed Jordan. "A retracted combustion cap in flight generally means at least one burned-out tube." He made his way to the instrument panel and looked at it glumly. "Three."

"A factor." Docchi nodded. "But I was thinking about the robot."

Anti was impatient. "An interesting subject, no doubt. What about it?"

"Where did it get instructions? Not radio; the hull of the ship cuts off all radiation. The last we knew, it was in our control."

"All right, how?"

"Voice," said Docchi. "Cameron's voice, to be exact."

"But he was in the rocket dome," Jordan objected.

"Think back to when we were loading the tank. We had to look through the telecom and the angle of vision was bad. We couldn't see much of the cargo lock. Anti couldn't see anything that wasn't directly overhead. Both Cameron and the geepee managed to get inside and we didn't know it."

Jordan hefted his weapon. "Looks like we've got another hunt on our hands. This time a nice normal doctor."

"Keep it handy," said Docchi, glancing at the toaster. "But be careful how you use it. One homicide and we can forget what we came for. I think he'll be ready to surrender. The ship's temporarily disabled; he'll consider that damage enough."

* * * * *

Jordan found the doctor in the forward section of the ship. Cameron knew better than to argue with a toaster. In a matter of minutes he was in the control room.

"Now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?" he asked.

Docchi swiveled away from the instrument panel. "I don't expect active cooperation, of course, but I like to think you'll give your word not to hinder us hereafter."

Cameron glared. "I promise nothing of the kind."

"We can chain him to Anti," suggested Jordan. "That will keep him out of trouble."

"Like leading a poodle on a leash? Nope," said Anti indignantly. "A girl has to have some privacy."

"Don't wince, Cameron," objected Docchi. "She really was a girl once, an attractive one."

"We can put him in a spacesuit and lock his hands behind his back," said Jordan. "Something like an ancient straitjacket."

Cameron laughed.

"No, that's inhuman," said Docchi.

Jordan juggled the toaster. "I can weld with this. Let's put him in a cabin and weld the door closed. We can cut a slot to shove food in. A very narrow slot."

"Excellent. I think you have the solution. That is, unless Dr. Cameron will reconsider his decision."

Cameron shrugged. "They'll pick you up in a day or less anyway. I suppose I'm not compromising myself by agreeing to your terms."

"Good."

"A doctor's word is as good as his oath," observed Anti. "Hippocratic or hypocritic."

"Now, Anti, don't be cynical. Doctors have an economic sense as well as the next person," said Docchi gravely. He turned to Cameron. "You see, after Anti grew too massive for her skeletal structure, doctors reasoned she'd be most comfortable in the absence of gravity. That was in the early days, before successful ship gravital units were developed. They put her on an interplanetary ship and kept transferring her before each landing.

"But that grew troublesome and--expensive. They devised a new treatment; the asteroid and the tank of acid. Not being aquatic by nature, Anti resented the change. She still does."

"I knew nothing about that," Cameron pointed out defensively.

"It was before your time." Docchi frowned at the doctor. "Tell me, why did you laugh when Jordan mentioned a spacesuit?"

Cameron grinned. "That was my project while you were busy with the robot."

"To do what? Jordan--"

But Jordan was already on his way. He was gone for some time.

"Well?" asked Docchi on his return. It really wasn't necessary; Jordan's gloomy face told the story.

"Cut to ribbons."

"All of them?"

"Every one. Beyond repair."

"What's the excitement about?" rumbled Anti. "We don't need spacesuits unless something happens to the ship and we have to go outside."

"Exactly, Anti. How do you suppose we go about replacing the defective tubes? From the outside, of course. By destroying the spacesuits, Cameron made sure we can't."

Anti opened her mouth with surprise and closed it in anger. She glowered at the doctor.