Part 2

But then the chief looked at Jane. His eyes were sad and old and suddenly and unexpectedly very wise. He said, "You can help? You can save his life?"

"You're not trying," Jane said. "I can try."

Carefully the chief stood up, making a mound of sand and letting his son's head rest there. "Then save him," he said finally. "Save him and you can return to your people."

A very old Mandmooran, far older than the chief, a skin-puckered, limping, hunch-backed, rheumy-eyed, gray-skinned Mandmooran, approached the chief and jabbered excitedly in their own language. The chief jabbered back at him and the old man raised his voice. The chief shouted him down. Shrugging but smiling, the old man wandered off to a hillock of sand, threw his arms up at the Lord Sun, and began a weird, wailing chant.

"Shaman say," the chief told Jane, "yours is bad medicine."

Jane didn't answer. She went down on one knee near the injured prince. It almost made her ill to stare at his torn, mangled arm. She was no nurse. She knew first aid, but that was all. Still, anything was better than the fatalistic Mandmooran attitude.

"Shaman say," the chief went on, "we offer sacrifice to wrath of Lord Sun. For long time our people no offer sacrifice in human form. Human sacrifice now, at moment of trial, work. So say shaman."

Turning, the chief shouted something. Three spearmen stalked within the circle around the Earthmen and came out with the uniformed figure of the corporal. The ancient shaman jabbered excitedly, but the chief did not look happy.

* * * * *

Sid Masters came brawling through the ring of spearmen, fighting clear with flailing arms and legs. "Wait a minute, chief!" he cried. "Who's running the show round here, you or that magician?"

The shaman jabbered, but the chief silenced him with a gesture. "I am chief of the Mandmoora," he said slowly.

"The girl is trying to save your son's life. Is that the thanks we get--what you're going to do with the corporal?"

The chief was silent for a few moments, meditating. Then: "Let him go. Until the girl has succeeded--or failed."

The shaman jabbered again. He didn't like it but he returned, grumbling, to his hillock. Jane was already going to work on the stricken prince. First she tore a strip from her jumper and used it to bind the prince's upper arm. The bleeding was first. She had to stop the bleeding. Twisting a pencil in the knotted tourniquet, she tightened it until the blood had stopped flowing. She felt anything but calm. She actually felt queasy. But somehow her fingers worked quickly and surely and before long a few score of the Mandmoorans came to watch.

"He's lost an awful lot of blood," Jane told Sid Masters. "I've stopped the bleeding now, but he needs a transfusion if he's going to have a real chance. And look at the wound, will you? It's dirty. He needs antibiotics and he needs them fast."

"On the flotilla out there?" Sid asked. "They ought to have antibiotics."

"Get them then," Jane said, and turned to the chief. "My companion needs strong medicine from the boats which wait."

"Stay. All stay."

"Then your son dies."

The chief looked at her. He was very quiet. The shaman wailed louder now. "Go," said the chief, and Sid Masters went splashing out into the water.

Five minutes later, swimming hard, he returned to the beach. He produced a water-proof packet of antibiotic powders and Jane opened it and let the powders sift down on the prince's wound. "Listen," Sid whispered. "We're in trouble, all right. They can't be sure when the sun is going to nova, you see? They figure it ought to be about seventeen hours, but nobody's going to make book with his life. They're giving us fifteen minutes. Then they're pulling out. They're sorry, but they're pulling out. You can't blame them, Jane, especially since interstellar law won't permit them the use of force."

"But you came back, Sid," Jane said.

"We're trying to help the boy. Besides, I couldn't leave you holding the bag like this--alone with those soldiers and three thousand fanatic Mandmoorans."

Jane smiled at him. There was nothing else she could offer him now. Their deaths seemed almost a certainty. They would be--had to be--deserted. They would be left to the Mandmoora--and the novaing sun.

"Is the boy going to live?" Sid asked.

"For a while. I've done all that first aid can do. The bleeding's stopped. The antibiotics will take care of any possibility of infection. But he's lost blood. If he doesn't get a transfusion soon, I'm afraid he won't pull through."

"Then tell the chief."

Jane nodded, and found the chief near the shaman's hillock, gazing on his medicine man with a troubled expression as if he couldn't decide between the old way and the new. "Your boy," Jane said.

"The boy lives?"

"For now he lives. He needs the kind of medical care I can't give him. The kind of care he can get aboard the exodus ships. Let him go, chief. Let us take him back. We can save his life."

* * * * *

The shaman leaped from the hillock and--for all his bag-of-bones appearance--alighted athletically beside them. "I heard!" he cackled, showing a toothless black hole of a mouth. "I heard! A trick to leave our island. A trick to leave our planet! A trick...."

"Just the boy then," Jane said. "If you want him to live. But you'll never know about it. Because if you stay here you'll all be killed."

"You see, a trick!" protested the shaman.

The chief shook his head slowly. "Life blood flow from boy. Boy would have died. She save boy. If she wish, let the boy go with them."

"But they stay here!" the shaman shrieked. "They must stay. Sacrifice all to Lord Sun, Lord Sun shrink again. Otherwise--" He showed the palms of his hands in a hopeless gesture.

"Bring small boat," the chief said, making up his mind. "The girl goes, with princeling, to her people."

But Jane shook her head. "Not alone, I don't. I go with this man here and with the three soldiers, or I don't go at all. And neither does your son. We can save his life, chief--but we don't intend to if you--"

"Tricks! Deceit!" screamed the shaman, jumping up and down. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

An uncertain line of spearmen appeared, but the chief lifted his hand and they remained perfectly still as if with the small motion of his arm he had somehow frozen them in their tracks. The spearmen seemed content: they had come forward at the shaman's summons without great resolution.

All at once the shaman leaped at Jane. He came so suddenly that she had time only for a quick look. Still, she had not missed the gleam of something in his hand and she threw herself sideways as the hand came down. She heard the chief shout, heard Sid Masters' startled oath as she fell to the sand with the old medicine man. Something burned against her shoulder and she knew it was his knife, knew it had pierced her flesh there. She felt a wave of giddiness, but after that the pain wasn't so bad. She could see Sid lifting the shaman bodily and flinging him away across the sand like an empty sack, could see Sid's face, grave with concern, swim close to her through the suddenly shimmering range of vision before her eyes.

"Bleeding pretty bad," Sid said. "Ought to be able to control it with the pressure point in your neck. Hurt much?"

Jane shook her head.

"Here goes then."

"Wait." Jane pushed his hand away. She could feel the warm wetness of her blood streaming down across her breast from the shoulder wound. She turned to the chief:

"I stopped your son's bleeding," she said calmly. "I saved his life. Stop my bleeding, chief. Save my life in return."

The chief looked at her without answering. Then he looked at the shaman, who had climbed to hands and knees but made no move to get up.

"Don't do it!" Sid pleaded. "He can't save you and you know it. You'll bleed to death."

Jane asked the chief, "You want to help me?"

"Girl saved princeling's life. I want to help."

"Then stop the bleeding. I've lost a lot of blood, chief. I'm growing weak. You have to stop ... the bleeding...."

* * * * *

The chief seemed confused. He looked first at the medicine man, then at Jane, then at the flotilla of exodus ships which even while Jane spoke was turning and heading out to sea, back to the mainland just beyond the horizon. He looked at Jane again. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. Then, finally, in a soft voice he said: "Your people save my people. Millions of them. Take to new home, because old home, old world, die. Some stay. Some--us. You come. Final chance for Mandmoora. Boy hurt and you save him. Man go to ships for good medicine. Could stay, but come back to help boy. You save boy. Princeling. I have no faith in your medicine, but he live. He live. Then you hurt. You bleed. Life blood run out. You bleed. You have faith, faith in chief of Mandmoora, to heal you. You have much faith." He raised his voice suddenly, shouting:

"I can no heal! You die if you do not heal yourself. I can no heal! Faith? Your faith in me kill you. Faith? If Sun-Lord fail us. Faith ..." he wailed, a broken man.

Sid Masters said, "Keep your faith, chief. There are other symbols, other suns. Your mistake was placing all your faith in one physical symbol--"

"Enough," the chief said. "The girl is right. I should save her as she save princeling. I no can heal! The girl is right. All your people's threats, all offers, all bribes, all speech and science explains, all, all fail. The girl alone win. Faith alone no good. Faith and deeds. Girl show deeds. But I no can heal! I no can heal! Stop bleeding, Earthman. Heal her."

Sid looked at Jane. She smiled up at him weakly. She had almost lost consciousness. She had lost much blood and, like the prince of the Mandmoora, would need a transfusion when they returned to the mainland and the final ship of the exodus space-fleet. But they had won, because the chief said:

"Girl teach us. Earthgirl. We all go."

The soldiers gave a wild whoop of joy as Sid rushed down to the surf, hailed the flotilla. Jane was barely aware of the fleet turning around to come back for the Mandmoora's final three thousand holdouts. The whole planet would be evacuated after all, she thought. It was hard to hold the thought. She was almost delirious with weakness, with lack of blood. She felt Sid's hand applying pressure to the pulse in the curve of her neck.

She heard his words: "Bleeding's stopped...."

Then, for a long time, there was a gentle rocking moment and a vision, half-remembered, of the three thousand holdouts splashing out across the surf toward the rescue flotilla, then, after that, a slow drifting off toward sleep.

She knew they would make it, knew not a human being, Earthman or Mandmooran, would be on Mandmoora when the sun's blowup occurred. She knew she would not see the blowup from deep-space: she would be aboard the spaceship in a hospital room.

She regretted that. It was a once-in-a-lifetime story, the kind of story a reporter didn't want to miss. But she had seen another story, a far greater story, the story of the final Mandmooran exodus, the story of life triumphant in the face of superstition and death.

She knew that was a far better story. And, besides, she had lived it.