Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online Page B

you. We should never have taken those damned ’phets. Plenty of excitement to keep us awake.” They dropped it on the stack, and the forklift man leaned up against it. “Two more and we’ll secure this load.”
    They tied a cable around the load and sat while the other rolled away to stow it. Marianne told her about the mummified technicians in the operations center.
    “I wonder,” Berrigan said. “It’s not important anymore, but I wonder whether it might have been the Americansor the Socialists. It is strange that neither side bombed here.”
    “Leave a spaceport intact for whoever wins,” O’Hara said.
    When the forklift came back they loaded it up again, but while they were waiting for it to return, the metal wall facing the fire started to creak ominously. The wall thermometer was stuck at fifty degrees Centigrade. There were enough cylinders for one more load, but Berrigan decided not to risk it. Everybody went up in the lift and helped secure the nitrogen for takeoff, then took seats in the passenger area. It was cramped, since the acceleration couches hadn’t been designed for use with space suits.
    “Anybody here who can’t take seven gees?” Berrigan asked. Jackson and Ten said they’d never been in a high-gee vehicle. “Well, we’ll keep it down to five. The more gees down here, though, the less fuel we use overall. The less fuel, the more water for the daisies.”
    The ship’s electrical activity made loud crackles of static. O’Hara could hardly hear what Berrigan was saying, the tranquilizer humming a lullaby in her veins, her body sagging with fatigue. With her chin she turned down the volume and stared through the porthole, out over the jungle canopy. Her last view of Earth, but she didn’t feel any real emotion.
    Berrigan’s voice droned quietly through the countdown. It was only a couple of minutes, but O’Hara started to doze and didn’t hear the warning: look straight ahead.
    A clear chime sang out, then an impossibly loud grinding roar. O’Hara’s head was suddenly clamped side-ways, staring out the porthole as the ship swiftly rose. In seconds, the horizon bent to a curve. Something popped in her neck; the cartilage in her nose crackled, and her nose began to bleed. The aspirator started hammering; she wondered idly whether it would work in five gees, or seven, and then she got her answer. The ship tilted side-ways suddenly and rivulets of blood splashed over theinside of her faceplate. They evened out to a thin red film that was barely transparent. To the suit’s little brain, it felt like condensation: the faceplate heated up and baked it to a black crust. She tried to curse but couldn’t move her lips or jaw.
    After what seemed like a very long time, the acceleration stopped abruptly and they were in free fall. She turned her head cautiously and her neck felt fine. She could see a little bit through the cracks in the blood crust.
    A figure in a spacesuit floated in front of her. It was Berrigan. “Marianne—what’s wrong? Did you—”
    “I’b jusd fide. Bud I god a broggen fugged nodes. You wadda helb be ged dis fugged helbed off?”
    “You got a nosebleed?”
    “Ndo, id’s all a big agt. You wadda ged duh latch odd duh bag so I cad geh duh helbed off?”
    Berrigan laughed with silly relief. “You can’t take your helmet off, not until we’ve disinfected. That’ll be a few hours. Better get used to it.”
    “Used do id!”
    The first step was to set off the spray bombs of biocide, everybody swimming around through the fog for an hour. Then they evacuated all the air out of the control room and the passenger area, and went over every square centimeter of the ship and each other with powerful ultraviolet lamps. Then they filled it with air again and heated the air to two hundred degrees Centigrade, their suits’ limit. That combination would kill any virus or bacterium, but it was hell on the leather upholstery.
    They got out of their spacesuits and everybody