White light blinded him. He shook his head and tried to keep his stomach from acting up. A voice asked, "Were you shielded from those nuclear blasts?"

"No," he said past a constricted throat. "Not from the last. We got some prompt radiation. I don't know how much."

"When was that? The exact time?"

Rip tried to remember. He felt horrible. "It was twenty-three-oh-five."

"Bad," the voice said. "He must have taken enough roentgens of gamma and neutrons to reach or exceed the median-lethal dose."

Rip found his voice again. "Santos," he said urgently. "On the asteroid.

He got it, too. The rest were shielded. Get him. Quick!"

MacFife snapped orders. The ball-bat would have Santos in the ship within minutes. Being sick in a s.p.a.ce suit was about the most unpleasant thing that could happen to anyone.

A hypospray tingled against Rip's arm. The drug penetrated, caught a quick lift to all parts of his body through his bloodstream. Consciousness slid away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN - s.p.a.cEFALL

Rip was never more eloquent. He argued, he begged, and he wheedled.

The _Aquila's_ chief physician listened with polite interest, but he shook his head. "Lieutenant, you simply are not aware of the close call you've had. Another two hours without treatment and we might not have been able to save you."

"I appreciate that," Rip a.s.sured him. "But I'm fine now, sir."

"You are not fine. You are anything but fine. We've loaded you with antibiotics and blood cell regenerator, and we've given you a total transfusion. You feel fine, but you're not."

The doctor looked at Rip's red hair. "That's a fine thatch of hair you have. In a week or two it will be gone and you'll have no more hair than an egg. A well person doesn't lose hair."

The ship's radiation safety officer had put both Rip's and Santos's dosimeters into his measuring equipment. They had taken over a hundred roentgens of hard radiation above the tolerance limit. This was the result of being caught unshielded when the last nuclear charge went off.

"Sir," Rip pleaded, "you can load us with suppressives. It's only a few days more before we reach Terra. You can keep us going until then. We'll both turn in for full treatment as soon as we get to the s.p.a.ce platform.

But we have to finish the job, can't you see that, sir?"

The doctor shook his head. "You're a fool, even for a Planeteer. Before you get over this you'll be sicker than you've ever been. You have a month in bed waiting for you. If I let you go back to the asteroid, I'll only be delaying the time when you start full treatment."

"But the delay won't hurt if you inject us with suppressives, will it?"

Rip asked quickly. "Don't they keep the sickness checked?"

"Yes, for a maximum of about ten days. Then they no longer have sufficient effect and you come down with it."

"But it won't take ten days," Rip pointed out. "It will only take a couple, and it won't hurt us."

MacFife had arrived to hear the last exchange. He nodded sympathetically.

"Doctor, I can appreciate how the lad feels. He started something and he wants to finish it. If y'can let him, safely, I think ye should."

The doctor shrugged. "I can let him. There's a nine to one chance it will do him no harm. But the one chance is what I don't like."

"I'll know it if the suppressives start to wear off, won't I?" Rip asked.

"You certainly will. You'll get weaker rapidly."

"How rapidly?"

"Perhaps six hours. Perhaps more."

Rip nodded. "That's what I thought. Doctor, we're less than six hours from Terra by ship. If the stuff wears off, we can be in the hospital within a couple of hours. Once we go into a braking ellipse, we can reach a hospital in less than an hour by snapper-boat."

"Let him go," MacFife said.

The doctor wasn't happy about it, but he had run out of arguments. "All right, Commander. If you'll a.s.sume responsibility for getting him off the asteroid and into a Terra or s.p.a.ce platform hospital in time."

"I'll do that," MacFife a.s.sured him. "Now get your hyposprays and fill him full of that stuff you use. The corporal, too."

"Sergeant," Rip corrected. His first action on getting back to the asteroid would be to recommend Santos's promotion to Terra base. He intended to recommend Kemp for corporal, too. He was sure the Planeteers at Terra would make the promotions.

The two Federation cruisers were still holding course along with the asteroid, the Connie cruiser between them.

Within an hour, Rip and Santos, both in false good health thanks to medical magic, were on their way back to the asteroid in a ball-bat boat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Let Him Go Back to the Asteroid, Doctor."]

"Let Him Go Back to the Asteroid, Doctor."

The remaining time pa.s.sed quickly. The sun receded. The Planeteers corrected course. Rip sent in his recommendations for promotions, and looked over the last nuclear crater to see why the blast had started the asteroid spinning.

The reason could only be guessed. The blast probably had opened a fault in the crystal, allowing the explosion to escape partially in the wrong direction.

Once the course was corrected, Rip calculated the position for the final nuclear charge. When the asteroid reached the correct position relative to earth, the charge would not only change its course but slow its speed somewhat. The asteroid would go around the earth in a series of ever-tightening ellipses, using Terra's gravity, plus rocket fuel, to slow it down to the right orbital speed.

When it reached the proper position, tubes of rocket fuel would change the course again, putting it into an orbit around the earth close to the s.p.a.ce platform. It wasn't practical to take the thorium rock in for a landing.

They would lose control and the asteroid would flame to earth like the greatest meteor ever to hit the planet.

Putting the asteroid into an orbit around earth was actually the most delicate part of the whole trip, but Rip wasn't worried. He had the facilities of Terra base within easy reach by communicator. He dictated his data and let them do the mathematics on the giant electronic computers.

He and his men rode the gray planet past the moon, so close they could almost see the Planeteer Lunar base, circled Terra in a series of ellipses, and finally blasted the asteroid into its final orbit within sight of the s.p.a.ce platform.

Landing craft and snapper-boats swarmed to meet them and within an hour after their arrival the Planeteers were surrounded by s.p.a.cemen, cadets from the platform, and officers and men wearing Planeteer black.

A cadet approached Rip and looked at him with awe. "Sir, I don't know how you ever did it!"

And Rip, his eyes on the great curve of earth, answered casually, "There's one thing every s.p.a.ce-chick has to learn if he's going to be a Planeteer.

There's always a way to do anything. To be a Planeteer you have to be able to figure out the way."