Nerves Read online

  Doc nodded, his ear cocked toward the drone of the siren that drew up and finally ended on a sour wheeze. He felt a sudden relief from tension as he saw Jones hurrying toward the rear entrance; work, even under the pressure of an emergency, was always easier than sitting around waiting for trouble. He saw the two stretchers come in, both bearing double loads, and noted that Beel was babbling at the attendant, the driver’s usually phlegmatic manner completely gone.

  “I’m quitting; I’m through tomorrow! No more watching ‘em drag out stiffs for me — not that way. Dunno why I gotta go back, anyhow; it won’t do ‘em any good to get in further, even if they can. From now on, I’m driving a truck, so help me I am.”

  Ferrel let him rave on, aware that the man was close to hysteria. He had no time to give Beel now as he saw the red flesh through the visor of one of the armor suits. “Cut off what clothes you can, Jones,” he directed. “At least get the shield suits off them. Tannic acid ready, nurse?”

  “Ready,” Meyers answered. Jenkins was busily helping Jones strip off the heavily armored suits and helmets.

  Ferrel kicked on the supersonics again, letting them sterilize the metal suits — there was no time to be finicky about asepsis; the supersonics and ultra-violet tubes were supposed to take care of that, and Ferrel would have to trust them, little as he liked it. Jenkins finished his work, dived back for fresh gloves, with a mere cursory dipping of his hands into antiseptic and rinse. Dodd followed him, while Jones wheeled three of the cases into the middle of the surgery, ready for work; the other had died on the way in.

  It was going to be a messy job, obviously. Where metal from the suits had touched, or come near touching, the flesh was burned — crisped, rather. But that was merely a minor part of it; there was more than ample evidence of major radiation burns, which had probably not stopped at the surface but penetrated through the flesh and bones into the vital interior organs. Doc glanced at Jones questioningly, and the man held up one of the little self-developing strips from an employee badge, it was completely black, showing that the margin of safety had been grossly exceeded.

  Much worse, the writhing and spasmodic muscular contractions indicated that radioactive matter had been forced into the flesh and was acting directly on the nerves controlling the motor impulses. Jenkins looked hastily at the twisting body of his case, and his face blanched to a yellowish-white; either it was the first real example of the full possibilities of an atomic accident he’d seen, or he was reading something extra into it. His sick voice seemed unsurprised. “A blast of gamma radiation first. Now it’s a beta emitter. It figures!”

  His hands clenched, and he threw an involuntary glance in the direction of the converters. Then he seemed to catch himself.

  “Curare,” he said finally, the word forced out, but level. Meyers handed him the hypodermic and he inserted it, his fingers still steady — more than normally steady, in fact, with that absolute lack of tremor that can come to a living organism only under the stress of emergency. Ferrel dropped his eyes back to his own case, both relieved and worried. It was too much of a coincidence that Jenkins had guessed the need for curare so accurately.

  From the spread of the muscular convulsions, there could be only one explanation: somehow radioactives had not only worked their way through the air grills but had been forced through the almost air-tight joints and sputtered directly into the flesh of the men.

  A few of the superheavy isotopes were capable of sending out beta emissions — high-energy electrons — in massive quantities, and this was obviously such a substance. Now the little deposits were driving out such radiation into the nerves, blocking the normal impulses from the brain and spinal column, setting up anarchic orders of their own that made the muscles writhe and jerk, one against the other, without pattern or reason, or any of the normal restraints of the body; It was as if the usual negative feedback controls on the nerves had all gone positive. The closest parallel was that of a man undergoing metrozol shock for schizophrenia, or a severe case of strychnine poisoning.

  Doc injected curare carefully, meting out the dosage according to the best estimate he could make, but Jenkins had been acting under pressure and had finished the second injection as Doc looked up from his first. Still, in spite of the rapid spread of the drug, some of the twitching went on.

  “Curare,” Jenkins repeated, and Doc tensed mentally; he’d still been debating whether to risk the extra dosage. But he made no counter-order, feeling relieved at having the matter taken out of his hands. Jenkins went back to work, pushing up the injections to the absolute limit of safety, and slightly beyond. One of the cases had started a weird hacking moan as his lungs and vocal cords went in and out of synchronization, but it stilled under the drug and in a matter of minutes he lay quiet, breathing with the shallow flaccidity common to curare treatment. The others were still moving slightly, but the violent bone-breaking convulsions had diminished to a spasmodic shudder, similar to a man with a chill.

  “God bless the man who synthesized curare,” Jenkins muttered as he began cleaning away damaged flesh.

  Doc could repeat that; with the older, natural product, true standardization and exact dosage had been next to impossible. Too much, and its action on the body was fatal; the patient died from “exhaustion” of his chest muscles in a matter of minutes. Too little was practically useless. Now that the danger of self-injury and fatal exhaustion from wild exertion was over, he could attend to such relatively unimportant things as the agony still going on — curare had no particular effect on the sensory nerves. He injected neo-heroin and began cleaning the burned areas and treating them with the standard tannic-acid solution, as well as with antibiotics to eliminate possible infection. Now and then he glanced up at Jenkins.

  He had no need to worry, though; the boy’s nerves were frozen into an unnatural calm and he worked with a speed Ferrel made no attempt to equal.

  Doc gestured, and Dodd handed him the little radiation indicator, and he began hunting over the skin, inch by inch, for the almost microscopic bits of matter; there was no hope of finding all now, but the worst deposits could be found and removed.

  Later, the nurses could handle the slower process of washing out what was left with versenes and other chemicals, as well as replacing the blood whose cells would be damaged. Fortunately, treatment for even heavy doses of radiation had been well developed for years. They were fortunate also that most of the radiation from the particles here came as beta rays, rather than the more insidious neutrons.

  “Jenkins,” he asked, “how about I-713’s chemical action? Is it basically poisonous to the system?”

  “No. Perfectly safe except for radiation. Full quota in the outer electron shell, chemically inert.”

  That, at least, was a relief. Radiations were bad enough, but when coupled with metallic poisoning, like the old radium or mercury cases, it was even worse. An inert element would also be less likely to have an affinity for any of the tissues, or to settle in the calcium of the bones. Probably the versenes would flush most of it from the body, and its short half-life would decrease the long hospitalization and suffering of the men.

  Jenkins joined him on the last patient, replacing Dodd at handing instruments. Doc would have preferred the nurse, who was used to his little signals, but he said nothing, and was surprised to note the efficiency of the boy’s co-operation. “How about the breakdown products?” he asked.

  “Isotope-713? Harmless enough, mostly, and what isn’t harmless isn’t concentrated enough to worry about. That is, if it’s still I-713. Otherwise —”

  Otherwise, Doc finished mentally, the boy meant there’d be no danger from poisoning, at least. Isotope R, with an uncertain degeneration period, turned into Mahler’s Isotope, with a complete breakdown in a billionth of a second. He had a fleeting vision of men, filled with a fine dispersion of that, suddenly erupting over their body with a violence that could never be described; Jenkins must have been thinking the same thing. For a second, they stood
there, looking at each other silently, but neither chose to speak of it. Ferrel reached for the probe, Jenkins shrugged, and they went on with their work and their thoughts.

  It was a picture impossible to imagine, which they might or might not see; if such an atomic blow-up occurred, what would happen to the Infirmary was problematical. No one knew the exact amount Maicewicz had worked on, except that it was the smallest amount he could make, so there could be no good estimate of the damage. The bodies on the operating tables, the little scraps of removed flesh containing the minute globules of radioactive substance, even the instruments that had come in contact with them, were bombs waiting to explode. Ferrel’s own fingers took on some of the steadiness that was frozen in Jenkins, as he went about his work, forcing his mind onto the difficulties at hand.

  It might have been minutes or hours later when the last dressing was in place and the three broken bones of the worst case were set. Meyers and Dodd, along with Jones, were taking care of the men, putting them into the little wards, and the two physicians were alone, carefully avoiding each other’s eyes, waiting without knowing exactly what they expected.

  Outside, a droning chug came to their ears and the thump of something heavy moving over the runways. By common impulse they slipped to the side door and looked out, to see the rear end of one of the electric tanks moving away from them. Night had fallen, but the gleaming lights from the big towers around the fence made the plant stand out in glaring detail. They watched the tank moving away, then other buildings cut off their view.

  From the direction of the main gate a shrill whistle cut the air and there was a sound of men’s voices, though the words were indistinguishable. Sharp, crisp syllables followed, and Jenkins nodded slowly to himself. “Ten’ll get you a hundred,” he began, “that — Uh, no use betting. It is.”

  Around the corner a squad of men in state militia uniforms marched briskly, bayoneted rifles on their arms. With the efficient precision, they spread out under a sergeant’s direction, each taking a post before the door of one of the buildings, one approaching the place where Ferrel and Jenkins stood.

  “So that’s what Palmer was talking to the Governor about,” Ferrel muttered. “No use asking them questions, I suppose; they know less than we do. Come on inside where we can sit down and rest. Wonder what good the militia can do here — unless Palmer’s afraid someone inside’s going to crack and cause trouble.”

  Jenkins followed him back to the office and accepted a cigarette automatically as he flopped back into a chair. Doc was discovering just how good it felt to give his muscles and nerves a chance to relax, and realizing that they must have been far longer in the surgery than he had thought. “Care for a drink?”

  “Uh — is it safe, Doc? We’re apt to be back in there any minute.”

  Ferrel grinned and nodded. “It won’t hurt you — we’re just enough on edge and tired for it to be burned up inside for fuel instead of reaching our nerves. Here.” It was a generous slug of bourbon he poured for each, enough to send an immediate warmth through them, and to relax their over-strained nerves. “Wonder why Beel hasn’t been back long ago?”

  “That tank we saw probably explains it; it got too tough for the men to work in just their suits, and they’ve had to start excavating through the converters with the tanks. Electric, wasn’t it, battery-powered?…So there’s enough radiation loose out there to interfere with atomic-powered machines, then. That means whatever they’re doing is tough and slow work. Anyhow, it’s more important that they damp the action than get the men out, if they only realize it — Sue!”

  Ferrel looked up to see a girl standing there, already dressed for surgery, and he was not too old for a little glow of appreciation to creep over him. No wonder Jenkins’ face lighted up. She was small, but her figure was shaped like that of a taller girl, not in the cute or pert lines usually associated with shorter women, and the serious competence of her expression hid none of the loveliness of her face. Obviously she was several years older than Jenkins, but as he stood up to greet her, her face softened and seemed somehow youthful beside the boy’s as she looked up.

  “You’re Dr. Ferrel?” she asked, turning to the older man. “I’m afraid I’m late. There was some trouble about letting me in at first. So I went directly to prepare before bothering you. And just so you won’t be afraid to use me, my credentials are here.”

  She pulled them from a simple saddle-leather handbag and put them on the table. Ferrel ran through them briefly; she was better than he’d expected. Technically she wasn’t a nurse at all, but a doctor of medicine — a so-called nursing doctor. There had been the need for assistants midway between doctor and nurse for years, having the general training and abilities of both, but only in the last decade had the actual course been created and the graduates were still limited in number. He nodded and handed the papers back.

  “We can use you, Dr. —”

  “Brown — professional name, Dr. Ferrel. And I’m used to being called just Nurse Brown.”

  Jenkins cut in on the formalities. “Sue, did you hear anything outside about what’s going on here?”

  “Rumors, but they were wild, and I didn’t have a chance to hear many. Mostly from some of the guards who were beginning to clear out the parking lot. All I know is that they’re talking of evacuating the city and everything within fifty miles of here, but it isn’t official. One of the guards said they were going to send in Federal troops to declare martial law over the whole section, but there was nothing on the radio.”

  Jenkins took her off, then, to show her the Infirmary and introduce her to Jones and the two other nurses. Ferrel sat down to wait for the sound of the siren again and tried to imagine what was happening outside in the plant. He attempted to make sense out of the article in the Weekly Ray, but finally gave it up; atomic theory had advanced too far since the sketchy studies he’d made, and the symbols were largely without meaning to him. He could work his way through the behavior of the normal elements and the fission of uranium, but the whole process of packing atoms together to form the complicated new isotopes was good only for headaches. He’d have to rely on Jenkins, it seemed. In the meantime, what was holding up the litter? He should have heard the warning siren long before.

  It wasn’t the litter that came in next, however, but a group of five men, two carrying a third, and a fourth supporting the fifth. Jenkins took charge of the carried man, Brown helping him; it was similar to the earlier cases, but without the actual burns from contact with hot metal. Ferrel turned to the men.

  “Where’s Beel and the litter?” He was inspecting the supported man’s leg as he asked, and began work on it without moving the fellow to a table. Apparently a lump of radioactive matter the size of a small pea had been driven half an inch into the flesh below the thigh, and the broken bone was the result of the violent contractions of the man’s own muscles under the stimulus of the radiations. It wasn’t pretty. Now, however, the strength of the action had apparently burned out the nerves around, and the leg was limp and without feeling; the man lay watching, relaxed on the bench in a half-comatose condition, his lips twisting into a sick grimace, but he did not flinch as the wound was scraped out. Ferrel was working around a small lead shield, his arms covered with heavily leaded gloves, and he dropped the scraps of flesh and isotope into a box of the same metal.

  “Beel’s out of this world, Doc,” one of the others answered when he could tear his eyes off the probing. “He got himself blotto, somehow, and wrecked the litter before he got back. He couldn’t take it, watching us grapple them out — and we hadda go in after ‘em without a drop to drink!”

  Ferrel glanced at him quickly, noticing Jenkins’ head jerk around as he did so. “You were getting them out? You mean you didn’t come from in there?”

  “Hell, no, Doc. Do we look that bad? Them two got it when the stuff decided to spit on ‘em. Went clean through their armor. Me, I got me some nice burns, but I ain’t complaining. I got a look at a couple of stiffs
, so I’m kicking about nothing!”

  Ferrel hadn’t noticed the three who had traveled under their own power, but he looked now, carefully. They were burned, and badly, by radiations and heat, but the burns were still new enough to give them only a little trouble and probably what they’d just been through had temporarily deadened their awareness of pain, just as a soldier on the battlefield may be wounded and not realize it until the action stops. Anyhow, atomjacks were never noted for being sissies.

  “There’s almost a quart in the office there on the table,” he told them. “One good drink apiece — no more. Then go up front and I’ll send Nurse Brown in to fix your burns as well as can be for now.” Brown could apply the unguents and administer the serums to counteract normal radiation burns as well as he could, and some division of work seemed necessary. “Any chance of finding any more living men in the converter housing?”

  “Maybe. Somebody said the thing let out a groan half a minute before it popped, so most of ‘em had a chance to duck into the two safety chambers. Figure on going back there and pushing tanks ourselves unless you say no; about half an hour’s work left before we can crack the chambers, I guess, then we’ll know.”

  “Good. And there’s no sense sending in every man with a burn, or we’ll be flooded here; they can wait, and it looks as if we’ll have plenty of serious stuff to care for. Dr. Brown, I guess you’re elected to go out with the men; have one of them drive the spare litter Jones will show you. Salve down and inject the burn cases, put the worst ones off duty, and just send in the ones with the jerks. You’ll find my emergency kit in the office there. Someone has to be out there to give first aid and sort them out; we haven’t room for the whole plant in here.”

  “Right, Dr. Ferrel.” She let Meyers replace her in assisting Jenkins and was gone briefly to come out with his bag. “Come on, you men. I’ll hop the litter and dress down your burns on the way. You’re appointed driver, mister. Somebody should have reported that Beel person before so the litter would be out there now.”