Deliberations

"Help! Doc, get down here and help!" Only the voice she heard now was singular and came from one very much alive, albeit frightened Bradley Johnson.

Lee leaped from the captain's chair, Hawthorne's hat falling to the floor as she orientated herself. She paused to clear the fog of sleep from her mind. She was shivering as if the icy winds of the dream had followed her into wakefulness. Lee recognized her condition for what it was. She felt as if she'd just recovered from an infection. There was only one place she could have contracted a disease, and only one explanation for how her body had recovered so quickly. Now was not the time to ponder that reason.

Lee was about to rush down to the crew quarter when an intuition told her to scoop the Stetson from the deck. She feared that Carl Hawthorne, last in a lineage of great adventurers and entrepreneurs, was on that final journey for which all men, great and small, must eventually make. If so, Lee would not allow him to do so without the family heirloom that had accompanied his ancestors for centuries past.

The pilot was still alive when Lee arrived at the crew quarter. On sight of his current condition, she wondered if that had been a blessing or a curse. Hawthorne's body rattled with convulsions, pink foam bubbling from between clenched teeth. Lee tried to restrain him, but his violent fits were beyond her ability to contain.

"How long has this been going on?" she asked.

"Three or four minutes," Johnson answered from the bunk across from the one on which Hawthorne lay. The kid hung half way over his bed, propping his upper torso on the ship's deck with his hands. It was obvious that Johnson had attempted to aide Hawthorne, but his legs were still nonfunctional.

"I've been calling you for a while now. Where have you been?"

Lee ignored Johnson's accusatory tone. Instead she tried to access Hawthorne's condition. Besides the onset of convulsions, the pilot's clothing was now drenched by fevered perspiration and the rancid odor of corrupted flesh she had detected earlier had increased tenfold.

"I don't know what to do?" Lee cried out loud.

At first, Johnson did not reply, still petulant that Lee had not responded earlier. Then he saw her distress and said, "You've done everything anyone else would have done under these circumstances. Don't blame yourself professor Lee. Remember what you told me earlier."

"What exactly did I say," she asked.

"You told me everyone can't be a hero all of the time. That it is enough sometimes just to face your fears, win or lose. Sometimes it's enough just to try."

Hawthorne's seizures had lessened during their brief discourse to Lee's relief. She grabbed an edge of the bedding to wipe the frothy blood from his lips. While performing this chore, Lee answered Johnson.

"I don't remember saying any such thing," Lee said.

"Well it's not verbatim Doc. That is just what I got out of our earlier conversation."

After wiping the sputum from Hawthorne's mouth, she flopped to the floor and faced the kid.

"I don't know who told you that crap, but they must be must be a genius."

"Yeah, she's alright," Johnson said.

Lee felt a grin stretching across reluctant lips. The only thing she could think to say was, "Thanks."

Lee continued cleaning Hawthorne's fevered face. The sheet she used to wipe the foam from the pilot's mouth was drenched by sweat. While the convulsions had abated, Hawthorne still rolled fitfully atop the mattress like a man possessed. His prognosis did not seem favorable in professor Janice Lee's opinion. It was a diagnosis that would prove terminal not only for the pilot, but for his surviving client's as well.

Lee waited until she knew Hawthorne was truly asleep before pursuing her conversation with Johnson. When it became obvious that the pilot had suffered the worse of his affliction for the time being and that he would not wake soon, Lee turned to face Johnson again.

The kid had managed to pull himself back atop to his bunk. The effort appeared to have taxed him for his uncovered upper torso was sheen by sweat. Either that, or he too was suffering from an infection brought about by his wounds. For all she knew the Plethorian animals that had attacked the crew carried equally dangerous pathogens.

"You okay?" Lee asked.

"Just fine," Johnson responded. He worked his way to the rear of the bunk until his back was braced against the bulkhead, his dampened and rumpled quilts piled around him.

"You and I have to stop meeting like this. One might think you have the hots for me; the way you keep catching me with my pants down or my shirt off."

"Don't flatter yourself. I'm into slightly older men", Lee retorted, slightly surprised at the ease with which she fell into the kid's senseless banter. In truth, she was starting to appreciate his ability to find time for humor even in the darkest of moments. Unfortunately, their current situation called for serious deliberation.

"Bradley, I'm afraid captain Hawthorne isn't going to make it," she said quietly, sneaking a peek at the stricken pilot to ensure he hadn't heard her, as if voicing her fear aloud would make it true. "Even if he has a chance of recovering, it will most likely be too late. The Plethorian wildlife seems to be... escalating their attacks. If the blood grass can reach the ship before Hawthorne improves then none of us..."

"I know Doc. No need get yourself worked up about it," said Johnson. His resignation sounding completely sincere.

'No need to get worked up about it,' thought Lee. 'If the captain dies, it will be us who go down with the ship.' She was about to harangue the kid when Bradley Johnson derailed her.

"It blows, the captain being the way he is. I was hoping he'd get better before I was forced to launch this old bucket. I didn't think there were any T - R 95's still in vacuum. Thing has got to be more than two hundred standard years alone. Still, I should be able to swing it,"

Had she heard him wrong? Had the kid said he could fly the Excelsior?

"Did you just say you can pilot this spacecraft?" a bewildered Janice Lee asked.

Johnson's sickened condition only served to magnify his indignation. "Jeez Doc, I might be several standard decades younger than you old farts, but I do know some things. My family basically designed half the systems on this tug. You honestly don't believe my hard ass pop would let me leave the nest without learning how to use the crap we make? Only thing I'm not on top of is the cryosystems. But I can't see them being all that difficult to figure out. At least I hope they're not."

"Why haven't you said anything about this sooner!" Lee couldn't control the shrillness of her question. Nor could she contain the shameful elation and relief she felt at the news that her own life was no longer tied to that of the critically injured pilot.

"I was hoping the Capt. would get better by now. I mean, I can get this piece of scrap into orbit, but I'm no navigator. And like I said, I have never dealt with cryosystems, so even if I could get the ship pointed in the right direction we could die of starvation or old age should the sleepers fail." The kid was out of breath by the end of his explanation. Given Johnson's normally effortless garrulous nature, Lee thought this a sure sign that he too was fighting a wound acquired infection. This compiled with what he said next deflated any of the ire Lee might have spat at him for withholding knowledge of his abilities.

Gripping his damaged legs Johnson said, "Aside from my unfamiliarity with T- R 95s, navigation and cryo systems, I will need to prep the ship for takeoff. Something I can't complete with these broken matchsticks."

Lee sighed heavily, appalled at her all-consuming thoughts of self-preservation. She had completely forgotten Johnson's crippling since Hawthorne's declining state became overwhelmingly obvious.

An entire life devoted to the protection of endangered species had not prepared her for the heart clutching prospect of her own demise. She patted Johnson's bunk, afraid of touching his damaged legs least she endanger her last chance of escape.

"Okay," she said. "What can I do to help?"

"Grow me another pair of legs, for one thing," the kid said, choking back a hysterical laugh. "Failing that, get me to the cockpit so I can determine which systems Hawthorne shut down when we landed, how much fuel we'll need to break orbit, and a ton of other things. I don't suppose a salty solar sailor like Captain Carl Hawthorne keeps a checklist up there, but we can only pray."

"Maybe he'll get better soon and we won't have to swing it, as you say."

"We can pray for that as well", Bradley Johnson said. Both turned their gazes to the pilot struggling for every breath in the opposite bunk. Neither of them spoke their doubts for heavenly intervention.