Runaway World

Casualties

     Windsor's shoulders had been protected by the life support machinery that the surface suits contained high up on their backs, but his hips and buttocks had been left red and blistered by the cold. He had to administer the thermal cream to himself because Andrew was too busy looking after Fox and Cheval.

     Cheval had been hit in the leg, just above the knee. The bullet had gone right through, though, without hitting either the bone or any major blood vessels and needed only a bandage until they got him back to the city. He tied it as quickly as he could and then, despite all Andrew's protestations, he hobbled out to the cockpit to supervise the rover's continued pursuit of Fox's rover.

     Fox's injury was more serious. His lung had indeed collapsed and, on top of that, a medium sized vein had been cut in two. With the living room turned into a makeshift infirmary, bloodstained bedsheets draped over every piece of furniture, Andrew had used the rover's small and rather basic ultrasound machine and a laparoscopic waldo to insert a clamp to stop the bleeding, under the direction of a doctor watching and talking to him over a video link. Andrew had then patched the injury so he could re-inflate the lung. Hopefully, that would keep him alive until they could get him to a hospital.

     Once he'd sorted them out as well as he could Andrew went back to Windsor, who was sitting backwards on an armchair, still rubbing the salve onto his blistered skin, wincing with pain. "That looks bad," he said sympathetically.

     "Feels bad," Windsor replied through gritted teeth. "We've all had the seminars, of course. They're supposed to tell you what to expect, but they don't. It hurts really bad."

     "Is the cream working?"

     "Does it feel warm?"

     Andrew touched the side of Windsor's hip with the tips of his fingers, trying not to disturb the cream smeared on it. "Yeah. Like a lukewarm cup of tea." Chemical reactions in the cream as it reacted with the air were releasing heat. It would continue to do so for about half an hour, by which time his skin and the flesh beneath should have been re-warmed to body temperature. "Doesn't look too bad, actually," he said. "Maybe the skin will survive. You might not need skin grafts."

     "That would be nice," said the Constable. He looked across at Fox, who'd been tied down to the sofa with strips of cloth cut from a bedsheet. "Wish I'd been the one to shoot him."

     The Historian opened his eyes a crack and turned his head to look at him. "I always hoped..." He paused whilst he gathered his strength to speak again. "I always hoped I could do what I needed to do without hurting anyone," he managed to say.

     "One man dead," said Windsor flatly. "Two more injured. It could have been three men dead."

     "Kartoshka acted from his own convictions. He persuaded me as much as I persuaded him."

     "And Lavandel? The guy who sabotaged rovers seventeen and eighteen? Did he persuade you as well?"

     "There are many of us who feel that leaving the Earth would be a suicidal mistake. Too many for you to stop us all. I may already have succeeded. My rover has too much of a lead over this one. You can't catch it in time."

     "How many of you are there?" asked Windsor. "Give me their names."

     "I don't know any names. I didn't know it was Lavendel aboard rover eighteen. Kartoshka was the only one whose name I knew."

     "Do you have a leader? Who gives you your orders?"

     "We don't have a leader. Just a bunch of people all driven by their own sense of morality."