Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 97: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GIMMICK 95 “Is he all right?” asked the com- mander, turning his head from the yammering video screens. “Healthy so far. He meeds a respirator.” “IT know. He’s supposed to have one.” The commander lifted his voice. ‘“Where’s the respirator?” Beside Calland another cyb tech murmured irritably. “But the medico doesn’t care if I’m healthy. They dragged me out of quarantine to send me over here. If I didn’t take pills, I’'d have a hundred and two fever, and I have the itch, and everyone thinks it’s funny.” He scratched his neck. “What did you say you have?” asked Calland, slightly alarmed. He leaned away and checked the re- sistance of a weld at arm’s length from the man. “Chicken pox,” the man said with sadistic glee. “You'll probably get it. It’s an old children’s disease in the planets of the cluster. The planets around here probably never had it because they quarantined the settling trips. It makes you itch for two days.” He scratched with a hand holding a soldering iron and said “Ouch,” ab- sently as the iron waved near skin. “What do you say the chances are that the bohunk knows anything?” Calland ran a rough weld through a gadget that smoothed it to the right bore. “Not good. Choose a man at random out of a human crew and the chances are that he can’t tell you what makes the air lock open and close, let alone why the guns fire.” The prisoner was talking to a trans- lator and the translator was talking to the commander and the calls were buzzing and talking and piling up on the commander’s screens behind him. “Where are some physicists or electri- cal engineers,” the commander de- manded indignantly. “I can’t under- stand this gabble honk!” Beside Calland the man _ with chicken pox muttered something to himself like, ‘not in quarantine, Let em ail itch,” and stepped rapidly in front of Calland and the other cyb electronics men who were beginning to put their tools down to volunteer. To the commander he said soothingly, “T’m qualified, sir,” and took the arm of the translator. “Let’s find some place to sit down and talk with this fellow.” He looked at the doctor. “Can he take questioning?” “What kind of questioning?” the doctor asked suspiciously, and turned to the commander. “‘He’s not in good shape sir, he needs a trip to the infirmary. The air isn’t doing him any good.” ‘“‘Where the deuce is that respira- tor?” There was a muttered explana- tion from one of the officers. ‘Making one?” Another muttered in answer. The commander looked around from face to face earnestly as though asking information. ““Who thought of storing everything essential in one place where the enemy could wreck it all with a single beam?” He waved at the medic. “Take him away and take care of him. The respirator will be sent over.” In four days, Calland learned, they had determined the Furry’s name, place of origin, and military rank— he was a mess-steward, able to give full details on the food preparation machinery in the Furry cruisers— before he died. The exact cause of the Furry’s death wasn’t determined; the questioning hadn’t had any reason to be of the type that might have caused it. The medical department had been overworked with other things, and by the fourth day the men weren’t in a mood to be concerned about the death by rather sudden collapse of one Furry. In exact congruence with Calland’s prediction, the Furry cruisers had connicloooks.c© Al