"You could make a fortune in orthopedics," Dr. Raimazan said. "Let's get our friend out of the aisle." I stepped out and pulled the policeman toward a sitting position. He groaned and opened his eyes. Though he'd fallen into the fragments of the broken pitcher, he'd suffered damage only to his dignity and his lower lip. A line of red dashes below the lip showed where his teeth had bitten through. He shook his head at our offers of tape and antiseptic and struggled to his feet. Holding the key to the front compartment before him like a dagger, he shuffled up there. He unlocked the door. Shouting something violent, he ducked into the compartment and slammed the door behind him.
I lent my hands to the Surgeon-General's instructions, patching up the cuts and sprains the passengers had gotten. In a moment Miss Barrie, the stewardess, took the bandages out of my hands and finished the job with fewer knots and less adhesive. The passengers sat quiet in the dim light of the capsule, as though afraid that panic might constitute a security-violation. The lovely Anna pouted. Though she was unhurt herself, her precious radio was shattered. It lay under her seat, its antenna snapped like a slender idiot's-neck, its electronic guts spilling from its belly.
"Whatever else happens, we're rid of that puling nuisance," Don Raffe growled, looking at the ex-radio. His mouth settled into creases, a satisfied line between parentheses. He picked up his magazine and leafed through it, to prove himself superior to these chance joltings-about. The lights maliciously dropped till only the bulbs at either end of the aisle were glowing. These died till they were yellow coils, magnifying the dark that fogged us.
In the top tray of my test kit was a flashlight. I broke it out to sweep the light in a quick survey of the car. Anna's eyes squinted at my beam, her mouth loose with fear for a moment, like a drawstring bag. Then she squared off, sat straight, stared defiantly into my light. Without looking down she snapped her purse open and took a tiny automatic pistol from it. She laid this on the seat beside her, out of sight. "I've got a right to defend myself," Anna said, grim as a suffragette. I laughed out loud at this tableau of maidenhood-at-bay. She smoothed her hair back with both hands, making a double cantilever of her arms to lift her breasts, demonstrating the noble architecture of woman, mocking me. I stopped laughing. I jumped the beam over her to help Miss Barrie break out the emergency lights.
Those lamps were lit, and glowed in the cabin with their chilly blue light. Mrs. Swaime asked of the woman beside her, as though it were an afterthought, "Why did we stop?"
"I don't know," Mrs. Grimm admitted. I knew her. She was the wife of the Minister of Agriculture, a man who'd acquired a reputation for integrity in a government that didn't use the word. "For me the Tube has always been just a link between home and Albert's office at Bahia. I didn't think that link could break."
Miss Barrie was knocking at the door up front. It opened a reluctant inch to show the eye of the Bupo cop. He growled some answer to the stewardess' question, then slammed and relocked his door. Miss Barrie hurried back to me. "A man was pulled out of that compartment," she said. "He unlocked the entry hatch and was blown out into the Tube by cabin pressure."
"Like a beetle blasted off a bush by a garden hose," Don Raffe murmured.
"I expect my baggage is strung out from here to Havana," Anna pouted. "Doesn't the State have regulations to keep prisoners from killing themselves on public property?"