Hughes! The math professor. The wise guy who had created the part of dumb bunny by making sounds of knowing too much, who pretended to know his way around in space.
Farradyne wondered whether Hughes had cried out in a polytonal voice—then he hauled him into the air-break and slammed the door shut. He felt for a pulse and found one fluttering; he turned him on his face and pumped the ribs in, out, in, out, wondering whether he was wasting his time.
Hughes groaned painfully. His groans echoed and reechoed in the tiny space, but Farradyne could not hear more than the wreaking moan of a man hurt very deeply. Hughes stirred and opened one eye. Then he closed it again and sobbed under his breath. Farradyne checked the heart and found it beating weakly; the pulse was not fluttering any more, and the breath was coming naturally, even though the man's chest heaved high and dropped low and there was a foghorn sound in the throat as he gasped huge lungfuls of air.
Whatever, Hughes would give Farradyne no trouble for some time. Farradyne carried the unconscious man to his stateroom and dropped him on the bed. Then he went below and closed the little hatches, reinserted the control rod, and wondered whether missing a few would louse up his landing.
He went up to the control room and replaced the wiring torn out of the audible-alarm system. The phalanx of warning lamps had winked out and the clangor of the alarm did not come.
Farradyne went back to Hughes; the man was in a semicoma.
"Can you hear me?" demanded Farradyne.
Hughes roused slightly and looked at Farradyne through heavy eyes, mumbling unintelligibly.
"You dirty louse!" fumed Farradyne. "I'd have let you die if it hadn't occurred to me that you might be good for some information. What makes, Hughes? Or should we have an accident below?"
Hughes mumbled something that sounded like defiance.