Hughes groaned painfully. His voice echoed and re-echoed in the tiny air break, but Farradyne could not hear more than the groan of a man badly hurt. Hughes stirred and opened one eye halfway. Then he closed it again and moaned 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.
Hughes would give Farradyne no trouble for some time. He carried Hughes to his stateroom and stretched him on the bed. Then he went below and closed the little hatches and reinserted the control rod, wondering again whether missing a few would louse-up his landing.
He went to the control room and replaced the wiring torn out of the audible-alarm panel. The phalanx of warning lamps had winked out, and the clangor of danger did not sound.
Farradyne went back to Hughes' stateroom. "Can you hear me?" he demanded.
Hughes awakened slightly. He looked up, his eyes dim but aware.
"You're a back-biting s.o.b.," snapped Farradyne. "And I'd have let you die if it hadn't occurred to me that you might be good for some information. What makes, Hughes?"
"Wiseacre," came from Hughes' lips in a whisper.
"What's the game, Hughes?"
"I don't know what—you're talking—about."
"I can break all your fingers and slip a hot soldering iron under your armpits until you yelp loud and clear."