quemos
It went on like this for several more days. Hansen, at first amused, was now alarmed and completely convinced that both Quemos and Bullard were thoroughly useless. The messages were his only source of information, since both “experts” were too immersed in their work to talk with him. As his alarm grew, he decided that he might at least try to strike up a friendship with someone on board Captain Fromer’s sealed ship—someone who might have something comforting to report. He called up the ship’s navigator.
“This is Hansen. How’re things going up there?”
“Ha!”
“What’s that mean? Good or bad?”
“It means,” the navigator said, while yawning, “that things are falling apart rapidly. In fact, in a day or two I don’t think it’ll make much difference whether or not they open that damn door.”
“You, er, care to fill me in?”
“Why not?” said the navigator, with the voice of a man who knows that it is too late for anything to matter. “The members of the crew are divided into two factions. It appears that our physician has rallied half the crew to support his medical contention that our exhalted passenger belongs in the refrigerator. The good captain, with some justice, one must admit, thinks that he is in command of the ship, and prefers to believe that R’thagna Bar belongs out of the refrigerator.”
“Who seems to be winning the argument?”