There was something else he had to tell Jay, something else not quite so funny.
He checked another fit of sobbing laughter.
“Jay,” he whispered, “I’m going mad.
It’s the red gas.
I can feel it on my skin, and I can’t stop laughing—though I guess it isn’t really funny.
You must take the controls.
And have Hal lock me hi the brig———”
“Why, John!”
“Please lock me up.
I might—I might even harm Aladoree… And go on to save the System.”
The laughter came back; he clung to Jay Kalam, sobbing out:
“Wait a little, Jay.
Let me tell you the joke.
So very, very funny.
Millions of men laughing—while they die.
Little children, even, laughing while their flesh decays.
It’s the biggest joke of all, Jay.
A cosmic joke on the whole human race.”
Laughter overcame him.
He fell shaking to the floor.
The next he knew, beyond laughter and delirium, he was strapped to a berth in a cabin, and Giles Habibula was bathing his body with a pale, luminously blue solution, evidently the same which Adam Ul-nar’s close-mouthed physician had used on the wound where the liquid gas had burned him, long ago in the Purple Hall.
“Giles,” he whispered, and his voice came hoarse and weak.
“Ah, lad!” wheezed Giles Habibula, smiling.
“You know me, lad, at last!
It’s mortal time you did.
You’ll laugh no more—promise old Giles?”
“Laugh.
What have I to laugh at?”
Vaguely he remembered some great joke, but what it was, he could not say.
“Nothing, lad!” gasped Giles, relieved.
“Not a precious thing.
And you’ll be on your blessed feet again, lad, by the tune we reach the System.”
“The System?… Oh, I remember.
Does Jay think we can escape the black fleet?”
“Ah, lad, we left them long ago.
We flew close to the red dwarf star.
They would not follow—its gravitational field stopped their propelling mechanisms.
Some of them fell in it.
So did we—mortal near!
Ah, a wicked fight we had to drive clear of it, lad.”
“So I was laughing?… I almost remember.
I thought that red gas had got me.
But that doesn’t seem so funny.
Am I sane again, Giles?”
“Ah, yes, you seem to be, lad.
Just now. Adam Ulnar had this solution.
The things made it up, to a prescription he had, while they were repairing the ship.
It neutralizes the gas—if one has not been exposed too mortal long.
The fearful green scales went from your skin days ago.
But we were afraid———”