Self-discovery

The motorcyclist's daring hit him. Tearing off his buttons, he undressed, put his leg over the edge, and — “Stop, Val! Think!” — went to the counter, and put on rubber gloves and goggles (“Wish I had an Aqua — lung!”). He filled his lungs with air and plunged into the pool.

Even at a distance from the reactor the water was warm. “A thousand one, a thousand two….” Krivoshein, instinctively turning his face away, walked across the slippery tiles to the middle of the pool. His rubber gloves were in contact with something, and he had to look: the eel, hanging in a loop between the wires, was there. “A thousand ten, a thousand eleven,” and carefully, so as not to disturb the rods, he pulled at the dead fish. “Thousand sixteen….” His hands got hot, and he instinctively wanted to pull away, but he controlled the impulse and slowly extracted the eel from the jumble. The goggles weren't so hermetic, and streams of radioactive water seeped into his eyes. He squinted. “Thousand twenty, a thousand twenty — one” — he got it out! The green glow flickered, and the rods silently slipped back into the cylinder. It got dark in the pool.

“A thousand twenty — five!” With a sharp push Krivoshein came up to the wall, jumped out of the water, grabbed the edge, and climbed over. “A thousand thirty….”

He had the presence of mind to hop around to get the excess water off his body; he even rolled around on the floor. He wiped his face and eyes dry with his pants. “Just don't let me get blind before I get there.” He dressed haphazardly and ran out of the room.

The radiation counter howled harshly as he went by. An automatic barrier blocked his path. He jumped over it and ran across the freshly dug lawn to his dorm.

“A thousand seventy; a thousand seventy — one,” his brain continued to count. It was twilight and he avoided meeting acquaintances; but someone called after him near zone B: “Hey, Val, where's the fire? He thought it was Nechinorov, a graduate student. “A thousand eighty, a thousand eighty — one….” His skin ached and itched and then it was pierced by a million needles. That was his nervous system, honed in previous experiments, telling him that the protons and gamma — quanta from the decayed nuclei were shooting the molecules of protein in the cells of the epithelium, in the nerve endings of the skin, breaking through the walls of the blood vessels, and wounding the red and white corpuscles. “A thousand hundred. thousand hundred five….” Now the prickling had moved to his muscles, stomach, and under his skull. His lungs were congested as though he had taken a deep draw on the crudest homegrown tobacco in the world. That was the blood carrying the exploded atoms and fractured proteins all over his body.

“A thousand two hundred five… two hundred eight… idiot, what have you done? Two hundred twelve….” He no longer had the idea, the impetus. There was only fear. He wanted to live. He was getting nauseating cramps in his stomach, and his mouth was filled with copper — tasting saliva. Bumping into the massive front door as he ran in, Krivoshein realized that he was dizzy. He was seeing black. “Two hundred forty — one… will I make it?” He had to get up to the fourth floor. He slapped himself as he ran, and his head got clearer.

Twilight rushed into the dark room with him. For the first few seconds Krivoshein circled the room aimlessly and weakly. The fear, that biological fear that cannot be controlled, that makes a wounded animal head for his lair, had almost killed him: he had forgotten what to do. He felt terribly sorry for himself. His body was filled with a ringing weakness and his consciousness was slipping away. “Well, so go ahead and perish, you fool,” he thought listlessly and felt a wave of extreme anger. And that's what saved him.

His clothes, spotted with green like lichen on trees, fell on the floor. The room got even lighter; his feet glowed, and his hair and vein pattern were visible on his hands. Krivoshein ran into the shower and turned it on. The cold water poured over him, sobering him up, over his head and body, forming an irridescent pool of emerald green on the floor, and refreshed him long enough to gather his thoughts and will power.

Now, like a strategist, he commanded the battle for survival that was raging in his body. Blood, blood, blood, was rushing through his entire body! The feverish pounding of his heart resounded in his temples. Myriad capillaries washed damaged molecules and particles from every cell in his muscles and glands and sucked them out from the lymph nodes. The white corpuscles surrounded them, breaking them down to elemental particles, and carried them off into the spleen, the lungs, the liver, kidneys, intestines, tossed them into the sweat glands. “Cover the bone vessels!” he instructed the nerves, remembering in time that radioactivity could settle in bone marrow, which produced blood cells.