Spaceship Medic
The ninety-two day run from the Lunar Station to Mars is a piece of cake – until the day the interplanetary spaceship Johannes Kepler is hit by a meteorite.
‘SPACE EMERGENCY ! ! THE HULL OF THIS SHIP HAS BEEN HOLED. FOLLOW SPACE SURVIVAL DRILL.’ Lieutenant Donald Chase, a young doctor on his first space flight, follows instructions and reaches the control room to discover that the Captain is dead, and that he and First Engineer Holtz are the only two officers left alive on the ship. When the badly shaken engineer refuses the Captain’s job, Don Chase finds himself in command of more than a hundred rebellious passengers and a damaged space ship, sailing off course without radio contact and headed for a solar storm.
‘That means we are all as good as dead right now,’ says Holtz. And what if they don’t succeed in contacting Mars, and what if they can’t change their course? Crisis follows crisis with terrifying speed, and it seems as though there are too many ‘ifs’, but Don Chase refuses to let the passengers and crew give in. ‘Something can be done. I know.’ Something has to be done if they are ever to reach mars.
When I picked up Spaceship Medic, judging by the title alone, I expected a medical story set against the backdrop of space. It does get around to the medical part of the story eventually but this is primarily an epic disaster movie on paper, all the complications that come with a crippled spacecraft fully utilized in building up the tension. Lt. Chase, the young doctor thrust into the position of captain after the deaths of everyone of higher rank in a freak accident, is a likable enough lead character, though a touch too optimistic. A moment of blind panic in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds would have added a layer of realism to his character.
The crisis begins when a meteorite smashes through the Johannes Kepler, tearing eighteen compartments open to the cold of space, and killing everyone in the main control-room in the middle of a staff meeting. The communications ability of the ship is destroyed in the encounter, the water supply is depleted, and oxygen-replenishing phytoplankton in the water is reduced dramatically, adding to the problems of the crew. The situation deteriorates as Don discovers that the ship is spinning wildly off course, and a solar storm is on its’ way. My concise outline of the emergency makes it seem overly melodramatic, but Harrison’s writing is beautifully lucid, never descending into hyperbole or cranking up the tension needlessly.
There are touches that make the story stand out from other novels set aboard spaceships, especially when the clever design of the spacesuits are concerned. The thought that the ship had typewriters aboard threw me off for a moment, as did the use of audio tape, but considering the era in which the book was written these are minor quibbles. Relying on Morse code to get in touch with Mars is slightly cliché, though not a deal-breaker.
When a mystery illness spreads through the crew and passengers I began thinking about the phytoplankton released in the meteorite smash, or what could possibly be in the cargo hold, but Harrison is smart enough to come up with a reason – and a solution – which avoids the simplistic. There is enough technical information to get across the advances in science, though technical terms are never used where they aren’t needed. Spaceship Medic is an easy enough read, albeit rather brief for a novel, and shouldn’t trouble many readers.
A few clever touches, such as solar storms being measured on the Hoyle scale, never overshadow the plot, and the story is wrapped up with a satisfactory ending. The only criticism may lie in the fact that there isn’t much room for re-readability.
Spaceship Medic by Harry Harrison (Puffin Books, 1976) ISBN-10: 0140308539
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