Bright Segment by Theodore Sturgeon

eagerly, they clambered up to Moira and helped her out. Carl breathed such a sigh of relief that Tod and April stopped tosmile at him, at each other.
    Carl shrugged out of his weakness as if it were an uncomfortable garment and went to be close to Moira, to care about Moira and nothing else.
    A deep labored voice called, “Who’s up?”
    “Teague! It’s Teague … all of us, Teague,” called Tod. “Carl and Moira and April and me. All except Alma.”
    Slowly Teague’s great head rose out of the Coffin. He looked around with the controlled motion of a radar sweep. When his head stopped its one turning, the motion seemed relayed to his body, which began to move steadily upward. The four who watched him knew intimately what this cost him in sheer willpower, yet no one made any effort to help. Unasked, one did not help Teague.
    One leg over, the second. He ignored the bar and stepped down to seat himself on the bottom step as if it were a throne. His hands moved very slowly but without faltering as he helped himself to the capsules, then the beaker. He permitted himself a moment of stillness, eyes closed, nostrils pinched; then life coursed strongly into him. It was as if his muscles visibly filled out a little. He seemed heavier and taller, and when he opened his eyes, they were the deeply vital, commanding light-sources which had drawn them, linked them, led them all during their training.
    He looked toward the door in the corner. “Has anyone—”
    “We were waiting for you,” said Tod. “Shall we … can we go look now? I want to see the stars.”
    “We’ll see to Alma first.” Teague rose, ignoring the lip of his Coffin and the handhold it offered. He went to Alma’s. With his height, he was the only one among them who could see through the top plate without mounting the steps.
    Then, without turning, he said, “Wait.”
    The others, half across the room from him, stopped. Teague turned to them. There was no expression on his face at all. He stood quite motionless for perhaps ten seconds, and then quietly released a breath. He mounted the steps of Alma’s Coffin, reached, and the side nearest his own machine sank silently into the floor. He stepped down, and spent a long moment bent over the body inside. From wherethey stood, tense and frightened, the others could not see inside. They made no effort to move closer.
    “Tod,” said Teague, “get the kit. Surgery
Lambda
. Moira, I’ll need you.”
    The shock of it went to Tod’s bones, regenerated, struck him again; yet so conditioned was he to Teague’s commands that he was on his feet and moving before Teague had stopped speaking. He went to the after bulkhead and swung open a panel, pressed a stud. There was a metallic whisper, and the heavy case slid out at his feet. He lugged it over to Teague, and helped him rack it on the side of the Coffin. Teague immediately plunged his hands through the membrane at one end of the kit, nodding to Moira to do likewise at the other. Tod stepped back, studiously avoiding a glance in at Alma, and returned to April. She put both her hands tight around his left biceps and leaned close. “
Lambda
.…” she whispered.
    “That’s … parturition, isn’t it?”
    He shook his head. “Parturition is Surgery
Kappa
,” he said painfully. He swallowed. “
Lambda’s
cesarean.”
    Her crimson eyes widened. “Cesarean?
Alma?
She’d never need a cesarean!”
    He turned to look at her, but he could not see, his eyes stung so. “Not while she lived, she wouldn’t,” he whispered. He felt the small white hands tighten painfully on his arm. Across the room, Carl sat quietly. Tod squashed the water out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Carl began pounding knuckles, very slowly, against his own temple.
    Teague and Moira were busy for a long time.
    II
    Tod pulled in his legs and lowered his head until the kneecaps pressed cruelly against his eyebrow ridges. He hugged his shins, ground his back into the