Double Contact (18 page)

“It isn't working,” said Prilicla, disappointed. “Every time you showed a DBDG, regardless of its size or whether it was a large, hairy Orligian, an Earth-human, or a half-sized, red-furred Nidian, the reaction was the same—one of intense fear and hatred. It will be extremely difficult to make these people trust you.”

“What on Earth,” said the captain, “could we ever have done to make them feel that way?”

“It was not done on Earth, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “But the show isn't over yet. Please continue.”

The format changed again. Instead of showing individual planets and subjects, two- and three-member groups comprising different species were shown meeting and talking, sometimes with their children present, or working together on various technical projects. In some of them they were encased in space suits while they rescued other-species casualties from damaged ships. The pictures' application to the present situation, he hoped, was plain. Then the scene changed again to show all of the subjects, forming the rim of wheel and shown in scale, from the diminutive Nallajims and Cinrusskins, up to the massive Tralthans and Hudlars of more than ten times that body-weight. At the hub of the circle was shown a tiny, glittering representation of the galaxy, from which radiated misty spokes joining it to the individual species on the rim. Then the individual species were pictured again, this time with all of them displayed as being the same size, in order, it was again hoped, to illustrate equality of importance.

Several seconds passed. At this extreme range Prilicla could not feel, but he could imagine, the captain's anxiety as it spoke.

“Well, Doctor,” it said urgently, “was there a response?”

“There was, friend Fletcher,” he replied, “but I'm still trying for an exact analysis of the emotional radiation. In conjunction with the background feelings of anxiety, which may be caused by worry over its companion who it can no longer contact, there are strong feelings of excitement, wonder, and, I feel sure, comprehension. I'd say that it understood our lesson.”

When he didn't go on, the captain broke the silence. It said, “I've the feeling that you're going to say ‘but.'”

“But,” Prilicla went on obligingly, “every time you showed a DBDG, the casualty also radiated deep suspicion and distrust. These feelings are better than the earlier ones of intense fear and blind hatred, but only fractionally. I feel certain that the casualty still doesn't want you DBDGs anywhere near it.”

For the first time in Prilicla's long experience on ambulance-ship operations, the captain used words that his translator had not been programmed to accept, and went on. “Then what the hell am I expected to do to change that?”

Before replying, Prilicla looked slowly around the compartment, pointed at one of the transparent inspection covers, then moved close and began opening it. The robot drifted nearby but made no attempt to interfere, even when he reached inside and, after hesitating and looking back as if to ask permission for what he was about to do, he gently touched one of the cable looms. When he replied, he knew that his vision pickup was showing the captain everything he had been doing.

“In very simple pictorial terms, we've been talking big,” he said, “by telling it about a few of the Federation's species and the cooperation that exists between their worlds and in space, like assisting distressed ships and—”

“If you remember my advice,” the other broke in, stressing the last word, “it was to follow through on the ship-rescue sequence and show the casualties receiving medical treatment. That, Doctor, would have clearly demonstrated our good intentions.”

“And I did not take your advice,” Prilicla replied gently, “because of the possibility of a misunderstanding. In the present climate of fear and distrust, the emotional reaction of an alien—who would have been witnessing a multispecies medical team, which would certainly have included at least one DBDG, carrying out a surgical procedure on a casualty—could not have been taken for granted. We know nothing about the alien's physiology, environment, or medical practices, if it has any. It may have decided that we were simply torturing captured casualties.

“You, friend Fletcher,” he said, when the other remained silent, “can do nothing right now, apart from furnishing me with technical advice when needed. I've already mentioned this idea to you, and your lack of enthusiasm for it was understandable. But the time for showing pictures is over. As my Earth-human gambling friends keep telling me, I must put my money where my mouth is.

“So now,” he ended, “we—or rather, I—must try to reinforce those pictorial lessons with deeds.”

He withdrew his hand slowly, closed the transparent cover, and pointed along the linking passageway in the direction of the identical compartment on the damaged side of the ship. Had the robot crew member been an organic life-form, he thought, it would have been breathing down his neck. But it made no move to hinder him.

In the darkened compartment he used his helmet light to open inspection panels and look and, if it didn't look dangerous, to touch the scorched or ruptured cable looms and plumbing inside all of them in turn. Still there was no interference from the robot. He was beginning to feel less sure of himself and his ability to do this job when the captain, demonstrating the strange mixture of empathy and understanding possessed by Earth-humans, answered his question before it could be asked.

“You should start with an easy one,” said the captain. “High on the upper side of the first inspection compartment you opened there are two fairly thick wires—one has what seems to be pale blue insulation, and the other red. If you look carefully you can see where they make a right-angle turn and disappear through a grommet into what is presumably the ceiling of your corridor. The force of the explosion caused a wiring break in one of them at the angle bend. Do you see the ends of the bare wire projecting from the torn insulation? Try to splice it, but be careful not to touch any metal in the area while you're working. Your gauntlets are thin and we don't know how much current that wire will be carrying. You'll need insulating tape to hold the splice together.”

“My med satchel has surgical tape,” said Prilicla. “Will that do?”

“Yes, Doctor, but be careful.”

A few minutes later the splicing operation was complete, the join was insulated, and all the lighting fixtures in the corridor were on. The robot crew member was moving from one to the other and, Prilicla hoped, reporting on the completion of one small repair to the conscious survivor who was its chief. It wasn't much, but he had done something.

“What next?” said Prilicla.

“Now comes the difficult part,” said the captain, “so don't get cocky. The other wiring affected is finer and with more subtle color-codings. Some of the ruptured strands show heat discoloration, and you must trace these back to an unaffected area so as to positively identify each end before joining them. The complexity of the wiring makes me pretty sure that most of these breaks are in the hull-sensor and internal-communications networks, and if a join were to be mismatched, we could cause all kinds of trouble. It would be like short-circuiting your hearing sensors to your eyes. We're in the strange position of making repairs to systems whose purposes are totally unknown to us. I wish I was there with the proper equipment to help you. This is going to be delicate, precise, painstaking, and exhausting work. Are you up to it, Doctor?”

“Don't worry,” said Prilicla, “it's a little like brain surgery.”

CHAPTER 18

Even though the captain was giving him the benefit of its wide-ranging technical expertise and guiding his hands at every stage, the work went very slowly. An early splicing problem was that some of the damaged fine-gauge wiring had burned away along several inches of its length and the missing pieces had to be replaced. There was suitable replacement material on
Rhabwar
and the captain offered to bring it itself, in the hope that it would be allowed to assist Prilicla directly and so speed up the process.

“Bring some food as well, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “I've decided that it will also save time if I don't have to return to the ship for meals. Or sleep.”

Prilicla waited politely until the expected objections were becoming repetitious, then said, “There are risks, of course, but I'm being neither foolish nor foolhardy. My space suit makes provision for the short-term elimination of body wastes, it has a small airlock attachment for the introduction of food, and in the weightless condition, padded rest furnishings are unnecessary for comfort. My thinking is that if we want the survivor to trust us, we must show that we trust it.”

“I agree, reluctantly,” the other replied after a long pause. “But if I can make it plain that I'm helping you help it, maybe it will begin to trust me, too.”

“That is the general idea, friend Fletcher,” he replied. “But at this delicate stage in the contact procedure we shouldn't rush things.”

“Right,” said the captain. “I'll bring the food, replacement wiring, and some simple, nonpowered tools that I think will help in your work. They will be inside a transparent container so that the survivor and/or its robot will be able to see exactly what it is getting. I'm coming now.”

But when it was approaching the alien ship, the emotional radiation of the survivor became apprehensive and its robot left the compartment quickly on what was obviously an interception course. Prilicla followed it and, when it was plain that the captain was not to be allowed to enter the ship, he relieved the other of its package.

“Sorry, friend Fletcher,” he said as he did so, “I'm afraid that you're still unwelcome here. But I've been thinking about a possible explanation for that, and for the high sensitivity these people have towards external physical contact, allied to the strange fact that, in both the ship and its crew robots, their defenses are ultra–short range. Surely that is a strange type of weapon to use in space.”

“The weapon used against them was not short-range,” said the captain. “It blew a large hole in their hull and, to a lesser degree, in the defunct crew robot we examined. But go on.”

“During your show,” Prilicla resumed, “I received the feeling that the survivor was being given information for the first time. There was excitement, wonder, but a strangely reduced level of surprise. It was almost as if the survivor was expecting, or maybe just hoping, to meet other life-forms in space. If I'm right, that would mean that interstellar travel was new to it, or that this was its first time out and it was exploring, perhaps even searching for the planet it has found. But when you showed the Hudla sequence, there I detected subtle changes in its emotions. There was an odd combination of fear, dread, hatred, and, strangely, familiarity. Hudla is not a pleasant world to people who are not Hudlars and, I would guess, neither is the survivor's. I realize this is speculation but I have the feeling that it went out looking for another and better world. The presence of its ship in close orbit could mean that it found it.”

The other made a gesture of impatience. “An interesting theory, but it doesn't take into account the fact that an as-yet unknown agency used an offensive weapon against it.”

Prilicla hated telling the captain that he thought it was wrong, especially at this short range because he would feel the other's annoyance at full intensity. He said gently, “Are we quite sure about that? Consider the type of blast damage to the ship and the robot taken aboard
Terragar,
and that this species may be new to interstellar and hyperspatial flight and the distress beacons associated with it. Let's suppose that they found an uninhabited planet, green and pleasant and without the violent meteorology of home and that they signaled its position by detonating—not a distress beacon because if they were new to space they would not expect rescue—but a similar device that would give an accurate position fix. The signaling device was untried and it blew up in their faces. That's the one we suspected might be a weapons discharge.
Terragar
responded before we could and needed to detonate its own distress beacon. But the point I'm making is that the damage to the alien ship might have been accidental and self-inflicted.”

“I think you're wishing rather than theorizing, Doctor,” said the captain; then, after a moment's thought, “But it's a nice theory. However, it doesn't explain why their robots as well as their ship have such prickly hides. Plainly they were expecting someone or something to attack them. And if you still think I'm wrong, don't waste time being polite about it.”

“Their defenses may be automatic,” said Prilicla.

The captain did not reply. It was beginning to have doubts, which meant that the reflected annoyance caused by Prilicla's words would be reduced. He went on. “Consider the surface design of the ship's outer hull as well as that of the robot's skin. Those surfaces can be touched without harm by organic digits or simple, unsophisticated, nonpowered tools. If we postulate a dense or highly disturbed atmosphere on their home world, a thick, protective, and streamlined covering would be necessary for survival, as it is on the Hudlars' planet. But suppose they have an implacable natural enemy, perhaps an intelligent and technically advanced one, and the ship's defensive weapons are needed only on their environmentally-hostile home planet during the periods of construction, takeoff, and landing.

“And if their implacable enemy bears a physical resemblance to you DBDGs,” he ended, “that would explain much.”

The captain made an untranslatable sound. “I suppose we're lucky that they don't have a phobia about outsized crabs or caterpillars, or six-legged elephants or even large flying insects,” it said, then went on briskly. “About this repair job, Doctor. There will be considerable physical and mental stress involved. The quality of any work suffers with the onset of fatigue, whatever the profession. While your mind is clear, can you estimate how long you will be able to function effectively before I should remind you to stop for rest?”