Double Contact (3 page)

“… is possibly responsible for causing the casualties on the first ship,” Prilicla went on firmly. “Or perhaps another, undistressed vessel or vessels in the area have caused both sets of casualties. We must prepare and organize now for that eventuality, beginning with a clarification of the chain of command.”

For several minutes nobody spoke. The level of their emotional radiation increased in strength and complexity, but not to a stage where it was affecting him physically. The three Monitor Corps officers were reacting with controlled restraint in the face of possible danger, the feelings characteristic of the military mind. Murchison's radiation was complex and negative, as was Naydrad's, but neither of them were feeling strongly enough to vocalize their objections. Unlike the others who were feeling minor nonspecific anxiety and uncertainty, Danalta projected the calm self-assurance of a shape-changer who felt itself to be impervious to all forms of physical injury.

“Normally,” Prilicla went on, “friend Fletcher here is in operational command of
Rhabwar
until it arrives at a disaster site, after which it is the senior medical officer, myself, who has the rank. But on this mission it may well be that, initially at least, military tactics will be of more benefit to us than medical expertise. I feel your agreement, friend Fletcher, and also that you are wanting to speak. Please do so.”

The captain nodded. “Have you and the other medics considered the full implications of what you are saying? I realize that at present all this is pure speculation, but in the event of our being faced with a situation of armed conflict, difficult—and to all you medics, disagreeable decisions will have to be taken, and orders issued by myself. If I am called on to make those decisions, my orders will have to be obeyed without question or argument, no matter how objectionable they will seem. This must be fully understood and accepted by everyone right now—before, and not during or after, the event. Is it?”

“At any space accident or surface disaster scene, that is how we obey Dr. Prilicla,” Naydrad said, its fur and feelings projecting puzzlement. “This is normal procedure for us. Why are you stressing the obvious? Or am I missing something?”

“You are,” said the captain, its emotional radiation as well as its voice quiet and under control, as it spoke words it was feeling an intense reluctance to say. “This ship is unarmed, but not without weapons of defense and offense. Lieutenant Chen.”

The engineering officer cleared its breathing passages noisily and said, “For a limited duration, no more than a few hours, our meteorite shield can be stiffened sufficiently to give protection against shrapnel from missiles tipped with chemical-explosive warheads. But if one was tipped with a nuclear device, we wouldn't have a prayer.”

Lieutenant Haslam, whose astrogation speciality included long- and short-range ship handling, joined in without being asked. It said, “My tractor-pressor beam array, which is normally used on wide focus for docking or pulling in space wreckage for closer examination, can be modified to serve as a weapon, although not a very destructive one. Providing we can control the distance of the object and precisely match its speed, the pressor focus can be narrowed to within a diameter of a few feet to punch a hole in the opposition's hull plating. The catch is that it would increase the already heavy meteorite-shield drain on our power reserves, the shields would go down, and we'd be defenseless against whatever form of nastiness the opposition wanted to throw at us.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said the captain. To the others it went on, “So you can see that we are poorly equipped for a military operation. The point I am making is that, should we encounter a situation of armed conflict or its aftermath, I shall assess the tactical picture and the decisions thereafter will be mine. These will include an immediate withdrawal to the safety of hyperspace if the action is still in progress. If not, and if there are damaged vessels in the area which I consider incapable of threatening our ship, I shall take, but not necessarily follow, the advice of the senior medical officer regarding the choice of which set of survivors, if any, is to be recovered first. These should be the Monitor Corps Earth-humans rather than the new, other-species casualties because—”

“Captain Fletcher!” Murchison broke in, its words accompanied by an explosion of shock and outrage that made Prilicla feel as if he had flown into a solid wall, an effect reinforced by the emotional reactions of the other medics. “That is not what we do here!”

The captain paused for a moment to order its own thoughts and feelings, which closely resembled those of its listeners, then continued quietly. “Normally, it is not, ma'am. I was about to say that there are sound tactical and psychological reasons for rescuing our own people first. They at least know who and what we represent and can furnish us with current intelligence regarding the situation, while the other people will be confused, frightened, and probably injured aliens who will take one look at us” —he glanced quickly at the medical menagerie around him—“and feel sure that we mean them harm. You must agree that it would be better to know something about the strangers, however little, before attempting to rescue and treat them.

“In the event,” it went on, looking up at the hovering Prilicla, “the decision and choice may not be necessary. But if it is, the med team must be prepared to treat the casualties in the order I designate. Is this clearly understood?”

It was, Prilicla knew, because there were no strong feelings of negation coming from anyone, and the surrounding emotional radiation was settling down to a level which enabled him to maintain a stable hover. It was Naydrad, their specialist in heavy rescue, who broke the lengthening silence.

“If nobody has anything else to add,” it said with an impatient ripple of its fur, “I for one want to review the medical log and space-rescue techniques. After six months in the hospital where all the patients are neatly stretched out in beds or whatever, one gets a little rusty.”

Without saying anything else, the captain left the casualty deck, closely followed by the two junior officers. Naydrad began running a visual summary of
Rhabwar
's early missions and the often unorthodox rescue techniques involved while recovering casualties. Murchison and Danalta joined it before the screen, probably because it was the only thing that was moving, apart from Prilicla's wings. Their emotional radiation was complex but firmly controlled as if they might be holding back the urge to say something. Prilicla excused himself and flew up the central well to his quarters so as to have the opportunity of thinking without the close proximity of outside emotional interference—and, of course, to give them the chance to relieve their feelings verbally.

“This is not what we do here,” Murchison had said.

He did not need Naydrad's viewscreen to remind him of all the things they
had
done on
Rhabwar,
including the rules they had broken or seriously deformed, because the memories were returning as sharp, clear, and almost tactile overlays on the flickering grey blur of hyperspace outside his cabin's viewport. Prilicla had an outstandingly good memory.

He began with the briefing on operational philosophy before the first and supposedly routine shakedown cruise. It had been explained that over the past century the Monitor Corps, as the Federation's executive and law-enforcement arm, had been charged with the maintenance of the Pax Galactica, but because the peace they guarded required minimum maintenance, they had been given additional responsibilities and an obscenely large budget for stellar survey and exploration. In the very rare event that they turned up a planet with intelligent life, they were also given responsibility for the delicate, complex, and lengthy first-contact procedures. Since its formation, the Corps' other-species communications and cultural-contact specialists had found three such worlds and established successful relations with them, to the point where they had become member species of the Federation.

But there is a tendency for travelers to meet other travelers, often in distress and far from home. The advantage of meetings with other space travelers was that both species were already open to the idea that intelligent and possibly visually horrendous beings inhabited the stars—as opposed to contacting less advanced, planetbound cultures, who would be much more suspicious and fearful of the terrifying strangers who had dropped from their skies.

The trouble where the travelers were concerned was that there was only one known system for traveling in hyperspace, and one method—the nuclear-powered distress beacon—of calling for help if a catastrophe occurred that marooned the distressed ship between the stars. The result had been that many other highly intelligent and technologically advanced species had been discovered with whom they could not make contact because they were nothing but dead or dying organic debris lying tangled inside the wreckage of their starships. With the rescue ships' medical officers unable to provide the required assistance to completely alien life-forms, the casualties had been rushed to Sector General, where a few of them had been successfully treated, while the rest ended up in the pathology department as specimens whose worlds of origin were unknown.

That was the reason why the special ambulance ship
Rhabwar
had been constructed. Not only was it commanded by an officer skilled in unraveling the puzzles presented by unique alien technology, its crew included a medical team specialized both in ship-rescue techniques and multispecies alien physiology. The result had been that since their ship had been commissioned, seven new species had been contacted, and subsequently became members of the Federation.

In every case this had been accomplished—not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by demonstrating the Federation's goodwill towards newly discovered species by rescuing and giving medical or other assistance to ailing, injured, or space-wrecked aliens.

The memories and images were returning, sharp and clear. In many of them, unlike this time, he had not borne the clinical responsibility for rescue and treatment because the then–Senior Physician Conway had been in charge of the medical team, with himself assisting as a kind of empathic bloodhound whose job was to smell out and separate the dead from the barely living casualties. There had been the recovery of the utterly savage and non-sapient Protectors of the Unborn whose wombs contained their telepathic and highly intelligent offspring; and the Blind Ones, whose hearing and touch had been so sensitive that they had learned to build devices that enabled them to feel the radiation that filtered down to their world from the stars they would never see, even though they had traveled between them; and there had been the Duwetti, the Dwerlans, the Gogleskans, and the others. All had presented their particular clinical problems and associated physical dangers, especially to a fragile life-form like himself who could literally be blown away by a strong wind.

He wondered how the present-day Diagnostician Conway would have handled the current situation, where its beloved special ambulance was in danger of becoming a ship of war. Certainly not by flying away to hide in its room.

CHAPTER 4

It was four days later. Beyond the direct-vision panel and on the main screen that was relaying the control deck image, the flickering gray motion of hyperspace gave a final, eye-twisting heave before dissolving into a view of normal space. Within a few moments the relayed voice of Lieutenant Dodds on the sensors was telling them and the ship's mission recorders what they were already seeing.

“We have emerged close to a planet, Captain,” it reported crisply. “The coloration and cloud cover suggests an atmosphere capable of sustaining warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life and the vegetation to support it. Two ships are in close orbit around the planet within fifty miles of each other. One is
Terragar;
the other has a configuration that is new to us. Neither is showing serious structural damage.”

“Split the screen,” said the captain. “Give me maximum magnification on both. Haslam, contact
Terragar.
”

The casualty-deck screen blurred suddenly, then showed images of the two ships that expanded rapidly until they touched the edges of their display areas.

“
Terragar
is not obviously damaged,” said Dodds, continuing to describe what they were seeing. “But it is tumbling slowly with a pronounced lateral spin, and there is no light from the flight-deck canopy or the viewports. Sir, it looks like they have no power, certainly not for attitude control.…”

“Or communication,” Haslam broke in. “They aren't responding to our signal.”

“The other ship also appears to be unlit,” Dodds continued, straying, “although that could be explained by visual hypersensitivity on the part of the crew. The outer hull is intact apart from two areas amidships about three and four meters in diameter. They are deeply cratered, which suggests the recent presence of intense heat accompanied by explosions. There is no evidence of the fogging that would indicate escaping air or whatever it is that they breathe. Either their safety bulkhead seals worked very fast, or the hits they sustained were lethal and the ship is airless and probably lifeless.

“The outer hull,” it added, “shows no evidence of anything recognizable as external weapons launchers, or of the protective covers that would conceal such weapons. First indications, sir, are that this vessel was a victim rather than an attacker.”

Even though half the length of
Rhabwar
stretched between them and the emotional radiation was attenuated, Prilicla could feel the captain coming to a decision.

“Very well,” it said. “Move in. Continue trying to raise
Terragar.
I want to know what happened here.… Power room. Chen, we're now too close to the planet to jump, so stand by for maximum thrust on the main drive. Haslam, be ready to pull out at the first sign of anything resembling a hostile action. I'll need the fastest possible reaction time on this.”