Double Contact (7 page)

“Friend Danalta,” he said, glancing back at the way they had come, “this casualty is close to termination and the temperature in here means that we can't afford the time or the risk of opening its suit. Please look for a faster way out of here. Try to find an opening in the hull large enough to allow the litter through so we can…”

“Doctor,” the voice of the captain broke in, “we can make that opening for you, as large as you need. I've been monitoring your progress, I'm familiar with the ship's layout, and I know exactly where you are. Please move clear of the hull on the landward side and hold on to something solid.

“Haslam,” he continued quickly, “tractor beam, narrow-focus rapid push-pull to the aft hull plating, just there.”

The whole power room began to vibrate in sympathy around them as a sudden, metallic screeching sound came from a small area of the hull interior. The existing cracks in the structure opened up as a large section of plating and internal trim was pulled outwards and pressed inwards at a rate of once a second. For a moment the plating fluttered like a metal flag in a high wind before it was whipped out of sight. Sunlight poured into the compartment and with it, a clear, close view of the beach and medical station.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said. “Friend Murchison, to save time I'm sending friend Danalta with the fourth litter. The canopy will be sealed and the cooling system set to maximum in the hope that the reduction in external temperature will be conducted to the occupant. The casualty is still inside its suit which should be removed as quickly as possible in a less hostile environment. I will follow at once to assist you.”

“Maybe not at once, Doctor,” said Danalta. Its voice was coming from what seemed to be a small storage compartment farther aft.

He had been aware of a sudden burst of emotion an instant before the shape-changer had spoken. Its feelings were complex, a mixture composed predominantly of intense surprise and curiosity. Before Prilicla could ask the natural question, Danalta gave the answer.

“Doctor,” it said, “there is another casualty here. The physiological classification is strange to me but, but I think I've found a stowaway.”

CHAPTER 7

The creature appeared to be wearing a spacesuit so close-fitting that it seemed highly probable that its general body configuration was identical in size and shape to its protective garment. Physically the creature was a flattened ovoid with six appendages growing at equal intervals from the perimeter, each terminating in long, flexible digits encased in gauntlets that fitted like a coat of metallic paint. There was a variety of what looked like specialized tools on the fingertips of each of the thin, metal gauntlets. The rounded projection on what was presumably the forebody, was almost certainly the cranium, but it was covered by sensors rather than a transparent visor so that he was unable to obtain a direct view of the facial tegument and features. There was a large area of scorching covering the upper surface, or possibly the underside, of the body. He couldn't be sure without removing the suit.

“What is it, Doctor?” said Danalta. “Is it alive?”

“I'm not sure,” he replied, and indicated to the fourth litter. “Move the Earth-human casualty ashore, quickly, and assist Murchison and Naydrad with it until I join you or send for another litter. I'll need this area to be clear of all other sources of emotional radiation if I'm to be absolutely sure whether or not life is present.”

The emoting of Danalta and the Earth-human casualty diminished with distance to merge with the faint, background feelings of the medical team and the rest of the casualties. Without false modesty Prilicla knew that out of the entire Cinrusskin race he possessed one of the most sensitive and analytical empathic faculties his planetary history had ever recorded. For several long minutes he concentrated on using it.

And found nothing.

His disappointment was severe enough to make his limbs tremble. He knew that he was capable of detecting the emotional radiation of every species known to the Federation, right down to the tiny, savage feelings of non-sapient insects, but this was a thinking member of a new star-traveling species. Perhaps he had finally encountered one that thought and felt on a sensory level that was beyond his detection range. He was having feelings of personal doubt and inadequacy as well as disappointment.

Sometime and somewhere,
he told himself as he lifted the scanner and keyed for the metal penetration setting,
everything has to happen for the first time.

Prilicla moved closer until his head was only a few inches from the bulbous swelling in the protective garment which, in the majority of life-forms, was the location of the cranium and the nerve center of the sensory equipment. Slowly and carefully he passed the scanner over the area, continuing for several minutes to scan with his feelings at ultra-short range while at the same time searching with the instrument for clinical signs of life in any underlying organic material. He could not believe it when he found neither. He even had trouble finding his voice.

“Friend Murchison,” he said finally, “I have a casualty here which requires further examination. Do you need me there?”

“We do, but not urgently,” the pathologist replied. It emitted a sudden burst of concern before it brought the feeling under control. “You have been with that one for over half an hour. The situation here is that all four casualties have been cut free of their suits but there are a few small areas where pieces of burned clothing and charred body tissue are adhering, which will require surgical separation. The escharred areas and deeper burn locations where obvious necrosis has taken place will need to be trimmed away and the sites covered with surrogate skin until proper replacement surgery is available at the hospital. Meanwhile, IV nutrients, rehydration, and replacement of lost protein is currently under way while the casualties are being supported on cushions of cool, sterile air. Their present condition is critical but stable, and one of them, the last one you sent to us, is barely on the plus side of terminal. We may lose that one. Earth-human vital organs don't take kindly to being casseroled in their own juices. But you sound as if you might have another casualty for us. Is it a new boy on the block?”

Prilicla hesitated, then said, “I'm not yet certain whether it is a casualty for treatment or a new specimen for postmortem investigation. Certainly I've never encountered a life-form like this one before, or seen references to anything like it in the literature.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Murchison, its matter-of-fact tone belying the mounting curiosity it was feeling. “When can we see it? Shall I send Naydrad with a litter to—”

“No,” Prilicla broke in. He could feel the other's surprise because normally he would never have spoken so sharply to a subordinate. In a gentler voice he went on. “I have the feeling that you have the clinical situation under control over there. Continue as you are doing, but do nothing else until I tell you otherwise.”

“Sir,” it said, emoting intense puzzlement. The feeling was being shared and reinforced by Naydrad, Danalta, and the officers on
Rhabwar
who were monitoring the images and conversations coming from
Terragar.
But Prilicla needed answers himself before he could try to give them to others, and he had to pause for a moment to steady his shaking limbs before he could return to the scanner examination.

Since he was the only empath present, there was of course nobody to know of or feel his fear. The minds of the medical team were engaged exclusively with their own clinical concerns, but the people on the ambulance ship had little more to do than to monitor and observe his actions, and those observations would have included the minor and continuing tremor in his limbs. Very soon friend Fletcher would deduce the reason for his terror, if it and the others hadn't done so already.

They knew as well as he did that the crew of
Terragar
had sought desperately to avoid all contact with their fellow officers and would-be rescuers, and that it was a virtual certainty that the entity he was trying to examine was the reason. It came as no surprise when the long period of silence was broken hesitantly by the captain.

“Doctor,” it said. “Possibly this is none of my clinical business, and I'll understand if you tell me to shut up in your usual polite fashion, but your examination of the alien casualty puzzles me. I've been watching you for the past half an hour and have observed that while you began by closely approaching but not touching the creature, for reasons that I think we both understand, you are now making continuous contact with it. In what way has the situation changed? Is the creature no longer a threat to you, and, if so, why is your body language suggesting otherwise? And why are you examining every square inch of the body surface, including its hands and individual digits which, in my layperson's opinion, are not usually the site of life-threatening injuries?”

Prilicla was silent for a moment while he tried to organize the results of his examination in a form that would not embarrass him when the recording was played back, as it would be many times, by the cultural-contact people.

“I began by assuming that the air inside its suit was one of the oxygen-and-inert combinations used by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, and identified the species tentatively as physiological classification CHLI. Subsurface scanner investigation of the suit, and a deeper, detailed examination of its content, revealed the presence of unique technology of a level of complexity that I am not qualified to assess. The subsequent forensic investigation suggests that the position and sharply defined area of heat damage to the suit—the head section, forward pair of limbs, and particularly the attached digits which are literally fused together—was sustained before, rather than after, the subject was taken on board
Terragar.
The later atmospheric heating effects suffered by the ship had no effect on the occupant. No doubt, friend Fletcher, you will wish me to help you to make a more thorough investigation at a more convenient time.

“To summarize,” he ended, “life—as we understand the term—is no longer present. I very much doubt that it ever was.”

He felt the sudden burst of surprise and curiosity from the medical team, but it was on a low level because their attention was being concentrated on their Earth-human casualties. The captain's emotional radiation was accompanied by words.

“Wait, Doctor,” it said. “Do I understand you correctly? Are you saying that the subject is a robot of unique and advanced design, and, and that it may be a casualty of war?”

“I'm unwilling to speculate on the available evidence, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied, “but judging by the sophistication of design and construction in this mechanism, it may even be possible that we have discovered a nonorganic form of intelligent life. But I advise extreme caution during any subsequent examination, because the actions of this creature or others like it may be the reason why
Terragar
was trying so hard to avoid contact with us. We won't know more until or unless the ship's officers are able to talk to us.

“Friend Murchison,” he added, “I'll be with you in five minutes.”

“The sooner the better,” he heard Naydrad say. In spite of Murchison's earlier, reassuring situation report, he could feel that it was speaking for all of them.

The field medical station was a prefabricated, modular structure designed for use at the scene of space construction accidents or planetary disaster-relief operations. It comprised a self-contained, multiple-species operating room to which recovery wards, medical-staff accommodation, and ancillary equipment could be added as required. The OR was already in use and
Rhabwar
's pressor beams had lifted in the less urgently required sections together with a couple of general-purpose robots that were busily attaching them as he approached.

As if it were an unconscious emotional preparation for the serious clinical problems ahead, a childhood memory of his home world, like a waking dream, came flooding back to calm his mind. In those days it had been himself who had been assembling brightly colored structures out of building-blocks on the sand, and peopling them with legendary creatures out of his imagination who had strange and varied capabilities for performing great deeds of good or evil on those in their power—short of ending their lives, that was, because violent death was something that even an adult Cinrusskin did not willingly think about. This stretch of golden beach could have been the same, as was the green fringe of vegetation inland that was too indistinct to appear alien and therefore different. But there all similarity ended.

The steep, low-gravity waves of Cinruss had been replaced by the low, smooth rollers that peaked and foamed only as they broke in the shallows; and here the people inhabiting the bright building blocks were more varied and wonderful than anything he could ever have imagined as a child, and death was something that they thought about, faced, and, in the majority of their cases, conquered every day of their lives.

But not today.

From Murchison and the other team members he felt the sudden burst of sorrow, self-criticism, and near anger characteristic of healers who had just lost a patient.

CHAPTER 8

When he joined them a few minutes later, Naydrad was moving the deceased casualty to an adjoining compartment on a litter with a closed, opaque cover. The features of Captain Fletcher looked silently down from the wall communicator screen, the fleshy edges of its mouth pressed tightly together and its strong feelings tenuous with distance. Two other casualties had been given preliminary treatment and were floating above an enclosed, air-cushioned bed while Murchison and Danalta were working on the remaining one. They were concentrating all of their attention on excising the areas of charred tissue while covering the less severely affected sections of the body surface with the thick, creamlike, clinging medication that had been developed for the treatment of DBDG burn cases. It would aid tissue regeneration, deaden pain on the patient's return to consciousness, and protect against same-species airborne infection. The latter was the reason why it was the pathologist alone who was dressed for a full aseptic operational procedure.