Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (15 page)

“And Conway,” O’Mara ended dryly, “this time try to bring back a few ordinary, or even extraordinary, casualties, and not a potential epidemic…”

They wasted no time moving out to Jump distance because Fletcher was now fully confident of the capabilities of his ship. He did complain a little, although it seemed to Conway to be more in the nature of an apology, about the tuition during the first mission and this one. Theoretically, his officers and the medical team were supposed to become less specialized in their functions.

According to the ambulance-ship project directive, Conway was supposed to teach his officers the rudiments of e-t physiology, their physical structures, musculatures, circulatory systems and so on—enough of the subject, at least, for them not to kill some hapless
casualty through good intentions. Meanwhile, Fletcher was supposed to reciprocate by lecturing the medical team on his particular specialty, e-t ship design and comparative technology, so that they would not make elementary errors regarding the vessel surrounding their patient.

Fletcher agreed with Conway that there would be no time to set up the lecture program on this mission, but that they would keep it in mind for the future. The result was that Conway spent most of the time in hyperspace with Naydrad, Prilicla and Murchison on the Casualty Deck, wondering whether they were properly prepared to receive an unknown number of casualties of an unknown physiological type. But he was in Control, at Fletcher’s invitation, just before they were due to emerge.

A few seconds after the
Rhabwar
emerged into normal space, Lieutenant Dodds announced, “Wreckage ahead, sir.”

“I don’t believe…!” Fletcher began incredulously. “The accuracy of your astrogation is much too good, Dodds, to be due to anything but sheer luck.”

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Dodds replied, grinning. “Distance is twelve miles. I’m locking on the scope now. You know, sir, this could be the fastest rescue ever recorded.”

The Captain did not reply. He was looking pleased and excited and a little bit wary of so much good luck. On the screen the wreckage showed as a flickering gray blur spinning rapidly in the blackness. Out here on the Rim the stellar density was low, and most of the available light came from the long, faintly shining fog bank, which was the parent galaxy. Suddenly the image became brighter but even more blurred as Dodds switched to the infrared receptors and they saw the wreckage by its own heat radiation.

“Sensors?” the Captain asked.

“Non-organic material only, sir,” Haslam reported. “No atmosphere present. Relative to the ambient temperature, it is very warm, suggesting that whatever happened occurred recently and probably as a result of an explosion.”

Before the Captain could reply, Dodds said, “More wreckage, sir. A larger piece. Distance fifty-two miles. Spinning rapidly.”

“Give me the numbers for closing with the larger piece,”
Fletcher ordered. “Power Room. I want maximum thrust available in five minutes.”

“Three more pieces,” said Dodds. “Large, distance one hundred plus miles, widely divergent bearings, sir,”

“Show me a distribution diagram,” said the Captain, responding quickly. “Compute courses and velocities of all the pieces of wreckage, with a view to tracing the original point of the explosion. Haslam, can you tell me anything?”

“Same temperatures and material as the other pieces, sir,” Haslam reported. “But they are at the limit of sensor range, and I could not say with certainty that it is composed entirely of metal. None of the pieces encloses an atmosphere, even residual.”

“So if organic material is present,” said Fletcher grimly, “it is no longer alive.”

“More wreckage, sir,” said Dodds.

This is not going to be a fast rescue
, thought Conway.
It might not even be a rescue at all
.

Fletcher must have been reading Conway’s mind, because he pointed at the big repeater screen. “Don’t give up hope, Doctor. The first indications are that a ship has suffered a catastrophic explosion, and the distress beacon was released automatically as a result of the malfunction and not by one of the survivors, if any. But look at that display…”

The picture on the screen did not mean very much to Conway. He knew that the winking blue spot was the
Rhabwar
and that the white traces that were appearing every few seconds were wreckage detected by the ship’s expanding radar and sensory spheres. The fine yellow lines that converged at the center of the screen were the computed paths taken by the wreckage from the point of the explosion, and what should have been a simple picture was confused by groups of symbols and numbers that flickered, changed or burned steadily beside every trace.

“…The distribution of the wreckage seems a bit lopsided for an explosion,” Fletcher went on, “and although the scale is too small for it to be apparent on the screen, it appears to have originated from a short, flat arc rather than a point. Then, there is the virtually uniform rate of spin on the pieces of wreckage, and their relatively
small number and large size. When a ship is torn apart by an explosion, usually caused by a power-reactor malfunction, debris size is small and the rate of spin negligible. Also, the temperature of this wreckage is too low for it to have originated in a reactor explosion, which we now know would have to have occurred less than seven hours ago.

“The probability is,” the Captain ended, “that it was a hyperdrive generator malfunction, Doctor, and not an explosion.”

Conway tried to control his irritation at the other’s lecturing and faintly condescending tone, realizing that the Captain could not help his academic background. Conway knew that if one of a matched set of hyperdrive generators was to fail, the other was supposed to cut out automatically; the vessel concerned would emerge suddenly into normal space somewhere between the stars, and sit there, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until either it repaired the sick generator or help arrived. But there had been instances when the safety cutoff on the good generator had failed or had been a split second late in functioning, which meant that a part of the ship had been proceeding at hyperspeed while the rest had been slowed instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the vessel concerned was, at best, only slightly less catastrophic than a reactor explosion—but at least there would be no heat fusion, radiation and the other complications of a reactor blowup to worry about. The chance of finding survivors was very slightly increased.

“I understand,” said Conway. He flipped the intercom switch on his console and said, “Casualty Deck, Conway here. You may stand down. Nothing will be happening for at least two hours.”

“That is a pretty accurate estimate,” Fletcher said dryly. “Since when have you become an astrogator, Doctor? Never mind. Dodds, compute a course linking the three largest pieces of wreckage, and put the figures on the Power Room repeater. Chen, we will apply maximum thrust in ten minutes. To save time I plan to make a close pass of the likeliest prospects and decelerate only if Haslam’s sensors or Doctor Prilicla’s empathy say it is worth doing so. Haslam, stay on the sensors and pick out a few more possibilities for us to look at once we’ve checked the first three. And continue searching the radio frequencies in case a survivor is trying to attract
our attention in that fashion, and keep an eye on your scope in case it is trying to flash a light at us.”

As Conway was leaving the Control Deck to rejoin his medical team aft, Haslam said in a quiet, respectful voice, “I’ve only got two eyes, sir, and they don’t swivel independently…”

One hour and fifty-two minutes later they passed heart-stoppingly close to the first piece of wreckage. The sensors had already reported negatively on it—no organic material present other than structural plastic trimming panels and furniture, no pockets of atmosphere that might have contained a living entity. When they tried to put a tractor beam on it to check its spin, the whole mass began to fly apart and they had to take violent evasive action.

They caught up with the next piece in less than an hour. They had to decelerate and return to it, because the sensors reported small pockets of atmosphere inside the wreckage and organic material of a non-structural but not necessarily still-living kind. This time they did not risk trying to check its spin in case the loose mass of wreckage fell apart and the potentially life-giving pockets of air were lost to space. Instead, they set the sensor and vision recorders going during their slow, careful and extremely close approach. The close approach was for Prilicla’s benefit, but the empath reported apologetically that none of the organic material was alive.

They had three hours to study the recordings before reaching the third piece of wreckage, which was the largest and most promising to be detected. In the process they learned quite a lot about the design philosophy of the alien ship-builders from the way the structural members and bulkheads had been twisted apart by the accident. The dimensions of the corridors and compartments gave an indication of the size of the life-forms that had crewed the ship. They had glimpses of things that looked like thick pieces of many-colored fur trapped and partially hidden in the wreckage. It might have been floor covering or bedding, except that a few of the pieces were restrained by webbing and many of them showed patches of reddish brown, which looked very much like dried blood.

“Judging by the color of those stains,” Murchison observed as they studied one of the stills on the Casualty Deck repeater, “the chances are pretty good that they are warm-blooded oxygen-
breathers. But do you think anyone could survive a disaster like that?”

Conway shook his head but tried to sound optimistic. “The staining on the fur does not appear to be associated with lacerations or punctured wounds of the kind suffered through violent deceleration or collision when the restraining body harness becomes deeply embedded in the body it was meant to protect. From these pictures it is impossible to tell which end of the body is which, but the staining seems to be located in the same areas of all the bodies. This suggests explosive decompression and the exiting of body fluid through natural openings, rather than massive external injury due to a sudden deceleration or collision. None of these people was wearing spacesuits, but if any of them was fast enough or lucky enough to be wearing suits, they should have been able to survive.”

Before Murchison could reply the picture changed abruptly to show another mass of wreckage, and the excited voice of the Captain sounded from the wall speaker. “This looks like the best bet so far, Doctor. No spin to speak of, so we can board easily, if necessary. The fog you see is not all escaped air; some of it is boil-off from the vessel’s water and hydraulic systems. If air is escaping, then there must be quite a lot of it still left on board. There is also what seems to be an emergency power circuit in use, weak and probably used for standby lighting. We may want to board this one. Is everyone ready?”

“Ready, friend Fletcher,” said the empath.

“Of course,” said Naydrad.

“We’ll be at the Casualty lock in ten minutes,” said Conway.

“Lieutenant Dodds and myself will accompany you,” said the Captain, “in case structural or engineering problems are encountered. Ten minutes, Doctor.”

There was not a lot of room to spare in the Casualty airlock with the Captain, Dodds, Naydrad and its already inflated pressure litter, Prilicla and Conway all clinging to its deck and walls with foot and wrist magnets while they watched the approach of the wreckage. It looked like a great rectangular metal thicket shrouded in fog and surrounded by smaller clumps of metal, some of which were spinning rapidly and some of which drifted motionless. When
Conway asked why this should be, the Captain turned silent in the manner of a person who has asked himself the same question and was unable to answer. They waited while the ambulance ship edged closer, passing between two of the wreckage’s madly spinning satellites, and their suit spotlights as well as those of the ship reflected off the twisted metal plating and projecting structural members. They went on waiting until the little Cinrusskin began trembling inside its spacesuit.

“Someone,” Prilicla finally managed to utter, “is alive in there.”

Of necessity, it was a hurried but very careful search, because the emotional radiation of the survivor was weak and characteristic of a mind that was becoming more deeply unconscious by the minute. With Prilicla indicating if not leading the way, the Captain and Dodds cleared a path through obstructions with their cutters or pushed away free-floating debris and tangled cable looms with their insulated gauntlets—there was, after all, a live power circuit in use. Conway followed closely behind, pulling himself along in a kind of weightless crawl through corridors and compartments whose ceilings were only four feet high.

Twice his spotlight picked out the bodies of crew-members, which he freed and pushed gently back the way they had come so that the waiting Naydrad could load them into the unpressurized section of the litter. Should the survivor need urgent surgical attention, Conway would feel much better if Murchison had a few cadavers to take apart so that she could tell him how the living one should be put together again.