Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (25 page)

“In which case,” said Murchison, joining the conversation from the
Rhabwar
, “I will be expected to brew up something efficacious against a dose of extraterrestrial pneumonia. Thank
you
, Doctor Prilicla!”

The portable airlock—a fat, lightweight metal cylinder swathed in the folds of transparent plastic that would form its antechamber—was positioned close to the alien ship. While Prilicla remained as physically close as possible to the survivors, Chen and Haslam joined the Captain and Conway in a final search for a fine line on the rim plating that might enclose an entry port.

He tried to be thorough without wasting time, because Prilicla did not think there was any time to waste as far as the two survivors were concerned. But the ship was close to eighty meters in diameter and they had an awful lot of rim to search in half an hour. Still, there had to be a way in, and their main problem was that, despite the many rough and incrusted patches, the ship’s structure represented an incredibly fine piece of precision engineering.

“Is it possible,” Conway asked suddenly, “that the reason for the ship’s distress is these rough patches?” The side of his helmet was close to the hull as he directed his spotlight at an acute angle onto the area that Fletcher was scanning for joins. “Perhaps the troubles of the survivors are a secondary effect. Maybe the unnaturally tight fit of the plating and panels is meant as a protection against attack by some kind of galloping corrosion native to the survivors’ home planet.”

There was a lengthy silence, then Fletcher said, “That is a very disquieting idea, Doctor, especially since your galloping corrosion
might infect our ship. But I don’t think so. The incrusted patches appear to be made of the same material as the underlying metal and not a coating of corrosion. As well, they appear to avoid rather than attack the joins.”

Conway did not reply. At the back of his mind an idea had begun to stir and take shape, but it dissolved abruptly as Chen’s voice sounded excitedly in his phones.

“Sir, over here!”

Chen and Haslam had found what seemed to be a large, circular hatch or section of plating approximately a meter in diameter, and they were already spraying the circumference with marker paint when Fletcher, Prilicla and Conway arrived. There were no rough patches inside the circular line or outside it except for two tiny rough spots set side by side just beyond the lower edge of the circle. Closer examination showed a five-inch-diameter circle enclosing the two rough patches.

“That,” said Chen, trying hard to control his excitement, “could be some kind of actuator control for the hatch.”

“You’re probably right,” said the Captain. “Good work, both of you. Now, set up the portable lock around this hatch. Quickly.” He placed his sensor plate against the metal. “There is a large empty space behind this hatch, so it is almost certainly an entry lock. If we can’t open it manually we’ll cut our way in.”

“Prilicla?” called Conway.

“Nothing, friend Conway,” said the empath. “The survivors’ radiation is much too faint to be detectable above the other sources in the area.”

“Casualty Deck,” Conway said. When Murchison responded, he went on quickly: “Considering the condition of the survivors, would you mind coming over here with the portable analyzer? Atmosphere samples will be available shortly. It would save some time if we didn’t have to send them to you for analysis, and shorten the time needed to prepare the litter for the casualties.”

“I was expecting you to think of that,” Murchison replied briskly. “Ten minutes.”

Conway and the Captain ignored the loose folds of transparent fabric and the light-alloy seal that bumped weightlessly against their backs while Haslam and Chen drew the material into position
around the entry lock and attached it to the hull with instant sealant. Fletcher concentrated on the lock-actuator mechanism—he insisted that the disk could be nothing but a lock—and described everything he thought and did for the benefit of Dodds, who was recording on the
Rhabwar
.

“The two rough areas inside the disk appear not to be corrosion,” he said, “but in my opinion are patches of artificially roughened metal designed to give traction to the space-gauntleted mandibles or manipulatory appendages of the ship’s crew—”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Conway. The idea he had had at the back of his mind was taking shape again.

“—to ease the operation of the actuator, this disk, that is,” Fletcher continued, ignoring him. “Now, the disk may be turned clockwise or counterclockwise, screwed in or out on threads in either direction, pulled outwards, or pressed inwards and turned one way or the other into a locking position…”

The Captain performed the various twisting and pressing movements as he described them, but with no effect. He increased the power on his foot and wrist magnets so as to hold himself more firmly against the hull, placed his gauntleted thumb and forefinger on the two rough spots and twisted even harder. His hand slipped, so that momentarily all of the pressure was on his thumb and one rough area. That half of the disk tilted inwards while the other side moved out. The Captain’s face became very red behind his visor.

“…or, of course, it might turn out to be a simple rocker switch,” he added.

Suddenly the large, circular hatch began to swing inwards, and the ship’s atmosphere rushed out through the opening seal. The fabric of the portable lock they had attached to the hull bellied outwards and the metal cylinder of its double seal drew away from them, allowing them to stand up inside a large, inflated hemisphere of transparent plastic. As they were watching the hatch move inwards and upwards to the ceiling of the ship’s lock chamber, a short loading ramp was slowly extruded. It curved downwards to stop at the position that would have corresponded to ground level had the ship been on the ground.

Murchison had arrived and had been watching them through the portable lock fabric. “The air that escaped was from the lock
chamber, because the flow has already stopped. If I could measure the volume of that lock chamber and our own portable job, I could calculate the aliens’ atmospheric pressure requirements as well as analyze the constituent gases… I’m coming in.”

“Obviously a boarding hatch,” said the Captain. “They should have a smaller, less complicated lock for space EVAs and—”

“No,” said Conway, quietly but very firmly. “These people would not go in for extravehicular activity in space. They would be terrified of losing themselves.”

Murchison looked at him without speaking, and the Captain said impatiently, “I don’t understand you, Doctor. Prilicla, was there any emotional response from the survivors when we opened the lock?”

“No, friend Fletcher,” the empath replied. “Friend Conway is emoting too strongly for the survivors to register with me.”

The Captain stared at Conway for a moment, then he said awkwardly, “Doctor, my specialty has been the study of extraterrestrial mechanisms, control systems and communication devices, and my wide experience in this area led to my appointment to the ambulance ship project. The reason why I was able to operate this lock mechanism so quickly was partly because of my expertise and partly through sheer luck. So there is no reason why you, Doctor, whose expertise lies in a different area, should feel irritated just because—”

“My apologies for interrupting, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla timidly, “but he is not irritated. Friend Conway is feeling wonder, with great intensity.”

Murchison and the Captain were both staring at him. Neither asked the obvious question, but he answered it anyway: “What would make a blind race reach for the stars?”

It took several minutes to make the Captain see that Conway’s theory fitted all the facts as they knew them, but even then Fletcher was not completely convinced that the crew of the ship was blind. It was true that the rough areas on the vessel’s underside, particularly those in the area of the thrusters, would give a being possessing only the sense of touch a strong tactual warning of danger, and that the smaller rough areas placed at regular intervals around the rim were probably the coverings of the less dangerous altitude jets. The smallest and most numerous patches of what at first they had
thought was corrosion could well be opening or maintenance instructions on access panels, written in an extraterrestrial equivalent of Braille.

The total absence of transparent material, specifically direct vision ports, also gave support to Conway’s theory, although it was not impossible that the ports were there but protected by movable metal panels. It was a very good theory, Fletcher admitted, but he preferred to believe that the ship’s crew
saw
in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, rather than were completely blind.

“Why the Braille, then?” Conway asked. But Fletcher did not answer because it was becoming increasingly obvious on closer examination that the rough spots on the panels and actuators were not there simply to furnish traction—each one was as individual as a fingerprint.

Like the exterior of the ship, the lock interior was unpainted metal. The lock chamber itself was large enough for them to stand upright, but the two actuator disks visible below the inner and outer seals were only a few inches above deck level. There were also a number of short, bright scratches and a few shallow dents in evidence, as though something heavy with sharp edges had been loaded or unloaded fairly recently.

“Physiologically,” said Murchison, “this life-form could be a weirdie. Is it a large being whose manipulatory appendages are at ground level? Or are they a small species whose ship was designed to be visited or used by a much more massive race? If the latter, then the rescue should not be complicated by xenophobic reactions on the part of the survivors, since they already know that there are other intelligent life-forms and that the possibility exists that an other-species group might rescue them.”

“It is much more likely to be a cargo lock, ma’am,” said the Captain apologetically, “and it is the cargo, rather than their extraterrestrial friends, if any, that was massive. Are we ready to go in?”

Without replying, Murchison switched her helmet spotlight to wide beam. The Captain and Conway did the same.

Fletcher had already checked that he could maintain two-way communication with Haslam and Chen outside the ship and with Dodds on the
Rhabwar
by touching the helmet antenna to the metal of the hull, in effect making the ship’s structure an extension of his
antenna. He knelt down and depressed the actuator, which was positioned just above deck level inside the outer seal. The hatch swung closed, and he repeated the operation on a similarly positioned actuator below the inner seal.

For a few seconds nothing happened. Then they heard the hiss of atmosphere entering the lock chamber, and they felt their suits becoming less inflated as air pressure built up around them. As the inner seal opened to reveal a stretch of dark, apparently empty corridor, Murchison was busy tapping buttons on her analyzer.

“What do they breathe?” Conway asked.

“Just a moment, I’m double-checking,” Murchison replied. Suddenly she opened her visor and grinned. “Does that answer your question?”

When he opened his own helmet, Conway felt his ears pop at the slight difference in air pressure. “So, the survivors are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers with roughly Earth-normal atmospheric-pressure requirements. This simplifies the job of preparing ward accommodation.”

Fletcher hesitated for a moment, then he, too, opened his visor. “Let’s find them first.”

They stepped into a metal-walled corridor, featureless except for a large number of dents and scratches on the ceiling and walls, which extended for about thirty meters toward the center of the ship. At the end of the corridor, lying on the deck, was an indistinct something that looked like a tangle of metal bars projecting from a darker mass. Murchison’s foot magnets made loud scraping sounds as she hurried towards it.

“Careful, ma’am,” said the Captain. “If the doctor’s theory is correct, all controls, actuators, instruction or warning tags will have tactile indicators, and there is still power available within the ship; otherwise, the airlock mechanism would not have worked for us. If the crew live and work in complete darkness, you will have to think with your fingers and feet and not touch anything that looks like a patch of corrosion.”

“I’ll be careful, Captain,” Murchison promised.

To Conway, Fletcher said: “The inner seal has an actuator just like the others under its lower rim.” He directed his helmet light at the area in question, then indicated a smaller circle a few inches to
the right of the actuator switch. “Before we go any farther I would like to know what this one does.”

“Well,” Conway said, “about the only thing we know for sure is that it isn’t a light switch.” He laughed as Fletcher depressed one side of the disk.

Murchison gave an unladylike grunt of surprise as bright yellow light flooded the corridor from an unseen source at the other end.

“No comment,” said the Captain.

Conway felt his face burning with embarrassment as he muttered about the lights being for the convenience of non-blind visitors.

“If this was a visitor,” said Murchison, who had reached the other end of the corridor, “then it was very severely inconvenienced. Look here.”

The corridor made a right-angle turn at its inboard end, although access to the new section was blocked by a heavy barred grill, which had been twisted away from its anchor points on the deck and one wall. Behind the damaged grill, dozens of metal rods and bars projected at random angles into the corridor space from the walls and ceiling. But they did not pay much attention to the strange cage-like outgrowth of metal because they were staring at the three extraterrestrials who were lying in wide, dried-up patches of their body fluids.

There were two very different physiological types, Conway saw at once. The large one resembled a Tralthan, but less massive and with stubbier legs projecting from a hemispherical carapace, which flared out slightly around the lower edges. From openings higher on the carapace sprouted four long and not particularly thin tentacles, which terminated in flat, spear-like tips with serrated bony edges. Midway between two of the tentacle openings was a larger gap in the carapace, from which projected a head that was all mouth and teeth, with just a little space reserved for two eyes set at the bottom of deep, bony craters. Conway’s first impression was that the entity was little more than an organic killing machine.