All Judgment Fled (8 page)

 

 

"Can you tie off the leg section tightly enough to avoid a lethal
pressure drop for the few minutes it will take to get him back to P-Two?
It would mean decompressing the leg, of course, but that would be better
than . . ."

 

 

"No, sir. The tear is high on the left hip. We can't evacuate the chamber
while he is in it, and I can't leave and nobody from outside can enter
unless . . ."

 

 

". . . Unless Walters goes back into the corridor while the chamber
is airless. Ask him how he feels about doing that."

 

 

The pilot's reply had to be edited and censored considerably. McCullough
said, "He'll do it, but he doesn't feel too enthusiastic."

 

 

Morrison refused to comment on Walters' feelings. He said,
"That takes
care of your return, but getting him back to P-Two means putting him in
another suit . . ."

 

 

There were several good reasons why the P-ships did not carry spare
spacesuits. Quite apart from the extra weight and stowage requirements
involved, there was the fact that a spacesuit had to be literally tailored
to fit its wearer, and this would have meant carrying a spare for every
member of the expedition. As well, damage to a suit usually meant death
for its wearer, so that repairs were not even considered. In any case,
repairing a suit was a specialist's job requiring facilities not available
on the ships.

 

 

"Both Hollis and Berryman are close to Walters in size,"
the
colonel went on,
"and Berryman is closest in distance. I'll shoot
Drew across to you. While he's on the way, Berryman can place his suit in
P-Two's airlock. Drew will pick it up and deliver it to you for Walters
and collect your air sample.
"You, Doctor, will stay with Walters to see that his seals are tight
and the suit isn't strained dangerously by forcing the fit. As well as
losing one of our trained pilots, we can't afford to write off another
suit. What is his condition now?"

 

 

Walters had his antenna in contact with the plating, listening. He tried
to speak, broke into a fit of coughing, and made a rude gesture instead.

 

 

McCullough translated, "He has a persistent cough which may be due
to throat irritation only. There are no other respiratory symptoms,
no chest pain and no detectable toxic affects. His morale is good."
The doctor did not
know
these things with any degree of certainty --
his optimism was mostly for his patient's benefit. But just in case the
colonel did not realize what McCullough was doing, he added quickly,
"But I'd like to give him a thorough checkup in shirt-sleeve conditions
as soon as possible."

 

 

A little later Morrison told them Drew was on his way and that he was
moving his own ship in to join P-Two. Tactically this was not a good
move, he said, but on this occasion tactics and common sense seemed
to be at variance, and in any case they could pull out quickly if it
became necessary.

 

 

"And go home?" asked McCullough.

 

 

"I don't know, Doctor. There are other considerations."

 

 

As the period of high drama, the first and unfortunately violent contact
with the aliens passed, the colonel began to worry over the possibility
that Prometheus Control had not faded out the networks during the incident
with Walters and the alien. Aware suddenly of a possible audience, they
became laconic to the point of sounding ridiculous. Stiffly, the colonel
wished Walters good luck. Walters said, "Thanks." Berryman suggested
McCullough should make a sketch of the alien from memory while they were
waiting on Drew. Morrison said it was a good idea, just in case. Nobody
asked in case of what.

 

 

During the twenty minutes or so it took for Drew to reach them -- in
subjective time it felt more like ten years -- McCullough sketched the
alien and made a map of the vicinity of their lock chamber. While doing
so he discovered a leak in one of the pipe joints. Probably the repeated
opening and closing of the seal had put an unfair strain on the hydraulic
system -- the joint was sweating and droplets of a clear brownish liquid
hung around it, steaming faintly.

 

 

McCullough hoped nothing calamitous would happen when the chamber was
evacuated.

 

 

Drew arrived, checked by radio on the operation of the lock, then waited
while McCullough opened the inner seal and entered the corridor with Walters.
As the air rushed out of the chamber and Drew swam in, a fogginess appeared
around the leaking joint, but nothing else seemed to be happening.

 

 

There were no aliens visible in the lighted section of corridor.

 

 

"If one of them comes at us," McCullough told Walters, "I'll hang onto
the net and kick at it with both feet. You concentrate on holding that
patch in position."

 

 

He was beginning to feel that the pilot's trouble had been his own rather
than Walters' fault.

 

 

The leak in the lock's hydraulic system was bothering him. It was almost
certainly a recent malfunction. There was a strong probability that it had
occurred because the seal actuator mechanism had been recently overstressed.
McCullough had forgotten how many times exactly they had opened and closed
the thing, something like seventeen or eighteen times in as many minutes,
while the chances were that normal usage was in the order of twice a day.

 

 

He was assuming, of course, that these were not omnipotent aliens and
that their ship might occasionally develop mechanical faults. Such
failures would show in their control center and a member of the crew
might be sent to check on it, or perhaps to deal with the real cause of
the trouble -- the human invaders. McCullough was coming to realize that
their actions, which had been meant simply to advertise their presence
on board, could just as well be construed as criminally irresponsible
or wantonly destructive. In these circumstances a certain amount of
hostility on the part of the aliens would be understandable.

 

 

People who leaned over backward, McCullough thought grimly, frequently
fell flat on their face . . .

 

 

"Walters. Doctor." Drew's voice came suddenly. "The colonel sent you a
weapon of sorts. To be used only in self-defense, he says. Grip it in
the middle and stab with it like a spear."

 

 

McCullough looked up and down the still empty corridor, then into the
chamber. He said, "It's just a length of pipe."

 

 

"A blunt bayonet makes a worse mess than a sharp one," Drew said
cheerfully, "and a length of one-inch pipe is about as blunt as a
weapon can get. Just take time to aim and jab hard -- I guarantee it
will discourage any man or beastie not wearing a suit of armor. I'm
leaving now. Good luck . . ."

 

 

A few seconds later he was blown through the outer door by escaping air,
and another eternity passed while he jetted back to the hull and closed
it again. Walters and McCullough re-entered the chamber, still without
alien interference.

 

 

The problem now was to get Walters out of his damaged suit and into the
replacement quickly enough to keep him from being gassed. McCullough
started by opening the pilot's face-plate, taping up his nostrils and
making him breathe slowly through his oxygen line. Then he wrapped his
legs around the pilot's waist and began cutting away the damaged suit.

 

 

It was hard, painstaking work. The plastic and metal foil was difficult
to cut with a scalpel and McCullough was all too aware of the skin and
blood vessels lying just a fraction of an inch below. The drying unit in
his own suit refused to cope with the increased flow of perspiration,
his visor was fogging badly despite its special coating, and he wasn't
dissipating nearly enough of his body heat.

 

 

This would be a great time to pass out from heat stroke.

 

 

Quickly he slit the legs, arms and chest, peeling them away to leave
only the shoulder section which contained the air supply and hinged-back
helmet. There followed a weightless adagio dance and he drew the new
suit onto the pilot's legs and arms while the tatters of the old one
hung out from his back. Walters could not give him much help because the
alien atmosphere was making his eyes stream and no matter how hard he
tried he could not stop coughing -- which drew more of the stuff into
his lungs. By the time he told Walters to hyperventilate and hold his
breath while the changeover was completed, McCullough was afraid that
he had already breathed in too much of it.

 

 

Finally they were ready to leave. The discarded suit twisted slowly,
like some shredded, dismembered corpse, in the mist which was growing
visibly in the area of the leak. McCullough wondered what the aliens
would make of it, what they would infer and deduce regarding the human
race. The thought made him look toward the transparent panel in the door.

 

 

There were three of them.

 

 

McCullough pushed himself toward the corridor door without thinking --
the reason for doing it seemed to come after the action rather than
before. To Walters he said quickly, "If they open that door the outer
one won't open -- there's sure to be a safety interlock system -- and if
they see us trying to leave they will surely open it. I'll move close
to the window and block their view while you open the outer seal --
the suction will pull us out. Where's that blasted pipe?"

 

 

He couldn't see it. Probably it was hiding in plain sight against a
background of Ship plumbing, a tree hiding in a forest.

 

 

His idea was to hold their attention somehow while blocking their view
of what Walters was doing. To do so he had to get close to the transparent
door panel and either arouse their interest or frighten them away.
McCullough did not know of anything he could do which would prove fascinating
to the aliens, but he just might be able to worry them a little with
his camera.

 

 

It was a beautiful instrument which fairly bristled with supplementary
lenses and attachments. It might very easily be mistaken for a weapon.

 

 

In some deep recess of his mind a small voice was reminding him
insistently of the need to consider the alien point of view, and
to do nothing to give them the wrong idea about humanity and human
behavior. McCullough felt a moment's shame, but he was really much too
frightened to listen.

 

 

There was no perceptible reaction from the e-t's as McCullough drifted
up to the window, still aiming his camera. One of them was drifting
in the center of the corridor, a stubby, dumbbell shape covered with
long spikes. Each half of its body was roughly the size of a football,
and there were no sensory or manipulatory organs visible. A second alien
clung to the opposite wall net like a great, fleshy spider, giving him a
perfect view of the starfish body with its thick tentacles and leathery
tegument. The tentacles ended in bony pincers, like white, miniature
elephant tusks. McCullough estimated its physical mass to be approximately
half that of a man, with the tentacle length between four and five feet.

 

 

The third alien was of the same species as number Two. It covered part
of the window with its body so that McCullough and his camera had a
perfect view of its underbelly, which was soft and pinkish-brown and
convoluted into folds and openings which were evidently mouths or gills
or sensory equipment of some kind, all grouped around a large, sharp,
centrally placed horn or sting . . .

 

 

McCullough swallowed hard. He thought that on the purely physical evidence
these were not nice people.

 

 

Then suddenly the aliens began to move. McCullough still wasn't sure where
their eyes were, but somehow he knew that their focus of attention had
changed. Something was approaching along the corridor. He could not get
his eyes close enough to the window to see, although he could hear low,
gobbling sounds being transmitted through the metal of the door to his
helmet. Quickly he stopped down his lens and aimed it along the dark
corridor. It had a wider angle of view and might see more than he could.

 

 

The first three aliens were leaving.

 

 

Walters opened the outer seal at that moment and the rush of escaping air
drew him away from the door, spinning him slowly end over end. But not
before he had a glimpse of something covered with white fur, or perhaps
clothing, which flicked past the window.

 

 

 

 

chapter nine

 

 

"I feel an awful fool," said McCullough, looking apologetically at Walters.
"I should have realized it in the Ship. At very least I should have suspected
it when I examined him here . . ."

 

 

"Granted that changing suits in the corridor would have been easier
on Walters' throat and eyes, I doubt if you would have been allowed to
complete the operation when the aliens arrived. So you have nothing
to reproach yourself with, and those photographs you took -- well,
altogether it was a very nice job."

 

 

"And
I'm
not complaining," said Walters.

 

 

For the analysis of the air sample taken in the corridor had shown that
the alien atmosphere was not harmful to human beings and was, in fact,
much less toxic than the air of an average city. But the sample taken in
the lock chamber contained a quantity of vaporized liquid which could
only have come from the leak in the hydraulic system. Apparently the
stuff Walters had breathed was about as damaging as a similar quantity
of tear gas.