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Authors: James White

Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (59 page)

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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He stopped. The tool melted, flowed into the inverted bowl shape and bounced high into the air. As it began to fall back it changed into glider configuration, picking up speed as it fell, then leveled out a few feet above the surface and came sweeping toward them. The leading edges
of its wings were like razors. Its two companions were also aloft in glider form, slicing the air toward them from the other side of the ship.
“Straps.”
They hit their acceleration couches just as the three fast-gliding tools struck the hull, by accident or design, cutting off two of the external-vision pickups. The one which was still operating showed a three-foot gash torn in the thin plating with a glider embedded in the tear, changing shape, stretching and widening it. Probably it was a good thing that they could not see what the other two were doing.
Through the gash in the plating Conway could see brightly colored plumbing and cable runs which were also being pushed apart by the tool. Then that screen went dead as well just as takeoff boost rammed him deep into the couch.
“Doctor, check the stern for stowaways,” said Harrison harshly as the initial acceleration began to taper off. “If you find any, think safe shapes at them—something which won’t scramble anymore of my wiring. Quickly.”
Conway had not realized the full extent of the damage, only that there were more red lights than usual winking from the control board. The pilot’s fingers were moving over his panels with such an intensity of gentleness that the harshness in his voice made it sound as if it was coming from a completely different person.
“The aft pickup,” said Conway reassuringly, “shows all three tools gliding in pursuit of our shadow.”
For a time there was silence broken only by the tuneless whistling of air through torn plating and unretracted scanner supports. The surface wobbled past below them and the ship’s motion made Conway feel that it was at sea rather than in the air. Their problem was to maintain height at a very low flying speed, because to increase speed would cause damaged sections of the hull to peel off or heat up due to atmospheric friction, or increase the drag to such an extent that the ship would not fly at all. For a vessel which was classed as a supersonic glider for operations in atmosphere their present low speed was ridiculous. Harrison must be holding onto the sky with his fingernails.
Conway tried hard to forget the lieutenant’s problems by worrying aloud about his own.
“I think this proves conclusively that the strata creatures are our intelligent tool users,” he said. “The high degree of mobility and adaptability shown by the tools makes that very plain. They must be controlled
by a diffuse and not very strong field of mental radiation conducted and transmitted by root networks and extending only a short distance above the surface. It is so weak that an average Earth-human or e-t mind can take local control.
“If the tool users
were
beings of comparable size and mental ability to ourselves,” he went on, trying not to look at the landscape lurching past below them, “they would have to travel under and through the surface material as quickly as the tools were flying over it if they were to maintain control. To burrow at that speed would require them being encased in a self-propelled armor-piercing shell. But this does not explain why they have ignored our attempts at making wide-range contact through remote-control devices, other than by reducing the communication modules to their component pieces …”
“If the range of mental influence pervades its whole body,” Murchison broke in, “would that mean that the creature’s brain is also diffuse? Or, if it does have a localized brain, where is it?”
“I favor the idea of a centralized nervous system,” Conway replied, “in a safe and naturally well-protected area—probably close to the creature’s underside where there is a plentiful supply of minerals and possibly in a natural hollow in the subsurface rock. Eye plant and similar types of internal root networks which you’ve analyzed tend to become more complex and extensive the closer we go to the subsurface, which could mean that the pressure-sensitive network there is augmented by the electrovegetable system which causes muscular movement as well as the other types whose function and purpose are still unknown to us. Admittedly the nervous system is largely vegetable, but the mineral content of the root systems means that electrochemical reactions generated at any nerve ending will transmit impulses to the brain very quickly, so there is probably only one brain and it could be situated anywhere.”
She shook her head. “In a being the size of a subcontinent, with no detectable skeleton or osseous structure to form a protective casing and whose body, relative to its area, resembles a thin carpet, I think more than one would be needed—one central brain, anyway, plus a number of neural substations. But the thing which really worries me is what do we do if the brain happens to be in or dangerously close to the operative field.”
“One thing we can’t do,” Conway replied grimly, “is delay the op. Your reports make that very clear.”
She had not been wasting time since coming to Drambo and, as a
result of her analysis of thousands of specimens taken by test bores, diggers and exploring medics from all areas and levels of its far-flung body, she was able to give an accurate if not completely detailed picture of the creature’s current physiological state.
They already knew that the metabolism of the strata creature was extremely slow and that its muscular reactions were closer to those of a vegetable than an animal. Voluntary and involuntary muscles controlling mobility, ingestion and digestion, circulation of its working fluid and the breaking down of waste products were all governed or initiated by the secretions of the specialized plants. But it was the plants comprising the patient’s nervous system with their extensive root networks which had suffered worst in the roller fallout, because they had allowed the surface radioactivity to penetrate deep inside the strata creature. This had killed many plant species and had also caused the deaths of thousands of internal animal organisms whose purpose it was to control the growth of various forms of specialized vegetation.
There were two distinct types of internal organisms and they took their jobs very seriously. The large-headed farmer fish were responsible for cultivating and protecting benign growth and destroying all others—for such a large creature, the patient’s metabolic balance was remarkably delicate. The second type, which were the being’s equivalent of leucocytes, assisted the farmer fish in plant control and directly if one of the fish became injured or unwell. They were also cursed with the tidy habit of eating or otherwise absorbing dead members of their own or the fish species, so that a very small quantity of radioactive material introduced by the roots of surface plants could be responsible for killing a very large number of leucocytes, one after another.
And so the dead areas which had spread far beyond the regions directly affected by roller fallout were caused by the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant plant life. The process, like decomposition, was irreversible. The urgent surgical removal of the affected areas was the only solution.
But the report had been encouraging in some respects. Minor surgery had already been performed in a number of areas to check on the probable ecological effects of large masses of decomposing animovegetable material on the sea or adjacent living strata creature, and to devise methods of radioactive decontamination on a large scale. It had been found that the patient would heal, but slowly; that if the incision was widened to a trench one hundred feet across, then the uncontrolled growth in the
excised section would not spread to infect the living area, although regular patrols of the incision to make absolutely sure of this were recommended. The decomposition problem was no problem at all—the explosive growth rate continued until the plant life concerned used up the available material and died. On land the residue would subside into a very rich loam and make an ideal site for a self-supporting base if medical observers were needed in the years to come. In the case of material sliding off shelving coastlines into the sea, it simply broke up and drifted to the seabed to form an edible carpet for the rollers.
Certain areas could not be treated surgically, of course, for the same reason that Shylock had to forego his pound of flesh. These were relatively small trouble spots far inland, whose condition was analogous to a severe skin cancer, but limited surgery and incredibly massive doses of medication were beginning to show results.
“But I still don’t understand its hostility toward us,” Murchison said nervously as the ship went into a three-dimensional skid and lost a lot of height. “After all, it can’t possibly know enough about us to hate us like that.”
The ship was passing over a dead area where the eye plants were discolored and lifeless and did not react to their shadow. Conway wondered if the vast creature could feel pain or if there was simply a loss of sensation when parts of it died. In every other life-form he had ever encountered, and he had met some really weird ones at Sector General, survival was pleasure and death brought pain—that was how evolution kept a race from just lying down and dying when the going got tough. So the strata creature almost certainly had felt pain, intense pain over hundreds of square miles, when the rollers had detonated their nuclear weapons. It had felt more than enough pain to drive it mad with hatred.
Conway cringed inwardly at the thought of such vast and unimaginable pain. Several things were becoming very clear to him.
“You’re right,” he said. “They don’t know anything at all about us, but they hate our shadows. This one in particular hates them because the aircraft carrying the sea-rollers’ atomic bombs produced a shadow not unlike ours just before large tracts of the patient’s body were fried and irradiated.”
“We land in four minutes,” said Harrison suddenly. “On the coast, I’m afraid, because this bucket has too many holes in it to float.
Descartes
has us in sight and will send a copter.”
The pilot’s face made Conway fight the urge to laugh. It looked like
that of a half made-up clown. Furious concentration had drawn Harrison’s brows into a ridiculous scowl while his lower lip, which he had been chewing steadily since takeoff, was a wide, blood-red bow of good humor.
Conway said, “The tools can’t operate in this area and, except for a little background radiation caused by fallout, there is no danger. You can land safely.”
“Your trust in my professional ability,” said the pilot, “is touching.”
From their condition of unlevel flight they curved into a barely controlled, tail-first dive. The surface crept, then rushed up at them. Harrison checked the rush with full emergency thrust. There were metallic tearing noises and the rest of the lights on his board turned red.
“Harrison, pieces of you are dropping off …” began
Descartes
’ radioman, then they touched down.
For days afterward the observers argued about it, trying to decide whether it had been a landing or a crash. The shock-absorber legs buckled, the stern section took some more of the shock as it tried to telescope amidships and the acceleration couches took the rest—even when the ship toppled, crashed onto its side and a broad, flickering wedge of daylight appeared in the plating a few feet away. The rescue copter was almost on top of them.
“Everybody out,” said Harrison. “The pile shielding has been damaged.”
Looking at the dead and discolored surface around them, Conway thought again of his patient. Angrily, he said, “A little more radiation hereabout won’t make much difference.”
“To your patient, no,” said the lieutenant urgently. “But perhaps selfishly I was thinking of my future offspring. After you.”
During the short trip to the mother ship Conway stared silently out of the port beside him and tried hard not to feel frightened and inadequate. His fear was due to reaction after what could easily have been a fatal crash plus the thought of an even more dangerous trip he would have to make in a few days’ time, and any doctor with a patient who stretched beyond the limits of visibility in all directions could not help feeling small. He was a single microbe trying to cure the body containing it, and suddenly he longed for the normal doctor-patient relationships of his hospital—even though very few of his patients or colleagues could be considered normal.
He wondered if it might not be better to have sent a general to medical school than to give a doctor control of a whole sector subfleet.
Only six of the Monitor Corps heavies were grounded on Drambo, their landing legs planted firmly in the shallows a few miles off one of the dead sections of coastline. The others filled the morning and evening sky like regimented stars. His medical teams were grouped in and around the grounded ships, which rose out of the thick, soupy sea like gray beehives. The Earth-humans like himself lived on board while the e-ts, none of whom breathed air, were quite happy roughing it on the sea bed.
He had called what he hoped would be the final pre-op meeting in the cargo hold of
Descartes,
which was filled with Drambon sea water whose content of animal and plant, life had been filtered out so that the beam of the projector would have a sporting chance of fighting its way to the screen attached to the forward bulkheads.
Protocol demanded that the Drambons present opened the proceedings. Watching their spokesman, Surreshun, rolling like a great flacid doughnut around the clear space in the center of the deck, Conway wondered once again how such a ridiculously vulnerable species had been able to survive and evolve a highly complex, technology-based culture—though it was just possible that an intelligent dinosaur would have had similar thoughts about early man.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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