Read Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations Online

Authors: James White

Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (63 page)

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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“Doctor Conway. My flagship has engaged in some odd exercises in her time, but never before have we been asked to hold a tourniquet.”
“I’m sorry, sir—it seemed the only way of handling the situation. But right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to have this digger lifted to map reference numbers …”
He broke off because Harrison was waving at him. The Lieutenant said softly, “Not this digger. Ask him to have the other one checked out and waiting when they get around to pulling us out.”
Three hours later they were in the second modified and strengthened digger, suspended under a transport copter and approaching the area which, they hoped, contained the strata creature’s brain and/or tool-producing facilities. The trip gave them a chance to do some constructive theorizing about their patient.
They were now convinced that it had evolved originally from a mobile vegetable form. It had always been large and omnivorous, and when these life-forms began to live off each other they grew in size and complexity and shrank in numbers. There did not seem to be any way that the strata creature could reproduce itself. It simply continued to live and grow until one of its own kind who was bigger than it was killed it. Their patient was the biggest, oldest, toughest and wisest of its kind. As the sole occupant of its land mass for many thousands of years, there had no longer been the necessity for it to move itself bodily and so it had taken root again.
But this had not been a process of devolution. With no chance of cannibalizing others of its own kind, it devised methods of controlling its growth and of rendering its metabolism more efficient by evolving tools to do the jobs like mining, investigating the subsurface, processing necessary minerals for its nerve network. The original farmer fish were probably a strain which were able to survive, like the legendary Jonah, in its stomach and later grow plant teeth for both the parent creature and the farmer fish to defend themselves against sea predators sucked in by the mouths. How the leucocytes got there was still not clear, but the rollers occasionally ran across a smaller, less highly evolved variety which were probably the leeches’ wild cousins.
“But one point which we must keep in mind when we try to talk to it,” Conway ended seriously, “is that the patient is not only blind, deaf and dumb, it has never had another of its own kind to talk to. Our problem isn’t simply learning a peculiar and difficult e-t language, we have to communicate with something which does not even know the meaning of the word communicate.”
“If you’re trying to raise my morale,” said Murchison dryly, “you aren’t.”
Conway had been staring ahead through the forward canopy, mostly to avoid having to look at the carnage depicted on his repeater screens where the tool attacks were taking an increasingly heavy toll at the feeding and transfusion sites. He said suddenly, “The suspected brain area is far too extensive to be searched quickly but, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this also the locality where
Descartes
made her first touchdown? If that is so then the tools sent to investigate her had a relatively short distance to come, and if it is possible to trace the path of a tool by the scar tissue it leaves in the body material …”
“It is,” said Murchison, looking excited. Harrison gave new instructions to the transport copter’s pilot without having to be told and a few minutes later they were down, cutting blades spinning and nosing into their patient’s spongy quasiflesh.
But instead of the large, cylindrical plug cut from the body material they found a flat, reversed conical section which tapered sharply to a narrow, almost hair-thin wound which angled almost at once toward the suspected brain area.
“The ship would have been drawn only a short distance below the surface, obviously,” said Murchison. “Enough to let tools make contact with its total surface while supported by body material, instead of making a fleeting contact after bouncing themselves into the air. But do you notice how the tools, even though they must have been cutting through at top speed, still managed to avoid severing the root network which relays their mental instructions … ?”
“At the present angle of descent,” Harrison cut in, “we are about twenty minutes from the subsurface. Sonar readings indicate the presence of caverns or deep pits.”
Before Conway could reply to either of them, Edwards’ face flicked onto the main screen. “Doctor, seals Thirty-eight through Forty-one have gone. We’re already holding tourniquets at Eighteen, Twenty-six and Forty-three, but—”
“Same procedure,” snapped Conway.
There was a dull clang followed by metallic scraping sounds running the length of the digger. The sounds were repeated with rapidly increasing frequency. Without looking up, Harrison said, “Tools, Doctor. Dozens of them. They can’t build up much impetus coming at us through this spongy stuff and our extra armor should cope. But I’m worried about the antenna housing.”
Before Conway could ask why, Murchison turned from the viewport. She said, “I’ve lost the original trail, Doctor—this area is practically solid with tool scar tissue. Traffic must be very heavy around here.”
The secondary screens were showing logistic displays on the deployment of ships, earth-moving machinery, decontamination equipment and movements into and out of the feeding and transfusion areas, and the main screen showed
Vespasian
no longer in position above Tunnel Forty-three. It was losing height and wheeling around in a ponderous, lateral spin while its pilot was obviously fighting hard to keep it from flipping over onto its back.
One of its four presser installations, Conway saw during the next swing, had been smashed in as if by a gigantic hammer and he knew without being told that this was the one which had been holding closed the ruptured Forty-three. As the ship whirled closer to the ground he wanted to close his eyes, but then he saw that the spin was being checked and that the surface vegetation was being flattened by the three remaining pressers, fanned out at maximum power to support the ship’s weight.
Vespasian
landed hard but not catastrophically. Another cruiser moved into position above Forty-three while surface transport and copters raced toward the crash-landed ship to give assistance. They arrived at the same time as a large group of tools which were doing nothing at all to help.
Suddenly Dermod’s head filled the screen.
“Doctor Conway,” said the Fleet Commander in a coldly furious voice, “this is not the first time that I have had a ship converted to scrap around me, but I have never learned to enjoy the experience. The accident was caused by trying to balance virtually the whole of the ship’s weight on one narrowly focused presser beam, with the result that its supporting structure buckled and damn near wrecked the ship.”
His tone warmed a little, but only temporarily, as he went on, “If we are to hold tourniquets over every tunnel, and with tools attacking every seal it looks as if we will have to do just that, I shall either have to
withdraw my ships for major structural modifications or use them for an hour or so at a time and check for incipient structural failure after each spell of duty. But this will tie up a much larger number of ships in unproductive activity, and the farther we extend the incision the more tunnels we will have to sit on and the slower the work will go. The operation is fast becoming a logistical impossibility, the casualty figures and material losses are making it indistinguishable from a full-scale battle, and if I thought that the only result would be the satisfaction of your medical curiosity, Doctor, and that of our cultural contact people, I would throw a permanent ‘Hold’ on it right now. I have the mind of a policeman, not a soldier—the Federation prefers it that way. I don’t glory in this sort of thing …”
The digger lurched and for an instant Conway felt a sensation impossible in these surroundings, that of free fall. Then there was a crash as the vehicle struck rocky ground. It landed on its side, rolled over twice and moved forward again, but skidding and slewing to one side. The sound of tools striking the hull was deafening.
Two vertical creases appeared on the Fleet Commander’s forehead. He said, “Having trouble, Doctor?”
The constant banging of tools made it hard to think. Conway nodded and said, “I didn’t expect the seals to be attacked, but now I realize that the patient is simply trying to defend itself where it thinks it is under the heaviest attack. I also realize now that its sense of touch is not restricted to its top surface. You see, it is blind, deaf and dumb but it seems to be able to feel in three dimensions. The eye plants and subsurface root networks allow it to feel areas of local pressure, but vaguely, without detail. To feel the fine details it sends tools, which are extremely sensitive—sensitive enough to feel the airflow over their wings in the glider configuration and reproduce the shape themselves at will. Our patient learns very quickly and that glider I thought at it has cost a lot of lives. I wish—”
“Doctor Conway,” the Fleet Commander broke in harshly. “You are either trying to make excuses or giving me a very basic lecture with which I am already familiar. I have time to listen to neither. We are faced with a surgical and tactical emergency. I require guidance.”
Conway shook his head violently. He had the feeling that he had just said or thought of something important but he did not know what it was. He had to stay with his present train of thought if he expected to drag it out into the light again.
He went on, “The patient sees, experiences everything, by touch. So
far our only area of common contact are the tools. They are thought-controlled extensions of its sense of touch throughout and for a short distance above the patient’s body. Our own mental radiation and control are more concentrated and of strictly limited range. The situation has been that of two fencers trying to communicate only through the tips of their foils—”
He stopped abruptly because he was talking to an empty screen. All three repeaters glowed with power, but there was neither sound nor vision.
Harrison shouted, “I was afraid of this, Doctor. We strengthened the hull armor but had to cover the antenna housing with a plastic radome to allow two-way communications. The tools have found our weak spot. Now we are deaf, dumb and blind, too—and missing one leg because our port caterpillar tread won’t work.”
The digger had come to rest on a flat shelf of rock in a large cavern which angled steeply into the subsurface. Above and behind them hung a great mass of the creature’s body material from which there was suspended thousands of rootlets which joined and rejoined until they became thick, silvery cables writhing motionlessly across the cavern floor, walls and roof before disappearing into the depths. Each cable had at least one bud sprouting from it, like a leaf of wrinkled tinfoil. The more well-developed buds quivered and were trying to take the shapes of the tools which were attacking the digger.
“This is one of the places where it makes the tools,” she said, using a spotlight as pointer, “or should I say grows them—I still can’t decide whether this is an animal or vegetable life-form basically. The nervous system seems to be centered in this area, so it is almost certainly part of the brain as well. And it is sensitive—do you see how carefully the tools avoid those silver cables while they are attacking?”
“We’ll do the same,” said Conway, then to Harrison, “That is, if you can move the digger on one track to that overhanging wall with the cables running along it, without crushing those two on the floor?”
Damage in this sensitive area could have serious effects on their patient.
The Lieutenant nodded and began rocking the digger forward and backward along the shelf until they were tight against the indicated wall. Protected by the sensitive cables above, the cavern floor below and the rocky wall on their starboard side, the tool attack was confined to their unprotected port side. They could once again hear themselves think, but
Harrison pointed out firmly but apologetically that they could not climb the slope or dig their way out on one track, that they could not call for help and that they had air for only fourteen hours and then only if they sealed their suits to use their remaining tanked air.
“Let’s do that now,” said Conway briskly, “and move outside. Station yourselves at each end of the digger, under the cables and with your backs to the cavern wall. That way you will have to think off attacks from the front only—any tool trying to cut through the rock behind you will make too much noise to take you by surprise. I also want you far enough from my position amidships so that your mental radiation will not affect the tools which I will be trying to control …”
“I know that smug, self-satisfied look,” said Murchison to the Lieutenant as she began sealing her helmet. “Our Doctor has had a sudden rush of brains to the head. I think he intends
talking
to the patient.”
“What language?” asked Harrison dryly.
“I suppose,” said Conway, smiling to show the confidence which he did not feel, “you could call it three-dimensional Braille.”
Quickly he explained what he hoped to do and a few minutes later they were in position outside the digger. Conway sat with his back to the port track housing a few feet from a water-filled depression in the cavern floor. There was a hole of unknown depth in the center of the depression where a cable or similar ore-extracting plant had eaten its way into the rock. To one side of him a group of seven or eight tools had merged together to encircle and squeeze the vehicle’s hull, and some of the armor was beginning to gape at the seams. Conway thought a break in the metal band and then he rolled it into the depression like a great lump of animated, silvery dough. Then he got down to work.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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