Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (11 page)

An added complication was that the
Tenelphi
and the
Rhabwar
were now docked and coupled fore and aft so that the ambulance ship could expand its hyperspace envelope to enclose the wreck, which would have to be taken back with them as evidence in the forthcoming investigation into the collision. With the two ships locked together and only one capable of exerting controlled thrust, delicate maneuvering of the order needed to land him on the derelict would be impossible. If Fletcher attempted it, the
Rhabwar
might well end up in the same condition as the
Tenelphi
. And then there was the sheer size of the derelict…

“The vessel is, or was originally, spherical,” the Captain went on, and the image from the Rhabwar’s telescope appeared on the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. “It is four hundred meters in diameter, with residual power and pressure in a few compartments deep inside the ship. But the
Tenelphi
has already reported the absence of life on board—”

“Sutherland may be on board now, Captain.”

Fletcher’s sigh made rustling noises on the intercom; then he went on in his patient, lecturing and infuriating voice. “The other ship’s findings are more dependable than ours, Doctor. A life indication is the result of a large number of sensor readings comprising the type and distribution of power sources, vibration associated with the mechanical aspects of life-support systems, pressure and temperature variations within the hull, detection of communication or lighting systems, and many more subtle indications. We both realize that many e-ts require ultra-low temperatures or do not see on our visual frequencies, but if anything, they are easier to detect as far as their life-support requirements are concerned.

“But right now,” the Captain continued, “I could not say with certainty whether or not anyone or anything was alive inside that thing. The close approach to the sun has heated up the outer hull to such an extent that it is no longer possible to detect subtle differences of temperature inside, and the other sensor readings are badly distorted because of the effect of the heat expansion on the structure as a whole. Besides, that ship is big. Its hull is so torn and
punctured by meteorite collisions that Sutherland could have found a way in anywhere. Where would you start looking for him, Doctor?”

“If he’s there,” said Conway, “he’ll let us know where to look.”

The Captain remained silent for a moment, and Conway, despite his irritation with Fletcher’s manner towards him, could sympathize with the other’s dilemma. No more than Conway did the Captain want to leave the area without finding or otherwise establishing the fate of the missing Surgeon-Lieutenant. But there was the welfare of the other casualties to consider, which properly was Conway’s responsibility, and the safety of the ambulance ship, which was very definitely Fletcher’s.

With all three vessels sliding down the gravity well of the system’s sun with an acceleration that did not bear thinking about, the time allocated for a search for the missing officer would be strictly limited, and the Captain would not want to be placed in the position of having to abandon Senior Physician Conway of Sector General as well as the Monitor Corps medic on the derelict. Neither could he risk sending one of his officers with Conway because if he, too, was lost the Captain would have a very serious problem. The
Rhabwar
’s crew was small and there was no overlapping of specialties. Fletcher would probably be able to Jump back to Sector General eventually, but serious risks and delays would be involved that could adversely affect the casualties.

The wall speaker rustled with another sigh, and Fletcher said, “Very well, Doctor, you may search for the Surgeon-Lieutenant. Dodds, take the scope. You are searching for evidence of a recent entry into the derelict. Lieutenant Chen, forget the pathologist’s samples for the time being and return to the Power Room. I want maneuvering thrust in five minutes. Doctor, I shall circle the derelict longitudinally at a distance of half a mile. Since it is rotating once every fifty-two minutes, this will enable us to scan its hull surface in four orbits. Haslam, do what you can with the sensors, and give the doctor some idea of the geography of the interior.”

“Thank you,” said Conway.

Dodds had been helping Murchison move one of the casualties into a pressure tent. As soon as he was finished he excused himself and headed for Control. Conway looked at the repeater screen and
the image of the derelict, half of which was a featureless blackness and half a confusion of brilliantly reflective hull plating that was crisscrossed by black fissures and craters. He glanced at it from time to time while he was helping attach bio-sensors to the casualties, seeing it grow larger and begin to unroll from top to bottom of the screen. Suddenly the image flicked off, to be replaced by a diagrammatic representation of the derelict.

It showed the cross section of the spherical vessel, with its deck levels making concentric circles to its core. Near the center several compartments of different sizes were marked in various shades of green, and close to the inner wall of the hull at one point there was a large, rectangular compartment marked in red. Fine red lines joined this area with the green compartments at the center.

“Doctor, Haslam here. I’m projecting a sensor diagram of the derelict’s interior. It is not detailed, I’m afraid, and a lot of it is guesswork…”

The derelict had been a generation transport, Haslam went on to explain, of the spherical configuration favored at a time when maximum living and cultivating space was a necessity. Direction of travel was along the vertical axis, with the control area forward and the reactor and drive units, which were marked in red, astern. The vessel could rotate fairly rapidly around the vertical axis so as to furnish the outer deck levels amidships with artificial gravity even when the ship was using thrust.

Haslam did not know whether it was one catastrophe or a number of them that had overtaken the ship, but whatever it was it had devastated the control area along with the rest of the outer hull and deck levels and in the process had checked the spin to a fraction of what it should have been. Heavy shielding around the reactors had protected them from serious damage.

The ship had virtually been depopulated, but a number of compartments deep inside the vessel had retained pressure and power, and a number of survivors must have been able to live in them for a time. These were the sections marked in green. The atmosphere inside some of these compartments was little more than a soft vacuum, Haslam added, but in others it was probably still breathable by the present-day members of the species who had built the ship, whoever and whatever they were.

“Is there any possibility…?”

“No survivors, Doctor,” Haslam stated firmly. “The
Tenelphi
reported the ship lifeless, derelict. The catastrophe probably happened centuries ago, and the survivors survived for only a short time.”

“Yes, of course,” said Conway. Then why would Sutherland go there?

“Captain. Dodds. I think I’ve found something, sir. Just coming into sunlight now. There it is on full magnification.”

The repeater screen showed a small area of the derelict’s ravaged outer hull. There was a black, jagged-edged opening leading into the depths of the ship, and beside it a section of buckled plating on which there was a large, brownish yellow smear.

“It looks like grease, sir,” said Dodds.

“I agree,” said the Captain, then impatiently: “But why would he use grease instead of fluorescent green marker paint?”

“Perhaps the stuff was handy, sir.”

Fletcher ignored Dodds’ reply—it had been a rhetorical question anyway. “Chen, we shall be closing with the derelict to one hundred meters. Haslam, stand by the pressors in case I miscalculate and blunder into that thing. Doctor, under the circumstances I’m afraid I cannot spare an officer to go with you, but a hundred meter flight should pose no serious problems. Just don’t spend too much time in there.”

“I understand,” said Conway.

“Very well, Doctor. Be ready to go in fifteen minutes. Take extra air tanks, water and whatever medical supplies you consider necessary. I hope you find him. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. He wondered what type of medication would be needed for a doctor who seemed to be physically fit but mentally deranged enough to go exploring in the derelict. Regarding his own requirements, he was less hesitant—he would simply increase the duration of his suit to forty-eight hours, at the end of which time the
Rhabwar
would depart, whether he found Sutherland or not.

While Conway was checking the extra tanks, Prilicla flew over and landed on the wall beside him. As they clung to the white plastic surface, the little empath’s legs trembled as if it was being subjected
to intense emotional radiation. When it spoke Conway was surprised to discover that the emotion was self-generated. It was frightened.

“If I might offer a suggestion, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “the job of finding the being Sutherland would be accomplished much more simply and quickly if I were to accompany you.”

Conway thought of the tangle of metal plating and structural members that lay beneath the hull of the derelict, of the danger of rupturing their spacesuits practically every foot of the way, and of the other dangers they could not even guess at. He wondered what had become of the celebrated Cinrusskin cowardice, which in that incredibly fragile species was its most important survival characteristic.

“You would come with me?” Conway asked incredulously. “You are
offering
to come with me?”

Prilicla responded timidly. “Your emotional radiation is somewhat confused, friend Conway, but on the whole flattering to myself. Yes, I shall go with you and use my empathic faculty to help find Sutherland, if he is still alive. However, you already know that I am not a brave person, and I reserve the right to withdraw from the search should the element of risk pass beyond what I consider acceptable limits.”

“I’m relieved,” said Conway. “For a moment there I was worried about your sanity.”

“I know,” said Prilicla, beginning to add items to its own spacesuit.

They exited by the small personnel lock forward, the main one being connected to the
Tenelphi
, and had to listen to Captain Fletcher worrying out loud about the situation for several interminable minutes. Then they were outside, and the hull of the derelict was spread out ahead and all around them like a gigantic wall, so pitted and torn and ruptured by centuries of meteorite collisions that at close range the spherical shape of the enormous vessel was not apparent. As they guided themselves towards it, there was a sudden dizzying change of perspective. The derelict was no longer a vertical wall but a vast, metallic landscape on which they were about to touch down, and the two coupled ships were hanging in the sky above it.

Conway found it much easier to guide himself down to the marked area than to control his emotions at the thought of landing on one of the legendary generation ships. But it was likely that his emotional radiation would not inconvenience Prilicla too much because the empath’s feelings would be very similar—even though it was physiologically impossible for a Cinrusskin to experience goose bumps or to have the non-existent hair at the back of its neck prickle with sheer wonder.

This was one of the generation ships which, before the discovery of hyperdrive, had carried colonists from their home worlds to the planets of other stars. All of the technologically advanced species of what was now the Galactic Federation had gone through their generation-ship phase. Melf, Illensa, Traltha, Kelgia and Earth had been among the scores of cultures which—between the time of their developing chemical-or nuclear-powered interplanetary travel and virtually instantaneous interstellar flight via the hyperdimension—had flung these planetary seed pods into space.

When a few decades or centuries later the cultures concerned had perfected hyperdrive or received it from one of the species of the emerging Galactic Federation, they had gone looking for these lumbering sub-light-speed behemoths and had rescued the majority of them a few decades or centuries after they had been launched.

This could be accomplished because the courses of the generation ships were known with accuracy, and their positions at any time during their centuries-long voyages could be computed with ease. Provided no physical or psychological catastrophe had occurred in the meantime—and some of the non-physical things that had gone wrong in the generation ships had given the would-be rescuers nightmares for the rest of their lives—the colonists were transferred to their target worlds within a matter of days rather than centuries.

Conway knew that the last of the generation ships to be contacted had been cleared, their metal and reactors salvaged. A few of them had been converted for use as accommodation for personnel engaged on space construction projects more than six hundred years ago. But this particular generation ship was one of the few which had not been contacted when hyperdrive was perfected. Either by accident or because of faulty design, it had gone off course to be
come a seedling destined never to reach fallow ground.

In silence they landed on the derelict’s hull. Because of the vessel’s slow spin, Conway had to use his feet and wrist magnets to keep from being tossed gently away again, while Prilicla used its gravity nullifiers in combination with magnetic pads on the ends of its six pipe-stem legs. Carefully they climbed through the gap in the plating and out of the direct sunlight. Conway waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then he switched on his suit spotlight.

There was an irregular natural tunnel in the wreckage, leading down for perhaps thirty meters. At the bottom was a projecting piece of metal, which had been daubed with luminescent green marker paint and a smear of grease.

“
If the
Tenelphi’s
officers marked a route for you
,” Fletcher said when Conway reported the find, “
it should speed the search for Sutherland. Always provided he hasn’t been diverted from the marked path. But there is another problem, Doctor. The farther you go into the derelict, the more difficult it will be to work your radio signals. We have more power here than you have in your suit power pack, so you will be able to listen to us long after we will cease hearing you. I’m referring to spoken messages, you understand. If you switch on your radio deep inside the ship, we will still be able to hear it, as a hiss or a burst of static, and vice versa. So even if we can no longer talk to each other, switch on your radio every fifteen minutes to let us know you’re still alive, and we’ll acknowledge
.