The Galactic Gourmet

by James White

  At once he knew that he had made two very serious mistakes.

  For the past two hours Gurronsevas and his leg muscles had been accustoming themselves to the three Gs of the Hudlar ship rather than the nil-G of the loading bay, so he had used too much power in his jump. He was off-course and spinning slowly and moving much too fast...

  "What the blazes are you doing?" said an angry voice in his ear­piece. "Get back onto the deck!"

  ...And he had forgotten to tell the tractor-beamers, who could not see his jumping-off position because of the restricted view through the cargo lock, of his intention to return to the hospital. Quickly, he used his thrusters, but misjudged again and found him­self tumbling towards one of the Illensan tanks.

  "Beamer Three," said the voice again, "pull that damn Tralthan out of there!"

  Gurronsevas felt the sudden, invisible tug of the tractor beam, but it was off-center so that it pulled only on his forebody and sharply increased his rate of spin.

  "Can't," said another voice. "It's still using thrusters. Stop moving, dammit, so's I can focus on you!"

  He had no intention of stopping. Behind him an Illensan food tank, touched briefly by the tractor beam, was rushing towards him. He used the thrusters at full power, not caring which direc­tion he took so long as it would avoid a collision with that hurtling chlorine bomb. An instant later he crashed into a 200-unit bale of Hudlar sprayers.

  In spite of the gravity-free state of the freight hold, the mass and inertia of a spinning Tralthan body was considerable. So was that of the food sprayers, several of which burst open in a great, soft explosion of nutrient paint that drove the others apart and into the path of the Illensan tank. The jagged edge of a broken sprayer must have ruptured it because there was another and greater pressure ex­plosion and, as the constituents of the Hudlar and Illensan food re­acted chemically with each other, a rapidly expanding cloud of yellow-brown, hissing and boiling gas began drifting towards the open cargo lock.

  "Cut all tractors to the ship," said a voice urgently. "We can't see through this muck...!"

  The steady procession of freight items that were still moving past him into the opaque cloud around the cargo lock and contin­uing through it—but not all of them. Some were striking the rim and bursting open with enough force to knock subsequent items off-course. The sounds of collisions and pressure explosions were continuous and the toxic cloud was growing rapidly, shooting out fat, yellow-brown filaments and threatening to engulf the entire freight hold within minutes.

  Hudlars could survive the environments of most of the Fed­eration planets as well as the vacuum of space, but contact with chlorine was instantly lethal to them.

  Somewhere a siren came suddenly to life, its short, urgent blasts reinforcing a new voice that was repeating, "Contamination alarm, major oxygen-chlorine incident Loading Bay Twelve. De­contamination squads Two through Five to Bay Twelve at once..."

  "Urgent to all Hudlar cargo handlers," the first, authoritive voice returned. "Evacuate your hold immediately and take cover in—"

  "Duty officer, Trivennleth," a new voice broke in. "We cannot get them all inside in time. Less than a quarter will reach safety. Pro­pose pulling free with airlocks open, changing attitude ninety de­grees using maximum lateral thrust port-side bow rather than main drive to minimize structural damage to the hospital—"

  "Do it, Trivennleth!" the first voice replied. "All cargo bay per­sonnel, reseal your suits and grab hold of something solid. Massive decompression imminent..."

  Above the braying of the siren, Gurronsevas could hear a great metallic creaking and groaning from around the cargo lock as the freighter's lateral bow thrusters applied lateral pressure to push the interface surfaces apart. Suddenly there was the high-pitched whis­tle of escaping air that sucked away the obscuring clouds momen­tarily, revealing a dark, widening crescent where the airlock seals on one side had been pulled apart, then he felt himself being sucked towards the opening with the other loose pieces of cargo.

  For an instant it seemed that every tank and sprayer in the vicinity was hitting him and splashing his suit with nutrient, then suddenly he was outside and the objects were drifting away from him.

  If he had been wearing a heavy-duty suit, Gurronsevas knew that he would not have survived. But the lightweight protective envelope had been flexible enough to remain undamaged, although the same could not be said for its wearer. His left flank and outer surfaces of his medial and hind limb on that side felt like one great, livid bruise, and he had the feeling that it would feel worse before it felt better.

  To take his mind off his discomfort, Gurronsevas moved his eyes to the few remaining areas of his helmet that were not obscured by paint so that he could watch what was happening while he awaited rescue.

  The projecting structure of Bay Twelve's cargo lock had suf­fered a minor deformation when the freighter had twisted itself free, but the seal was still open and projecting a misty cone of escaping air mixed with pieces of unsecured cargo which were colliding and bursting against each other. Trivennleth had turned through ninety degrees and was lying parallel with the hospital's outer hull. By comparison the freighter's hold was only a fraction of the volume of the unloading bay and must have been airless by now, because its lock showed no signs either of mist or escaping cargo.

  Its duty officer had acted decisively and well, Gurronsevas thought, and wondered why the Captain had not taken charge dur­ing the emergency. He was considering the possibility that the com­manding officer had been the person he had left sharing the recre­ation deck with the Hudlar intern when he became aware that a voice in his headset was talking about him.

  "...And where is that stupid Tralthan?" it was saying angrily. "Trivennleth's crew are safe in vacuum, no casualties. The same with our oxy-breathing handlers. Senior Dietitian Gurronsevas, come in please. If you're still alive, respond dammit...!"

  It was then that Gurronsevas discovered that his suit had not escaped entirely without damage. The communicator's Transmit light would not come on.

  Not only was his air running dangerously low, nobody would be able to hear his calls for help.

  Chapter 11

  It was completely incredible, Gurronsevas told himself angrily, that the Federation's foremost exponent of the art of multi-species cuisine was going to end his life asphyxiating inside a spacesuit smothered in Hudlar nutrient. No matter how subtly worded the manner of his death might be, as the final entry in a professionally distinguished life it was unfair, unsuitable and undignified. He could only guess at the kind of farewell message some of his less serious-minded colleagues would inscribe on his Pillar of Memory. But as yet he felt far too angry and embarrassed to be really fearful. Surely there must be some means of signalling his predicament other than by radio. But the voices in his receiver—which, unlike the stupid transmitter, was working perfectly—were saying other­wise.

  "Gurronsevas, come in please," said one of them. "If you can hear me but cannot respond, release your distress flare...Still no reply, sir."

  "You're forgetting that it's a hospital suit," a second voice said, "for interior use only. It doesn't carry flares. And Gurronsevas had no reason to draw one because it wasn't expecting to leave the bloody hospital! But it is wearing a short-duration thruster pack. You know what a Tralthan looks like so look for it. This one has a thruster pack and will be moving independently with respect to the general drift of cargo and trying to return to the cargo lock, if it is conscious and uninjured, that is."

  "Or still alive."

  "Yes."

  Gurronsevas tried to ignore the pessimistic turn the conver­sation was taking and concentrated instead on the helpful advice it contained. The endless metal landscape of the hospital structure, the blunt, torpedo shape of the Hudlar freighter, and the cloud of dispersing cargo, some of it still steaming and spraying out a thick mist of chlorine or nutrient paint, was wheeling grandly around him. As the first voice had suggested, he should begin by moving inde
pendently of the material surrounding him. But first he would have to use the thrusters to kill his spin.

  Because of his minimal experience of maneuvering with a thruster pack, it required several minutes as well as a considerable waste of fuel, which the indicators showed to be already dangerously low, before he was able to neutralize his spin. He estimated that at best he had only enough thrust to move himself, slowly, for a few minutes and a distance of a few hundred yards, and that his termi­nal velocity would fall far short of that needed to break free of the expanding cloud of cargo debris, much less bring him back to the unloading bay before his air ran out.

  The voices in his headset were agreeing with him, but other­wise they were not being helpful.

  "...And we checked the suit register, sir," one of them was saying. "It shows the recent withdrawal of one Tralthan-style pro­tective suit with a three-hour air supply and a standard thruster pack, just under two and three-quarter hours ago. If Gurronsevas used the thrusters during its visit to the Hudlar ship and remained sealed while doing so, it might not be able to move far or breathe for very much longer. A search and rescue team is suiting up, but where do we tell them to look for it?"

  "Suppose it uses its remaining thrust to spin rapidly," said another, "that would enable us to get a visual fix on a rapidly rotat­ing body of roughly Tralthan mass and—"

  "I don't know, sir," the first voice replied. "Some of those cargo items are large and have mass and momentum in proportion. If Gurronsevas was unlucky enough to be caught between two colliding masses, it might no longer bear much resemblance to a Tralthan."

  "Mount a tractor-beam on the outer hull," said the first voice quickly. "Use it in conjunction with the rescue team who will spread themselves out to search the cargo cloud in one sweep. If they spot anything that looks like our wanderer, you pull it in."

  "Tractor mounts aren't exactly portable, sir," said the other voice. "We'll need time to clamp it in position and realign the—"

  "I know, I know. Just do it as fast as you can."

  Through the few clear patches in his helmet, Gurronsevas saw that he had stabilized himself with respect to the hospital because the cargo lock of the unloading bay, reduced by distance to a small, brightly-lit square, was no longer moving past him. Already tiny, Earth-human figures were moving equipment, presumably the tractor beam installation, through the lock and onto the hull. A few seconds later the first members of the rescue team came shooting out in powered suits to scatter towards their assigned search areas.

  None of them were heading directly towards him, and Gur­ronsevas himself was headed for trouble.

  The cargo debris was still expanding and dispersing all around him and the nebular fog of nutrient and chlorine was fading to a thick mist, except for one area nearby where a Hudlar food con­tainer had collided with something that had broken off its sprayer nozzle and sent it spinning. The container was discharging its con­tents in a thin, high-pressure jet as it spun so that it was encircled by a continuous expanding spiral of nutrient. Gurronsevas was too close and moving too fast to evade the bright, insubstantial rings of vapor with his thrusters, and could only wrap his arms around his head to protect the remaining clear areas of the helmet.

  Just before he reached the bright, insubstantial barrier, Gur­ronsevas could almost believe that he was approaching and penetrating the orbiting equatorial dust of some vast, ringed planet, and he thought that the ending of his life was accompanied by some un­usual and interesting experiences. He was pleased when he passed through without any further deterioration in helmet visibility.

  Beyond the rings he saw another object about fifty yards ahead, a large, seemingly undamaged bale of Hudlar nutrient drifting with­out spin and motionless with respect to himself. It was not, there­fore, a threat.

  The rescue team was being widely deployed, but none of the voices reported sighting him, and he could see only one of them through the fog. He was wondering if he should wave his arms in an attempt to attract that single Earth-human's attention when he caught sight again of the spinning food sprayer that was producing the rings.

  Perhaps, Gurronsevas thought with a faint stirring of hope, he would have time for many more interesting experiences before his life came to an end.

  The undamaged bale of Hudlar food tanks was drifting nearby. He used the suit thrusters to close with it. In spite of his shortage of air and the need for urgency, he used minimum power so that the contact would be gentle enough not to set the bale spinning or damage the food tanks that lay like a large, tightly-packed carpet of eggs that was moving up to meet him.

  He landed gently and, moving with great care, positioned him­self as close to the center of the layer of tanks as his ungainly phys­iology would permit. Because the cargo had been orbitally loaded in weightless conditions and the hyperspace jump to Sector Gen­eral had also been gravity-free, the two-layer bale was held in one piece by a tightly-stretched open net rather than a solid container. Gurronsevas was able to look between the long, tightly-packed cylinders to the opposite face of the bale, and beyond it to the hos­pital's outer hull.

  Looking through the opening between the group of tanks clos­est to his helmet, Gurronsevas attached himself to the bale and used his suit thrusters to send it into a slow, controlled roll. When the brightly-lit cargo lock of Bay Twelve came into view, he checked the roll and with gentle applications of side thrust then centered the target in this crude sight and waited for a moment to be sure that it would stay there. Then he forced himself to think.

  Gurronsevas estimated that there were one hundred food tanks in the layer around him, all of their nozzles pointing verti­cally upwards. A central group of about twenty of them were cov­ered by his body and were therefore useless for his purpose, but the outlying tanks could be emptied without him being covered with nutrient. Very carefully he extended all his arms, selected two pairs of tanks that were equidistant from his central position, opened the nozzles for a maximum delivery jet rather than a spray, and switched all four on simultaneously.

  He felt a very gentle pressure as the tanks emptied their con­tents rapidly into space. But the inertia of the cargo bale and his own large body had to be overcome, and it was too great for there to be any noticeable reduction in his velocity away from the hospital. He opened the valves on all of the tanks he could reach and was soon surrounded by spurting, inverted cones of nutrient paint. It was very important that his strange vehicle's center of thrust did not de­viate from its intended direction of flight, so every few seconds he sighted through the tiny spaces between the tanks to ensure that the brightly-lit and now slowly expanding opening into Bay Twelve had not moved aside. Whenever it showed a tendency to drift, he cor­rected with his suit thrusters.

  According to the helmet indicators, his thrust power had been exhausted minutes earlier. He assumed that the inaccuracy had been designed into them so that they read empty when there was, in fact, a small safety reserve remaining. Fervently he hoped that the same design philosophy had been used on his air tank indicators.

  His difficulty in breathing, the pounding in his head and the increasing pain in his chest were probably psychosomatic, he told himself, and caused principally by foreknowledge. But he did not believe himself.

  He was moving away from the expanding cloud of cargo debris and Lock Twelve was growing larger ahead. The rescue team members were continuing to send in negative reports. Surely, thought Gurronsevas, someone should have spotted him by now. Then suddenly they all did.

  "Rescue Four, it looks as if one of the Hudlar bales sustained freak collision damage that ruptured the tanks on one side. It is moving in a direction opposite to the rest of the cargo and could be a personnel hazard..."

  "Five here. Freak collision hell! Our missing Tralthan is rid­ing on that thing. Oh man, that is one nice trick. But it's going in too fast..."

  "Rescue team, can any of you intercept?"

  "Rescue One. No, not before it hits. We're all moving in the wrong di
rection. Hull tractor beam, can you soft land it?"

  "Negative, One. We won't be operational for another ten minutes."

  "Then forget it and clear the area in case it lands on top of you."

  "I don't think so, One. We've computed its trajectory and think it will make it through the airlock. That Tralthan knows how to..."

  "Rescue One. All internal tractor beamers switch to pressor mode. Catch it as it comes in. Decontamination and medical teams stand by..."

  His heartbeat was becoming so rapid and thunderous that it was difficult to hear the rest of the conversation and, in spite of the blurring of his vision, he could see the bright opening into Bay Twelve rushing closer. The nutrient tanks propelling him were emptying themselves, but unevenly so that his bale was beginning a slow, lateral roll that was moving him towards the edge of the lock opening.

  For an instant Gurronsevas thought that he would pass through safely, but a corner of his vehicle struck the coaming and the whole bale disintegrated into its component tanks. Miracu­lously, he had escaped injury, but suddenly he was in the middle of about two hundred full and empty food tanks, all of them tumbling at high speed towards the inner wall of the unloading bay. Then he felt as if he had been punched all over his body as the immaterial rod of a pressor beam brought him to an abrupt halt, leaving the tanks to crash and burst against the inner wall. Those that were not already empty emptied themselves rapidly in all directions.

  One of them struck his chest as it spun past, not violently enough to cause pain, but suddenly his communicator transmit light came on. All it had needed was a solid thump.

  "Don't leave it hanging up there, dammit," said an authorita­tive voice. "Pull it into the personnel lock. Duty medic, stand by..."