Sector General sg-5

by James White

  Conway gave a relieved sigh which ended in an enormous, eye-watering yawn. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Thank you, everyone. Put them back to sleep, check the sutures, and reseal them in their hibernation cylinders. They will not have to link up again until after the landing, by which time the wounds should have healed to a large extent so that the fusion will be more comfortable for them. As for ourselves, I prescribe eight hours solid sleep before—”

  He broke off abruptly as the features of Fleet Commander Dermod appeared on the screen.

  “You appear to have successfully repaired a major break in our alien chain, Doctor,” he said seriously, “but the time taken to do so was not short. There are many other breaks and we have three days during which a concerted Jump is possible, Doctor, after which the gravitational distortion effects caused by that rapidly approaching sun will make an accurate Jump out of the question even for single ships.

  “Should we overrun the three-day deadline,” he went on grimly, “single-ship Jumping within operational safety limits will be possible for an additional twenty hours. During this twenty-hour period, if the coilship is not to be abandoned to fall into the sun, it will have to be dismantled into sections small enough to be accommodated by the hyperspheres of the units available in the area. This, you will understand, would of necessity be a very hurried operation and our own accident casualties as well as those of CRLTs would be heavy?

  “What I am saying, Doctor,” he ended gravely, “is that if you cannot complete your organic link-ups within three days, tell me now so that we can begin dismantling the coilship in a safer and more orderly fashion.”

  Con way rubbed his eyes and said, “There were seventeen missing segments between the join which we have just effected, and this makes it the most difficult job of the lot. The remaining breaks are of two, three, or at most five segments, so that those linking operations will be correspondingly easier. We know the drill now and three days should be ample time, barring an unforeseen catastrophe.”

  “I cannot hold you responsible for one of those, Doctor,” the Fleet Commander said dryly. “Very well. What are your immediate intentions?”

  “Right now,” Conway said firmly, “we intend to sleep.”

  Dermod looked vaguely surprised, as if the very concept of sleep was one that had become alien to him over the past few days, then he nodded grudgingly and broke contact.

  Feeling rested, alert, and much more human — and, of course, more Kelgian and Cinrusskin — they returned to Descartes’s cargo hold to find another two CRLTs already waiting for them and the remaining segments to be joined clamped to the outer hull. The Fleet Commander, it was clear, was a man who believed in maintaining the pressure.

  But achieving fusion with these two was remarkably easy. Only two intervening segments were missing so that the surgery required was minor indeed. The next pair were more difficult, nevertheless a satisfactory link-up was achieved within two hours and, with their growing confidence and expertise, this was to become the average time required for the job. So well did they progress that they became almost angry with themselves when they were forced to break for meals or sleep.

  Then suddenly they were finished and there was nothing to do but watch the screen while the last gap in the coil was being closed and hundreds of spacesuited figures swarmed all over it to give a final check to the sensor actuators on each hibernation cylinder which would expel their endplates and initiate resuscitation on landing.

  With the exception of Rhabwar and one of Descartes’s planetary landers, the great fleet of scoutships and auxiliaries withdrew to a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers, which was far enough to relieve the traffic congestion in the area but close enough for them to return quickly should anything go wrong.

  “I do not foresee anything going seriously wrong at this end,” the Fleet Commander said when the coilship was in one tremendous, spiral piece. “You have given us enough time, Doctor, to carry out all the necessary pre-Jump calculations and calibrations. This will be a time-consuming process since our three vessels, whose hyperspace envelopes will have to be extended to enclose the coilship, are Jumping in concert. Should a problem arise and we are unable to make this Jump, the units standing by will move in, dismantle the coilship as quickly as possible, and Jump away with the pieces and salvage what we can from this operation.

  “There will be enough Monitor Corps medics on these ships to deal with the expected casualties,” he went on, “and for this reason I would like Rhabwar to leave at once and position itself close to the CRLTs new target planet. If trouble develops it is much more likely to be at that end.”

  “I understand,” Conway said quietly.

  The Fleet Commander nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. From now on this is purely a transport problem and my responsibility.”

  Sooner yours than mine, Conway thought grimly as Dermod broke contact.

  He was thinking about the Fleet Commander’s problem while they were wishing Colonel Okaussie and the Descartes’s tractor beam crew good-by and good luck, and it remained in his mind after the medical team boarded Rhabwar and the ambulance ship was heading out to Jump distance from the combined CRLT and Federation vessels.

  Conway understood Dermod’s problem all too well and the strong but unspoken reason why the Fleet Commander wanted the ambulance ship positioned in the target system. They both knew that the majority of single-ship accidents occurred because of a premature emergence into normal space when one of the unfortunate vessel’s matched set of hyperdrive generators was out of synchronization. A single generator pod emerging into normal space while the rest of the vessel was in the hy-perdimension could tear the ship apart and leave wreckage strewn across millions of kilometers. Timing, therefore, was: ritical even on a single ship where only two or perhaps four generators had to be matched. The Fleet Commander’s problem was that Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes together with the jnormous coilship of the CRLTs were linked together by tractor and pressor beams into a single rigid structure.

  The Emperor-class cruisers were the largest ships operated by the Monitor Corps, and each required six generators to move its tremendous mass into and out of hyperspace, while the survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes needed only four. I" his meant that sixteen generators in all would be required to perform a simultaneous Jump and subsequent emergence into normal space. And the problem was further complicated by the Fact that all of the generators would be operating under controlled overload conditions because their coombined hyperspace envelope had to be extended to enclose the coilship.

  As Rhabwar made its Jump into hyperspace Conway was overcome by such an intense, gnawing anxietty that even Prilicla could not reassure him out of it. He had the awful feeling that they were about to witness the worst spactdisasaster in Federation history.

  The new home chosen for the CRLIs had been known to the Federation for nearly two centurie and was listed as a possible colony world for the Chalders.however, the denizens of Chalderescol Three — a water-breathing life-form resembling an outsize, tentacled crocodile which combined physical inaction with mental agility — were not very enthusiastic about it since they already possessed two colony worlds and their home planet was far from overcrowded So when they learned of the plight of the CRLT colonists they willlingly relinquished their claim to a planet which was of marginal interest to them anyway.

  It was a warm, pleasant world with a continent, largely desert, encircling its equator like a wide, ragged belt and two relatively small bands of ocean separating the equatorial land-mass from the two large continents centred 3 at each pole; these were green, temperate, and free of icecaps …

  Following exhaustive investigations of tthe cadavers available to them at Sector General both Murchison and Thornnastor were firmly of the opinion that this would be an ideal home for the CRLT life-form — moreover it was an environment which would not force them into periodic hibernation …

  The landing area, a large clearing on the shore of
a vast, inland sea, had already been marked with beacons. It awaited only the arrival of the CRLTs — as, vith mounting anxiety, did the personnel on board Rhabwar. On t the Casualty Deck Conway and the other members of the medical team each picked a direct visionport, hoping in some obscure fashion that by watching and worrying hard they might ensre the safe arrival of the coilship.

  It was no surprise, considering the distances involved, that they learned of its emergence from the Control Room repeaters.

  “Trace, sir!” Haslam’s voice sounded excitedly. “The bearing is—“

  “Are you sure it’s them?”

  “A single trace that size couldn’t be anything else, sir. And yes, the sensors confirm.”

  “Very well,” the Captain’s voice replied, trying unsuccessfully to hide its relief. “Lock the scope on your radar bearing and give me full magnification. Dodds, contact astrogation on Vespasian and arrange a rendezvous. Power Room, stand by.”

  The rest of the crewmen’s conversation was ignored as the medical team crowded around the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. One look was enough to tell them that their preparations to receive large numbers of casualties from the expected emergence accident had been wasted effort, but they did not care because it was immediately obvious that the concerted Jump had been completely successful.

  Centered on the repeater screen was a small, sharp image of the coilship with its three Monitor Corps vessels spaced along its axis, looking like an exercise in alien three-dimensional geometry. Vespasian, the stern component, was already applying thrust, and the three linked ships were beginning to turn around their longitudinal axes in order to reproduce the original rate of rotation and centrifugal force conditions ofthe coilship before its accident. Gradually a voice from Control made itself heard above the sound of the medics’ human and extraterrestrial jubilation.

  “… Rendezvous in four hours thirteen minutes,” Haslam was saying. “No preliminary orbital maneuvering, sir. They intend going straight in.”

  Rhabwar, in its hypersonic glider configuration, circled the descending coilship at a distance of three kilometers using its thrusters only when necessary to maintain the same rate of descent. Rotating slowly and illuminated to near- incandescent brightness by the system’s sun and noontime reflection from the planet’s cloud blanket, it seemed to Conway as if it were boring its way into the lower reaches of the atmosphere like some gigantic, alien drill. Inside the enormous, dazzling coil the three Federation ships in their drab service liveries were virtually invisible except for the flare of Vespasian’s thrusters, which were supporting the weight not only of the coilship but the two vessels stacked above it. The great alien and Monitor Corps composite continued its descent until, three kilometers from the surface, tangential thrust was applied to begin killing its spin.

  Vespasian’s flare lengthened suddenly and brightened, slowing the descent until the ship was hovering a meter above the ground. Then simultaneously the coilship’s rotation ceased, Vespasian’s stabilizers came to rest on the fused and blackened soil, and the sternmost segment of the coilship touched down.

  For perhaps five seconds nothing happened, then, reacting to the cessation of spin and the presence of a suitable atmosphere, the sensor-actuators on every hibernation cylinder performed their function. The endplates which kept the individual CRLTs apart were ejected to fall like a shower of giant coins to the ground, and resuscitation of the group entity was initiated. Conway could imagine the individual CRLTs awakening, stretching, and linking up, the occupants of close on nine hundred hibernation compartments which had survived the eighty-seven years past collision. Then he began to worry in case some of them could not link up and there was an organic log-jam somewhere inside the coil trapping CRLTs above it …

  But within a surprisingly short time the great group entity was leaving its ship, the leading head segments walking carefully around the fused earth under Vespasian’s stern and toward the vegetation on the edge of the clearing. And, like an endless, leathery caterpillar the younger segments emerged carrying equipment and stores and following the tracks of their elders.

  When at last the tail was clear of the coilship, the power to the supporting tractor and pressor beams was gradually reduced so that the towering, open spiral collapsed slowly onto itself to lie like a great, loose coil of metal rope on the ground. A few minutes later Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes took off and separated, the two capital ships to go into orbit and Descartes to land again a few kilometers along the shoreline to await formal contact with the CRLT group entity. Contact would occur, they knew, because the individual CRLTs who had undergone surgery knew that the beings inside the Federation ships wished them well and, since the CRLT life-form had shared mentation, the whole group would be aware of these good intentions.

  By this time Rhabwar’s lander had also touched down and its medics were on the surface standing as close as they possibly could to the being who was marching endlessly past them. Ostensibly they were there to furnish any medical assistance which might be required. Actually they were simply satisfying their curiosity regarding a being which must surely have been the strangest life-form yet encountered.

  Conway, as was his wont, was indulging in a bout of postoperative worrying. He waved, indicating the endless line of dorsal appendages which were either gathering pieces of edible vegetation or waving back at him, and said, “I realize that one or more of the head segments must have tried the local vegetation with no ill effects, and now the whole group entity knows what is safe to eat, but the procedure seems a bit slapdash to me. And I haven’t been able to spot any of our surgical joins going past. There is bound to be a certain amount of muscular weakness in those areas, and perhaps an impairment in sensory communication and — What the blazes is that”

  That was a low, moaning and caterwauling sound which ran up and down the length of the kilometers-long entity, rising in volume suddenly until it became deafening. It sounded as if each and every CRLT was suffering intense physical or mental anguish. But strangely the outpouring of emotional radiation which must have accompanied it was not bothering Prilicla.

  “Do not feel concern,” the little empath said. “It is an expression of group pleasure, gratitude, and relief. They are cheering, friend Conway.”

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  Document creation date: 2011-08-24

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