by James White
Even though the casualties’ stay in the ambulance ship would be a matter of hours rather than days, the treatment available during the first few minutes could make all the difference between a casualty who survived and one who was dead on arrival. Even Sector General could do nothing about the latter category, Conway thought; he wondered if any other preparations could be made to receive casualties whose number and condition were as yet unknown.
He must have been wondering aloud, because Naydrad said suddenly, “There is provision for twelve casualties, Doctor, assuming that each member of the scoutship’s ten-man crew is injured, and further assuming that two of our crew-members are injured during the rescue, which is a very low probability. Eight of the beds have been prepared for multiple-fracture cases, and the other four for cranial and mandible fractures with associated brain damage necessitating a cardiac or respiratory assist. Self-shaping splints, body restraints and medication suited to the DBDG classification are readily available. When may we learn the contents of O’Mara’s tape?”
“Soon, I hope,” Conway replied. “Though I lack the empathic faculty of Prilicla, I feel sure our Captain would not be pleased if we were to discover and discuss the details of our mission without him.”
“Correct, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “However, the combination of observation, deduction and experience can in many cases give a non-empathic species the ability to detect or to accurately predict emotional output.”
“Obviously,” said Naydrad. “But unless someone has something important to say, I shall go to sleep.”
“And I,” said Murchison, “shall press my not-unattractive face against a viewport and watch. It must be three years since I had a chance to see outside the hospital.”
While the Kelgian charge nurse curled itself into a furry question mark on one of the beds, Murchison, Prilicla and Conway moved to a viewport, which at that moment showed only a featureless expanse of metal plating and the foreshortened cylinder of one of the hydraulic docking booms. But as they watched they felt a series of tiny shocks, which were being transmitted through the fabric of the ship. The hospital’s outer skin began moving away from them, and the docking boom became even more foreshortened as it came smoothly to full extension, simultaneously releasing the ship and pushing it away.
The distance increased, allowing more and more details to crawl into the port’s field of vision-the personnel and stores loading tubes, which were already being withdrawn into their housing; the flashing or steadily burning approach and docking beacons; a line of ports ablaze with the greenish yellow lighting characteristic of the Illensan chlorine-breathers; and a big supply tender sidling up to its docking boom.
Suddenly the picture began to unroll from the top to the bottom of the viewport as the Rhabwar applied thrust. It was a gentle, cautious maneuver aimed at placing the ship on a spiral course that would take it through the local hospital traffic to a distance where full thrust could be applied without inconveniencing other ships in the area or elevating the temperature of the hospital’s skin-something that would be much more than an inconvenience if behind such a temporary hot spot there was a ward filled with the fragile, crystalline, ultra-frigid methane life-forms. The picture continued to shrink until the whole vast hospital structure was framed in the port, turning slowly as the ship spiraled away; then thrust was applied, and it slipped out of sight astern.
With the disappearance of the brilliantly lit hospital, their night vision returned slowly, and they watched, in a silence broken only by the hissing noises made by the sleeping Kelgian, while stars began to develop in the blank blackness outside the port.
The casualty deck speaker clicked and hummed. “This is Control. We are proceeding at one Earth-gravity thrust until Jump-distance is reached, which will be in forty-six minutes. During this period the artificial-gravity grids will be deactivated on all decks for the purposes of system checking and inspection. Any e-t requiring special gravity settings please check and activate its personal equipment.”
Conway wondered why the Captain was not covering the Jumpdistance at maximum thrust instead of dawdling along at one-G. He certainly could not Jump too close to the hospital, because the creation of an artificial universe that would allow faster-than-light travel-even a tiny one capable of enclosing the mass of their ship- would be much more than an inconvenience to Sector General. It could disrupt every piece of communications and control equipment in the place, with dire results for patients and staff alike. But Fletcher did not seem to be reacting with urgency to what was, after all, a distress call. Was Fletcher being overly careful with his nice new ship, Conway wondered, or was he proceeding carefully because the distress call had come before the ship was quite ready for it?
Though Conway’s worrying was causing the Cinrusskin to tremble slightly, Prilicla seemed calm. “I check my gravity nullifiers every hour, since my continued existence as a living and thinking entity requires it. But it is nice of the Captain to worry about my safety. He appears to be an efficient officer and an entity in whom we can place full trust where the workings of the ship are concerned.”
“I was a little worried for a moment,” Conway admitted, laughing at the empath’s unsubtle attempt at reassurance. “But how did you know I was worried about the ship? Are you becoming a telepath too?”
“No, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “I was aware of your feeling and had already noted our somewhat leisurely departure, and I wondered if it was the ship or the Captain who was proceeding cautiously.”
“Great minds worry alike,” said Murchison, turning away from the viewport. “I could eat a horse,” she added with feeling.
“I, too, have an urgent requirement for food,” said Prilicla.
“What is a horse, friend Murchison, and would it agree with my metabolism?”
“Food,” said Naydrad, coming awake.
They did not have to mention the fact that if the Tenelphi casualties were serious they might not have many opportunities to eat and it was always a good idea to refuel whenever an opportunity offered itself. As well, Conway thought, eating stopped worrying, at least for a while.
“Food,” Conway agreed, and he led the way to the central well, which connected the eight habitable levels of the ship.
As he began climbing the connecting ladder against the one-G thrust aft, Conway was remembering the diagram of the ship’s deck layout, which had been projected on O’Mara’s screen. Level One was Control, Two and Three held the crew and medics’ quarters, which were neither large nor overly well supplied with recreational aids, since ambulance ship missions were expected to be of short duration. Level Four housed the dining and recreational areas, and Five contained the stores of non-medical consumables. Six and Seven were the Casualty Deck and its ward, respectively, and Eight was the Power Room. Aft of Eight was a solid plug of shielding, then the two levels that could not be entered without special protective armor: Nine, which housed the hyperdrive generator, and Ten, which contained the fuel tanks and nuclear-powered thrusters.
Those thrusters were making Conway climb very carefully and hold tightly onto the rungs. A fall down the normally gravity-free well could quickly change his status from doctor to patient-or even to cadaver. Murchison was also being careful, but Naydrad, who had no shortage of legs with which to grip the rungs, began ruffling its fur with impatience. Prilicla, using its personal gravity nullifiers, had flown ahead to check on the food dispensers.
“The selection seems to be rather restricted,” it reported when they arrived, “but I think the quality is better than the hospital food.”
“It couldn’t be worse,” said Naydrad.
Conway quickly began performing major surgery on a steak and everyone else was using its mouth for a purpose other than talking when two green-uniformed legs came into sight as they climbed down from the deck above. They were followed by a torso and the features of Captain Fletcher.
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked stiffly. “I think we
should listen to the Tenelphi material as soon as possible.”
“Not at all,” Conway replied in the same formal tone. “Please sit down, Captain.”
Normally a Monitor Corps ship commander ate in the isolation of his cabin, Conway knew, that being one of the unwritten laws of the service. The Rhabwar was Fletcher’s first command and this his first operational mission, and here he was breaking one of those rules by dining with crew-members who were not even fellow officers of the Corps. But it was obvious as the Captain drew his meal from the dispenser that he was trying very hard to be relaxed and friendly-he was trying so hard, in fact, that Prilicla’s stable hover over its place at the table became somewhat unsteady.
Murchison smiled at the Captain. “Doctor Prilicla tells us that eating while in flight aids the Cinrusskin digestion as well as cools everyone else’s soup.
“If my method of ingestion offends you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla offered timidly, “I am quite capable of eating while at rest.”
“I m not offended, Doctor.” Fletcher smiled stiffly. “I think fascinated would better describe my feelings. But will listening to the tape adversely affect anyone’s digestion? The playback can certainly wait until you’ve all finished.”
“Talking shop,” said Conway in his best clinical manner, “also aids the digestion.” He slotted in the tape, and O’Mara’s dry, precise voice filled the compartment.
The Monitor Corps scoutship Tenelphi, which was currently engaged on preliminary survey operations in Sector Nine, had failed to make three successive position reports. The coordinates of the star systems assigned to the Ten elphi for investigation were known, as was the sequence in which they would be visited; and since the ship had not released a distress beacon, there was no immediate cause for concern over the fate of the missing vessel. The trouble, as so often happened, might turn out to be a simple communications failure rather than anything dramatic.
Stellar activity in the region was well above the norm, with the result that subspace radio communication was extremely difficult. Signals considered to be important-and they had to be very important indeed, because of the power required to penetrate the highly peculiar medium that was hyperspace-were taped and transmitted repeatedly for as long as was thought necessary, and safe, to do so. The transmission process released harmful radiation, which could not be effectively shielded if the signal was prolonged, especially where lightly built scoutships were concerned. The result was that a terse, highly compressed signal riddled with stellar interference was sent to be pieced together, hopefully in its entirety, from fifty or more identical but individually unreadable messages. Position-report signals were brief and therefore safe, and the power drain was relatively light, even for a scoutship.
But the Tenelphi had not sent a position report. Instead, it had transmitted a repeated message to the effect that it had detected and later closed with a large derelict that was falling rapidly into the system’s sun, with impact estimated in just under eight days. Since none of the system’s planets was within the life-spectrum-unless the life concerned was one of the exotic varieties that might be capable of flourishing on semi-molten rock under a small, intensely hot and aging sun-the assumption had been made that the vessel’s entry into the system was accidental rather than the result of a planned mission. There was evidence of residual power remaining in the derelict, and of several pockets of atmosphere of various densities, but no sign of life. The Tenelphi’s intention was to board it and investigate.
In spite of the poor signal quality, there could be no doubt of the pleasure felt by the Tenelphi’s communications officer at this lucky break in the otherwise deadly monotony of a routine mapping assignment.
Possibly they became too excited to remember to include a position report,” O’Mara’s voice continued, “or they knew that the timing of the signal, by checking it against their flight plans, would tell us where they were in general terms. But that was the only coherent message received. Three days later there was another signal, not taped but repeated, each time in slightly different form, by the sender speaking into a microphone. It said that there had been a serious collision, the ship was losing pressure and the crew was incapacitated. There was also some sort of warning. In my professional opinion the voice was distorted by more than the intervening subspace radio interference, but you can decide that for yourselves. Then, two hours later, a distress beacon was released.
“I have included a copy of the second signal, which may help you.” The Chief Psychologist’s voice added dryly, “Or help confuse you …
Unlike the first signal, the second was virtually unreadable. It was like listening to a mighty storm through which a voice, badly distorted to begin with, was trying to make itself heard in a whisper. They listened intently to the words while trying even harder to ignore the rattling explosions of interstellar static accompanying them, so much so that Naydrad’s fur rippled tensely with the strain and Prilicla, who was reacting to everyone else’s feelings as well as to the noise, gave up its attempt to hover and settled, trembling, on the table.
… idea if this … getting out or … crew incap … collision with derelict and … can’t do … distress beac … work it inside … manually … but can’t assume … stupidity of specialization when … if signal is getting out … warning in case … in collision … internal pressure dropping … can’t do anything about that, either … how to operate beacon from inside, release it manually from … al warning in case, lets too stiff to … confused and not much time … only chance is … sin chest … derelict is close … extra suit tanks … my specialty … ship Tenelphi in collision with … crew incapable of any … pressure dropping …
The voice went on for several minutes, but the words were lost in a prolonged burst of static. Shortly afterwards the tape ended. There were a few minutes of beautiful silence, during which Naydrad’s fur settled down and Prilicla flew up to the ceiling.
“It seems to me that the gist of this message,” Conway said thoughtfully, “is that the sender was unsure that the signal was being transmitted, possibly because he was not the communications officer and knew nothing about the equipment he was using, or maybe because he thought the subspace radio antenna had been damaged in the collision, which had, apparently, knocked out the rest of the crew. He did not seem to be able to help them, pressure was dropping, and again due to structural damage, he was unable to release the distress beacon from inside the ship. He would have to have set its timer and pushed it away from the ship with his hands.
“His doubts about the signal going out and his remarks regarding the stupidity of specialization,” he went on, “indicate that he was probably not the communications officer or even the Captain, who would have a working knowledge of the equipment in all departments of his ship. The ‘lets too stiff’ bit could be ‘gauntlets too stiff’ to operate certain controls or suit fastenings, and with the ship’s internal pressure dropping he might have been afraid to change from his heavy-duty spacesuit to a lightweight type with its thinner gauntlets. What an ‘al warning’ or a ‘sin chest’ is, I just don’t know, and in any case the distortion was so bad that those may only be approximations of the words he used.”
Conway looked around the table. “Maybe you can find something I missed. Shall I play the tape again?”
They listened again, and again, before Naydrad, in its forthright fashion, told him he was wasting their time.
“We would know how much credence to place on the material in this signal,” Conway said, “if we knew which officer sent it and why he, of all the crew, escaped serious injury during the collision. And another point: Once he says the crew are incapable, and later he describes them as being incapacitated. Not hurt or injured, but incapacitated. That choice of word makes me wonder if he is perhaps the ship’s medical officer, except that he hasn’t described the extent of their injuries or, as far as his signal is concerned, done much to help them.”
Naydrad, who was the hospital’s expert in sh
ip rescue procedures, made noises like a modulated foghorn, which translated as, “Regardless of his function in the ship, there is not much that any officer could do with fracture and decompression casualties, especially if everyone was sealed in suits or if the officer himself was a minor casualty. Regarding the, to me, subtle difference in meaning between the words incapacitated and injured, I think we are wasting time discussing it. Unless there is a deficiency in this ship’s translation computer that affects only the Kelgian programing …
The Captain bridled visibly at the suggestion that there might be anything at all wrong with his ship or its equipment. “This is not Sector General, Charge Nurse, where the translation computer fills three whole levels and handles simultaneous translations for six thousand individuals. The Rhabwar’s computer is programmed only to cover the languages of the ship’s personnel, plus the three most widely used languages in the Federation other than our own-Tralthan, Illensan and Melfan. It has been thoroughly tested, and it performs its function without ambiguity, so that any confusion—”
“Undoubtedly lies in the signal itself,” Conway contributed hastily, “and not in the translation. But I would still like to know who sent the message. The crew-member who used the words incapacitated and incapable instead of hurt or injured, who could not do something because he was confused and short of time and was hampered by gauntlets … Dammit, he might at least have told us something about the physical condition of the casualties so we’d know what to expect!”
Fletcher relaxed again. “I wonder why he was wearing a suit in the first place. Even if the ship was maneuvering close to the derelict and a collision occurred for whatever reason, it would not have been expected. By that I mean the crew would not normally be wearing spacesuits during such a maneuver. But if they were wearing them, then they were expecting trouble.”