Ambulance Ship sg-4

by James White

  “Did any of the other helmets contain this anti-nausea medication?” asked Conway.

  “All of them so far, Doctor,” Naydrad replied, its four manipulators working independently on the suit fastenings while its eyes curled up to regard Conway. “The first casualty to be undressed displayed symptoms of nausea when I inadvertently applied pressure to the abdominal region. The being was not fully conscious at the time, so its words were not sufficiently coherent for translation.”

  Prilicla quickly joined in. “The emotional radiation is characteristic of a being in delirium, friend Conway, probably caused by the elevated temperature. I have also observed erratic, uncoordinated movements of the limbs and head, which are also symptomatic of delirium.”

  “I agree,” said Conway. But what was causing it? He did not utter the question aloud because he was supposed to know the answer, but he had an uneasy premonition that even a really thorough examination might not reveal the cause. He began helping the charge nurse to remove the patient’s sweat-soaked clothing.

  There was evidence of heat prostration and dehydration, which, considering the patient’s high temperature and associated loss of body fluid, was to be expected. Gentle palpation in the abdominal area caused involuntary retching movements, although there was no foreign material in the stomach so far as Conway could determine. The man had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours.

  The pulse was a little fast but steady, respiration irregular and with a tendency towards intermittent coughing. When Conway checked the throat he found it seriously inflamed, and his scanner indicated that the inflammation extended along the bronchi and into the pleural cavity. He checked the tongue and lips for signs of damage by toxic or corrosive material, and noticed that the man’s face was not, as he had first thought, wet only with perspiration- the tear ducts were leaking steadily, and there was a mucous discharge from the nose as well. Finally, he checked for evidence of radiation exposure or the inhalation of radioactive material, with negative results.

  “Captain. Conway,” he called suddenly. “Would you ask Lieutenant Chen, while he is searching the Tenelphi for the missing officer, to bring back samples of the ship’s air and food and liquid consumables? Would he also look for evidence of a leakage of toxic material, solid or gaseous, into the life-support system, and bring them, tightly sealed, to Pathologist Murchison for analysis as quickly as possible?”

  “Will do,” Fletcher responded. “Chen, you overheard?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the engineer officer. “I still can’t find the missing casualty, Doctor. Now I’m beginning to look in all the unlikely places.”

  Because Conway’s helmet was still sealed, Murchison had been listening to the conversation on the Casualty Deck’s speaker as well as hearing his side of it through his suit’s external sound system. “Two questions, Doctor,” she said irritably. “Do you know what’s wrong with them, and has it anything to do with your using that overly loud suit speaker instead of opening your visor and talking normally?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Conway.

  “Perhaps,” she said angrily to Dodds, “he doesn’t like my perfume.”

  Conway disregarded the sarcasm and looked around the ward. While he had been examining the casualty with Naydrad, Murchison and Dodds had stripped the others and were obviously waiting for instructions. Prilicla was already carrying out the instructions that Conway had yet to utter on the first two casualties, but then, Prilicla invariably said and did the right thing because it was an exceptionally fine doctor as well as an empath.

  “If it wasn’t for the very high temperature and general severity of their symptoms,” Conway said finally, “I’d say we are dealing with a respiratory infection with associated nausea caused, perhaps, by swallowing infected mucus. But the sudden and incapacitating onset of the symptoms makes me doubtful of that diagnosis.

  “But that is not the reason I stayed sealed,” he went on. “There was no reason for doing so at first. Now, however, I think it would be a good idea if Lieutenant Dodds and you sealed up. It may be an unnecessary precaution.”

  “Or it may already be too late,” said Murchison, unclipping one of the lightweight helmets, which, with its connecting hose, air tank and body webbing, converted the coveralls she was wearing into a protective suit, proof against anything but the most corrosive atmospheres. Dodds had already sealed his visor with remarkable haste.

  “Until we can get them to the hospital,” Conway said, “treatment must be supportive rather than curative. Replace the lost fluids intravenously, control the nausea and try to keep the temperature down. We may have to use body restraints to keep them from dislodging their monitor leads. Isolate them in pressure tents and raise the oxygen level. I think their condition is going to worsen, and we may eventually need to assist their breathing with a ventilator.”

  He paused for a moment, and when he looked at Murchison he knew that the concern on his face was concealed by the blurring effect of his visor and by the suit’s external speaker, which distorted his voice.

  “The isolation may be unnecessary,” he said. “These symptoms could just as easily be due to inhaling and swallowing an as yet unidentified toxin. We can’t be sure, and we haven’t the proper facilities to find the answer in the limited time available. As soon as we find out what happened to the missing crew-man, we’ll whisk them all back to Sector General and submit ourselves to a thorough—”

  “While we are waiting,” Murchison broke in, her voice and features now also distorted by a helmet, “I would like to try to discover what it was that hit them, and what it is that may hit everyone else but yourself.”

  “There may not be time for that,” Conway began, but the voice of the engineer officer reporting to the Captain made him break off.

  “Captain, Chen here. I’ve found the duty roster, sir, and I’ve checked it against the IDs of the casualties. The missing man turns out to be Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland, so the Doctor’s guess was right. But his body is not here. I’ve searched thoroughly and he’s not inside the wreck. There are things missing as well-the ship’s portable sound and vision recorders, the crew’s personal recorders, cameras, baggage containers, all missing. Clothing and personal effects are drifting about inside the crew’s quarters as — f they’d been scattered during a hurried unpacking.

  “Practically all the spare air tanks have gone, and the equipment register shows that the crew’s spacesuits were all logged out for a period of between two and three days, except for the Surgeon-Lieutenant’s suit, which wasn’t logged out and is missing. The ship’s portable airlock is missing also.

  “The Control area is badly damaged, so I can’t be absolutely sure, but it looks as if they were trying to set up for an automatic Jump, and the instrument settings in the Power Room, which wasn’t damaged, supports this. I’d say they were trying to move away from the derelict because of the distortion such a large mass of metal would zntroduce into the Jump calculations, but they collided with it instead.”

  “I have the samples for Pathologist Murchison. Shall I come back now, sir?”

  “Right away,” the Captain ordered.

  While Lieutenant Chen and the Captain had been talking, Conway had been trying to make sense out of the strange behavior of the Tenelphi’s medical officer. Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland had displayed professional competence of a very high order in his treatment of the casualties. Through no fault of his own, he had not been able to communicate properly via the subspace radio although he had made a good try, but he had managed to perform the tricky job of manually releasing and activating the distress beacon. It seemed to Conway that Sutherland was a sensible and resourceful officer of the kind who did not panic easily. Neither was he the kind who would get himself killed accidentally or go without leaving some sort of message.

  “If he isn’t adrift and he isn’t on the Tenelphi,” said Conway suddenly, “there is only one other place he can be. Can you land me on the derelict, Captain?”

&nb
sp; Knowing Fletcher’s concern for his ship, Conway expected anything from a flat negative to a verbal explosion at the very suggestion. Instead, he received the kind of response an instructor gives to a pupil of mediocre intelligence-a lecture couched in such elementary language that if the Captain had not been five levels forward in Control, Conway would have risked unsealing his visor to spit in Fletcher’s eye.

  “I can conceive of no reason, Doctor, why the missing officer should leave the Tenelphi when the obvious course would be to stay with the other casualties and await rescue,” the Captain began. Then he went on to remind Conway that they did not have a lot of time to waste. Not only should the casualties be hospitalized quickly, but the derelict, the Tenelphi and their own vessel were closing with the system’s sun at an accelerating rate, which would make it uncomfortably warm for all concerned in two days and would cause their hull to melt in four. There was also the fact that the closer they approached the sun, the more difficult it would be for them to make a Jump.

  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, ja
gged-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.