Ambulance Ship sg-4

by James White

  The total absence of transparent material, specifically direct vision ports, also gave support to Conway’s theory, although it was not impossible that the ports were there but protected by movable metal panels. It was a very good theory, Fletcher admitted, but he preferred to believe that the ship’s crew saw in a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, rather than were completely blind.

  “Why the Braille, then?” Conway asked. But Fletcher did not answer because it was becoming increasingly obvious on closer examination that the rough spots on the panels and actuators were not there simply to furnish traction-each one was as individual as a fingerprint.

  Like the exterior of the ship, the lock interior was unpainted metal. The lock chamber itself was large enough for them to stand upright, but the two actuator disks visible below the inner and outer seals were only a few inches above deck level. There were also a number of short, bright scratches and a few shallow dents in evidence, as though something heavy with sharp edges had been loaded or unloaded fairly recently.

  “Physiologically,” said Murchison, “this life-form could be a weirdie. Is it a large being whose manipulatory appendages are at ground level? Or are they a small species whose ship was designed to be visited or used by a much more massive race? If the latter, then the rescue should not be complicated by xenophobic reactions on the part of the survivors, since they already know that there are other intelligent life-forms and that the possibility exists that an other-species group might rescue them.”

  “It is much more likely to be a cargo lock, ma’am,” said the Captain apologetically, “and it is the cargo, rather than their extraterrestrial friends, if any, that was massive. Are we ready to go in?”

  Without replying, Murchison switched her helmet spotlight to wide beam. The Captain and Conway did the same.

  Fletcher had already checked that he could maintain two-way communication with Haslam and Chen outside the ship and with Dodds on the Rhabwar by touching the helmet antenna to the metal of the hull, in effect making the ship’s structure an extension of his antenna. He knelt down and depressed the actuator, which was positioned just above deck level inside the outer seal. The hatch swung closed, and he repeated the operation on a similarly positioned actuator below the inner seal.

  For a few seconds nothing happened. Then they heard the hiss of atmosphere entering the lock chamber, and they felt their suits becoming less inflated as air pressure built up around them. As the inner seal opened to reveal a stretch of dark, apparently empty corridor, Murchison was busy tapping buttons on her analyzer.

  “What do they breathe?” Conway asked.

  “Just a moment, I’m double-checking,” Murchison replied. Suddenly she opened her visor and grinned. “Does that answer your question?”

  When he opened his own helmet, Conway felt his ears pop at the slight difference in air pressure. “So, the survivors are warmblooded oxygen-breathers with roughly Earth-normal atmosphericpressure requirements. This simplifies the job of preparing ward accommodation.”

  Fletcher hesitated for a moment, then he, too, opened his visor. “Let’s find them first.”

  They stepped into a metal-walled corridor, featureless except for a large number of dents and scratches on the ceiling and walls, which extended for about thirty meters toward the center of the ship. At the end of the corridor, lying on the deck, was an indistinct something that looked like a tangle of metal bars projecting from a darker mass. Murchison’s foot magnets made loud scraping sounds as she hurried towards it.

  “Careful, ma’am,” said the Captain. “If the doctor’s theory is correct, all controls, actuators, instruction or warning tags will have tactile indicators, and there is still power available within the ship; otherwise, the airlock mechanism would not have worked for us. If the crew live and work in complete darkness, you will have to think with your fingers and feet and not touch anything that looks like a patch of corrosion.”

  “I’ll be careful, Captain,” Murchison promised.

  To Conway, Fletcher said: “The inner seal has an actuator just like the others under its lower rim.” He directed his helmet light at the area in question, then indicated a smaller circle a few inches to the right of the actuator switch. “Before we go any farther I would like to know what this one does.”

  “Well,” Conway said, “about the only thing we know for sure is that it isn’t a light switch.” He laughed as Fletcher depressed one side of the disk.

  Murchison gave an unladylike grunt of surprise as bright yellow light flooded the corridor from an unseen source at the other end.

  “No comment,” said the Captain.

  Conway felt his face burning with embarrassment as he muttered about the lights being for the convenience of non-blind visitors.

  “If this was a visitor,” said Murchison, who had reached the other end of the corridor, “then it was very severely inconvenienced. Look here.”

  The corridor made a right-angle turn at its inboard end, although access to the new section was blocked by a heavy barred grill, which had been twisted away from its anchor points on the deck and one wall. Behind the damaged grill, dozens of metal rods and bars projected at random angles into the corridor space from the walls and ceiling. But they did not pay much attention to the strange cage-like outgrowth of metal because they were staring at the three extraterrestrials who were lying in wide, dried-up patches of their body fluids.

  There were two very different physiological types, Conway saw at once. The large one resembled a Tralthan, but less massive and with stubbier legs projecting from a hemispherical carapace, which flared out slightly around the lower edges. From openings higher on the carapace sprouted four long and not particularly thin tentacles, which terminated in flat, spear-like tips with serrated bony edges. Midway between two of the tentacle openings was a larger gap in the carapace, from which projected a head that was all mouth and teeth, with just a little space reserved for two eyes set at the bottom of deep, bony craters. Conway’s first impression was that the entity was little more than an organic killing machine.

  He had to remind himself that the Sector General staff included several beings whose species were highly intelligent and sensitive while retaining the physical equipment that had enabled them to fight their way to the top of their home planet’s evolutionary tree.

  The other two beings belonged to a much smaller species with much less in the way of organic weaponry. They were roughly circular, just over a meter in diameter, and in cross section, a slim oval flattened slightly on the underside. In shape they very much resembled their ship, except that it did not have a long, thin horn or sting projecting aft or a thin, wide slit on the opposite side, which was obviously a mouth. The upper lip of the mouth was wider and thicker than the lower, and on one of the dead beings it was curled over the lower lip, apparently sealing the mouth shut. Both of the beings were covered on their upper and lower surfaces and around the rims by some kind of organic stubble, which varied in thickness from pin size to the width of a small finger. The stubble on the underside was much coarser than that on the upper surface, and it was plain that parts of it were designed for ambulation.

  “It is clear what happened here,” said the Captain. “Two members of the species that crew this ship died when the large one broke free because of inadequate restraints, and presumably the survivors Prilicla detected were unable to cope with the situation and released a distress beacon.”

  One of the smaller beings, which had sustained multiple incised and punctured wounds, lay like a piece of torn and rumpled carpet under its killer’s hind feet. Its companion, although just as dead, had suffered fewer wounds and had almost made its escape through a low opening in the wall at deck level before being immobilized and crushed by one of its attacker’s forefeet. It had also, before it died, been able to inflict several deep puncture wounds on the larger alien’s underside, and its broken-off horn or sting was still deeply embedded in one of them.

  “I agree,” said Co
nway. “But one thing puzzles me. The blind ones appear to have modified their ship to accommodate the larger life-form. Why would they go to so much trouble to capture such a dangerous specimen? They must need it very badly or consider it extremely valuable for some reason to risk confining it with a blind crew.

  “Possibly they have weapons that reduce the risk,” Fletcher said, “longer range, more effective weapons than that horn or sting, which these two omitted to carry for some reason and died because of the omission.”

  “What kind of long-range weapon,” asked Conway, “could be developed by a being with only a sense of touch?”

  Murchison tried to head off the argument that was impending. “We don’t know for certain that they have only a sense of touch, although they are blind. As for the value of the large life-form to them, it could be a fast-breeding source of food, or its tissues or organs might contain important sources of valuable medication, or the reason maybe a completely alien one. Excuse me.”

  She switched on her suit radio. “Naydrad, we have three cadavers to transfer to the lab. Move them in the litter to avoid additional damage to the specimens by decompression.” She turned to Conway and the Captain. “I don’t think the other members of the crew would object to my opening up their friends, especially since the large one has already begun the process.”

  Conway nodded. They both knew that the more she was able to discover about the physiology and metabolism of the two dead specimens, the better would be their chances of helping the surviving blind ones.

  With Fletcher’s help they extricated the large cadaver from its cage and from the strange assortment of metal rods and bars that were pressing it against the deck. They had to widen the opening it had made in the grill. This required the combined efforts of the three of them and gave some indication of the strength of the being who had forced it apart. When they had the large alien free, its tentacles opened out and practically blocked the corridor as it floated weightless in the confined space.

  While they were pushing it towards the airlock, Murchison said, “The deployment of the legs and tentacles is similar to the Hudlar FROB life-form, but that carapace is a thicker ELNT Melfan shell without markings, and it is plainly not herbivorous. Considering the fact that it is warm-blooded and oxygen-breathing and its appendages show no evidence of the ability to manipulate tools or materials, I would tentatively classify it as FSOJ, and probably nonintelligent.”

  “Certainly non-intelligent, considering the circumstances,” said Fletcher as they returned to the caged section of corridor. “It was an escaped specimen, ma’am.”

  “We medical types,” said Murchison, smiling, “never commit ourselves, especially where a brand-new life-form is concerned. But right now I wouldn’t even try to classify the blind ones.

  Since she was the smallest person there, it was Murchison who wriggled carefully through the damaged grill and between the projecting rods and bars. If it had not been for the large alien warping a number of the bars out of true, she would not have been able to reach the blind one at all.

  “This,” she said breathlessly as she reached the cadaver, “is a very strange cage.”

  Although it was brightly lit, they could not see the other end of the caged section of corridor, because it followed the curvature of the ship, which at this distance from the center was sharp enough to keep them from seeing more than ten meters into it. The corridor walls and ceiling of the section they could see, however, were covered with projecting metal bars and rods. Some of them had sharp tips, others had spatulate ends and a few of them terminated in something that resembled a small metal ball covered in blunt spikes. The metal bars projected from slits in the walls, and the slots were long enough to allow their individual bars a wide angle of travel either up and down or from side to side. The rods protruded from circular holes and collar pieces in the ceiling and were designed only to move in and out.

  “It is strange to me, too, ma’am,” said the Captain. “None of the e-t technology I’ve studied gives me any ideas. For one thing, it is a large cage, or should I say a very long cage, if it is continued around the ship. Perhaps it was meant to house more than one specimen, or the one specimen required space in which to exercise. I’m guessing, but I would say that the bars and rods projecting into the corridor formed some kind of restraint whereby the specimen could be immobilized in any part of the caged section for feeding purposes or for physical examination.”

  “A pretty good guess, I’d say,” said Conway. “And if there was a malfunction in the mobile restraints, then the metal grill formed a safety backup that couldn’t, on this occasion, withstand the specimen’s attack. But I’m wondering just how far this corridor follows the radius of the ship. Extending this arc to the other side of the vessel places it in the area where Prilicla detected the two survivors. One of those survivors, according to Prilicla, was emoting anger on a very basic, perhaps animal, level while the other being’s emotional radiation was more complex.

  “Let’s suppose,” Conway went on, “that there is another large alien at the other end of the corridor cage, maybe even outside the other end of the cage, with a badly injured blind one who wasn’t as successful as its crew-mate here in killing the brute—”

  He broke off as Naydrad’s voice sounded in the suit phones, saying that it was outside with the pressure litter.

  Murchison pushed the first blind one towards the lock. “Wait for a few minutes, Naydrad, and you can load all three specimens.”

  Fletcher had been staring at Conway while the doctor was talking, plainly not liking the thought of another large FSOJ being in the ship. He pointed anxiously at the second blind one’s body. “This one nearly escaped after killing the FSOJ with its horn. If we knew where it was trying to escape to, we might know where to look for its crew-mate who did escape.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Conway.

  Time for the survivors, whichever species they belonged to, was fast running out.

  At deck level there was a low rectangular opening, which was wide and deep enough to allow entry to a blind one. Nearly one third of its flat, circular body was inside the opening, and when they tried to remove it they encountered resistance and had to give the creature a gentle tug to pull it free. They were pushing it towards Murchison, who was waiting to load it into the airlock with the other two specimens, when there was an interruption on the suit frequency.

  “Sir! A panel is swinging open topside. It looks like … it is an antenna being deployed.”

  “Priicla,” Conway called quickly, “the survivors. Is one of them conscious?”

  “No, friend Conway,” the empath replied. “Both remain deeply unconscious.”

  Fletcher stared at Conway for a moment. “If the survivors did not extend that antenna, then we did, probably when we were pulling the blind one out from that opening.” He bent suddenly and slid his foot magnets backwards until he was lying flat against the corridor floor. He moved his head close to the opening through which the blind one had tried to escape, and directed his helmet light inside. “Look at this, Doctor, I think we’ve found the control center.”

  They were looking into a wide, low tunnel whose internal dimensions were slightly larger than those of the bodies of the blind ones. Visibility was restricted because, like the corridor behind them, it followed the curvature of the ship. For a distance of about fifteen inches inside the opening the floor was bare, but the roof was covered with the tactually labeled actuators of the type they had found in the airlock. There were, naturally, no indicator lights or visual displays. Just beyond this area the tunnel had no roof, and they had a clear view of the first control position.

  In shape it resembled a circular, elliptical sectioned sandwich open around the edges to facilitate entry by the blind ones of the crew. They could see hundreds of actuators covering the inside faces of the sandwich and, on the outer surfaces, the cable runs and linkages that connected the actuators with the mechanisms they controlled. The majority of t
he cable runs led towards the center of the ship while the rest curved towards the rim. There was no evidence of color-coding on the cables, but the sheathing carried various embossed and inset patterns that performed the same function for technicians who felt but could not see. A second control pod was visible beyond the first one.

  “I can see only two control positions clearly,” said Fletcher, “but we know that the crew numbered at least three. The survivor is probably out of sight around that curve, and if we could squeeze through the tunnel—”

  “Physically impossible,” said Conway.

  “—without blundering against actuators every foot of the way,” the Captain went on, ‘and switching on every system in the ship. I wonder why these people, who do not appear to be stupid, even if they are blind, placed a control position so close to the cage of a dangerous captive animal. That was taking a risk.”

  “If they couldn’t keep an eye on it,” said Conway dryly, “they had to keep closely in touch.”

  “Was that a joke?” the Captain asked disapprovingly while he detached one of his gauntlets and reached into the opening. A few seconds later he said, “I think I feel the actuator we must have snagged pulling the blind one out. I’m pressing it, now.”

  Chen’s voice on the suit frequency broke in. “There is another antenna array deploying, close to the first one, sir.”

  “Sorry,” said Fletcher. For a moment his face registered an expression of deep concentration as his fingers felt their way over the alien controls; then Chen reported that both antennae had retracted.

  The Captain smiled. “Assuming that they group their controls together in sensible fashion, and the actuators for power, altitude control, life-support, communications and so on occupy their own specific areas on the control panels, I’d say that the blind one was touching its communications panel when it died. It managed to release a distress beacon, but that was probably the last thing it was able to do.