Major Operation sg-3

by James White

  He broke off as the seal ahead disappeared in a soft white explosion of bubbles which roared toward them along the tunnel roof. He could not see anything outside the digger and inside only Edwards’ face and pictures of ships in line astern formation.

  “Doctor, the seal’s gone,” shouted the Major, his eyes sliding to one side. “The debris behind the seal is being washed away. Harrison, dig in!”

  But the Lieutenant could not dig in because the bubbles roaring past made it impossible to see. He threw the tracks into reverse, but the current sweeping them along was so strong that the digger was just barely in contact with the floor. He killed the floodlights because reflection from the froth outside the canopy was dazzling them. But there was still a patch of light ahead, growing steadily larger …

  “Edwards, cut the rattlers …

  A few seconds later they were swept out of the tunnel as part of a cataract which tumbled down an organic cliff into a ravine which seemed to have no bottom. The vehicle did not explode into its component parts nor themselves into strawberry jam, so they knew that Major Edwards had been able to kill the rattler batteries in time. When they crashed to a halt a subjective eternity later, two of the repeater screens died in spectacular implosions and the cataract which had cushioned their fall on the way down began battering at their side, pushing and rolling them along the floor of the incision.

  “Anyone hurt?” said Conway.

  Murchison eased her safety webbing and winced. “I’m black and blue and … and embossed all over.”

  “That,” said Harrison in an obviously uninjured tone, “I would like to see.

  Both relieved and irritated, Conway said, “First we should look at the patient.”

  The only operable view screen was transmitting a picture taken from one of the copters stationed above the incision. The heavy cruisers had drawn off a short distance to leave the operative field clear for rescue and observation copters, which buzzed and dipped above the wound like great metal flies. Thousands of gallons of water were pouring from the severed throat tunnel every minute, carrying the bodies of leucocytes, farmer fish, incompletely digested food and clumps of vital internal vegetation into and along the ravine. Conway signaled for Edwards.

  “We’re safe,” he said before the other could speak, “but this is a mess. Unless we can stop this loss of fluid, the stomach system will collapse and we will have killed instead of cured our patient. Dammit, why doesn’t it have some method of protecting itself against gross physical injury, a nonreturn valve arrangement or some such? I certainly did not expect this to happen …

  Conway checked himself, realizing that he was beginning to whine and make excuses instead of issuing instructions. Briskly, he said, “I need expert advice. Have you a specialist in short-range, low-power explosive weapons?”

  “Right,” said Edwards. A few seconds later a new voice said, “Ordnance control, Vespasian, Major Holroyd. Can I help you, Doctor?”

  I sincerely hope so, thought Conway, while aloud he went onto outline his problem.

  They were faced with the emergency situation of a patient bleeding to death on the table. Whether the being concerned was large or small, whether its body fluid was Earth-human blood, the superheated liquid metal used by the TLTUs of Threcald Five or the somewhat impure water which carried food and specialized internal organisms to the far flung extremities of this Drambon strata creature’s body, the result would be the same-steadily reducing blood pressure, increasingly deep shock, spreading muscular paralysis and death.

  Normal procedure in these circumstances would be to control the bleeding by tying off the damaged blood vessel and suturing the wound. But this particular vessel was a tunnel with walls no more strong or elastic than the surrounding body material, so they could not be tied or even clamped. As Conway saw it the only method remaining was to plug the ruptured vessel by bringing down the tunnel roof.

  “Close-range TR-7s,” said the ordnance officer quickly. “They are aerodynamically clean, so there will be no problem shooting into the flow, and provided there are no sharp bends near the mouth of the tunnel any desired penetration can be achieved by—”

  “No,” said Conway firmly. “I’m concerned about the compression effects of a large explosion in the tunnel itself. The shock wave would be transmitted deep into the interior, and a great many farmer fish and leucocytes would die, not to mention large quantities of the fragile internal vegetation. We must seal the tunnel as close to the incision as possible, Major, and confine the damage to that area.

  “Armor-piercing B-22s, then,” said Holroyd promptly. “In this material we could get penetrations of fifty yards without any trouble. I suggest a simultaneous launch of three missiles, spaced vertically above the tunnel mouth so that they will bring down enough loose material to block the tunnel even against the pressure of water trying to push it away as it subsides.”

  “Now,” said Conway, “you’re talking.”

  But Vespasian’s ordnance officer could do more than talk. Within a very few minutes the screen showed the cruiser hovering low over the incision. Conway did not see the missiles launched because he had suddenly remembered to check if their digger had been swept far enough to avoid being buried in the debris, which fortunately it had. His first indication that anything at all had happened was when the flow of water turned suddenly muddy, slowed to a trickle and stopped. A few minutes later great gobs of thick, viscous mud began to ooze over the lip of the tunnel and suddenly a wide area around the mouth began to sag, fall apart and slip like a mass of brown porridge into the ravine.

  The tunnel mouth was now six times larger than it had been and the patient continued to bleed with undiminished force.

  “Sorry, Doctor,” said Holroyd. “Shall I repeat the dose and try for greater penetration?”

  “No, wait.”

  Conway tried desperately to think. I knew that he was conducting a surgical operation, but he did not really believe it-both the problem and the patient were too big. If an Earth-human was in the same condition, even if no instruments or medication were available, he would know what to do-check the flow at a pressure point, apply a tourniquet … That was it.

  “Holroyd, plant three more in the same position and depth as last time,” he said quickly. “But before you launch them can you arrange your vessel’s presser beams so that as many of them as possible will be focused just above the tunnel opening? Angle them against the face of the incision instead of having them acting vertically, if possible. The idea is to use the weight of your ship to compress and support the material brought down by the missiles.”

  “Can do, Doctor.”

  It took less than fifteen minutes for Vespasian to rearrange and refocus her invisible feet and launch the missiles, but almost at once the cataract ceased and this time it did not resume. The tunnel opening was gone and in its place there was a great, saucer-shaped depression in the wall of the incision where Vespasian’s starboard pressers were focused. Water still oozed through the compacted seal, but it would hold so long as the cruiser maintained position and leaned her not inconsiderable weight on it. As extra insurance another inflatable seal was already being moved into the supply tunnel.

  Suddenly the picture was replaced by that of a lined, young-old face above green-clad shoulders on which there rested a quietly impressive weight of insignia. It was the Fleet Commander himself.

  “Doctor Conway. My flagship has engaged in some odd exercises in her time, but never before have we been asked to hold a tourniquet.”

  “I’m sorry, sir-it seemed the only way of handling the situation. But right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to have this digger lifted to map reference numbers …

  He broke off because Harrison was waving at him. The Lieutenant said softly, “Not this digger. Ask him to have the other one checked out and waiting when they get around to pulling us out.”

  Three hours later they were in the second modified and strengthened digger, suspended under a transp
ort copter and approaching the area which, they hoped, contained the strata creature’s brain and/or tool producing facilities. The trip gave them a chance to do some constructive theorizing about their patient.

  They were now convinced that it had evolved originally from a mobile vegetable form. It had always been large and omnivorous, and when these life-forms began to live off each other they grew in size and complexity and shrank in numbers. There did not seem to be any way that the strata creature could reproduce itself. It simply continued to live and grow until one of its own kind who was bigger than it was killed it. Their patient was the biggest, oldest, toughest and wisest of its kind. As the sole occupant of its land mass for many thousands of years, there had no longer been the necessity for it to move itself bodily and so it had taken root again.

  But this had not been a process of devolution. With no chance of cannibalizing others of its own kind, it devised methods of controlling its growth and of rendering its metabolism more efficient by evolving tools to do the jobs like mining, investigating the subsurface, processing necessary minerals for its nerve network. The original farmer fish were probably a strain which were able to survive, like the legendary Jonah, in its stomach and later grow plant teeth for both the parent creature and the farmer fish to defend themselves against sea predators sucked in by the mouths. How the leucocytes got there was still not clear, but the rollers occasionally ran across a smaller, less highly evolved variety which were probably the leeches’ wild cousins.

  “But one point which we must keep in mind when we try to talk to it,” Conway ended seriously, “is that the patient is not only blind, deaf and dumb, it has never had another of its own kind to talk to. Our problem isn’t simply learning a peculiar and difficult e-t language, we have to communicate with something which does not even know the meaning of the word communicate.”

  “If you’re trying to raise my morale,” said Murchison dryly, “you aren’t.”

  Conway had been staring ahead through the forward canopy, mostly to avoid having to look at the carnage depicted on his repeater screens where the tool attacks were taking an increasingly heavy toll at the feeding and transfusion sites. He said suddenly, “The suspected brain area is far too extensive to be searched quickly but, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this also the locality where Descartes made her first touchdown? If that is so then the tools sent to investigate her had a relatively short distance to come, and if it is possible to trace the path of a tool by the scar tissue it leaves in the body material …

  “It is,” said Murchison, looking excited. Harrison gave new instructions to the transport copter’s pilot without having to be told and a few minutes later they were down, cutting blades spinning and nosing into their patient’s spongy quasi flesh.

  But instead of the large, cylindrical plug cut from the body material they found a flat, reversed conical section which tapered sharply to a narrow, almost hair-thin wound which angled almost at once toward the suspected brain area.

  “The ship would have been drawn only a short distance below the surface, obviously,” said Murchison. “Enough to let tools make contact with its total surface while supported by body material, instead of making a fleeting contact after bouncing themselves into the air. But do you notice how the tools, even though they must have been cutting through at top speed, still managed to avoid severing the root network which relays their mental instructions …

  “At the present angle of descent,” Harrison cut in, “we are about twenty minutes from the subsurface. Sonar readings indicate the presence of caverns or deep pits.”

  Before Conway could reply to either of them, Edwards’ face flicked onto the main screen. “Doctor, seals Thirty-eight through Forty-one have gone. We’re already holding tourniquets at Eighteen, Twenty-six and Forty-three, but—”

  “Same procedure,” snapped Conway.

  There was a dull clang followed by metallic scraping sounds running the length of the digger. The sounds were repeated with rapidly increasing frequency. Without looking up, Harrison said, “Tools, Doctor. Dozens of them. They can’t build up much impetus coming at us through this spongy stuff and our extra armor should cope. But I’m worried about the antenna housing.”

  Before Conway could ask why, Murchison turned from the view port. She said, “I’ve lost the original trail, Doctor-this area is practically solid with tool scar tissue. Traffic must be very heavy around here.”

  The secondary screens were showing logistic displays on the deployment of ships, earth-moving machinery, decontamination equipment and movements into and out of the feeding and transfusion areas, and the main screen showed Vespasian no longer in position above Tunnel Forty-three. It was losing height and wheeling around in a ponderous, lateral spin while its pilot was obviously fighting hard to keep it from flipping over onto its back.

  One of its four presser installations, Conway saw during the next swing, had been smashed in as if by a gigantic hammer and he knew without being told that this was the one which had been holding closed the ruptured Forty-three. As the ship whirled closer to the ground he wanted to close his eyes, but then he saw that the spin was being checked and that the surface vegetation was being flattened by the three remaining pressers, fanned out at maximum power to support the ship’s weight.

  Vespasian landed hard but not catastrophically. Another cruiser moved into position above Forty-three while surface transport and copters raced toward the crash-landed ship to give assistance. They arrived at the same time as a large group of tools which were doing nothing at all to help.

  Suddenly Dermod’s head filled the screen.

  “Doctor Conway,” said the Fleet Commander in a coldly furious voice, “this is not the first time that I have had a ship converted to scrap around me, but I have never learned to enjoy the experience. The accident was caused by trying to balance virtually the whole of the ship’s weight on one narrowly focused presser beam, with the result that its supporting structure buckled and damn near wrecked the ship.”

  His tone warmed a little, but only temporarily, as he went on, “If we are to hold tourniquets over every tunnel, and with tools attacking every seal it looks as if we will have to do just that, I shall either have to withdraw my ships for major structural modifications or use them for an hour or so at a time and check for incipient structural failure after each spell of duty. But this will tie up a much larger number of ships in unproductive activity, and the farther we extend the incision the more tunnels we will have to sit on and the slower the work will go. The operation is fast becoming a logistical impossibility, the casualty figures and material losses are making it indistinguishable from a full-scale battle, and if I thought that the only result would be the satisfaction of your medical curiosity, Doctor, and that of our cultural contact people, I would throw a permanent 'Hold' on it right now. I have the mind of a policeman, not a soldier-the Federation prefers it that way. I don’t glory in this sort of thing …

  The digger lurched and for an instant Conway felt a sensation impossible in these surroundings, that of free fall. Then there was a crash as the vehicle struck rocky ground. It landed on its side, rolled over twice and moved forward again, but skidding and slewing to one side. The sound of tools striking the hull was deafening.

  Two vertical creases appeared on the Fleet Commander’s forehead. He said, “Having trouble, Doctor?”

  The constant banging of tools made it hard to think. Conway nodded and said, “I didn’t expect the seals to be attacked, but now I realize that the patient is simply trying to defend itself where it thinks it is under the heaviest attack. I also realize now that its sense of touch is not restricted to its top surface. You see, it is blind, deaf and dumb but it seems to be able to feel in three dimensions. The eye plants and subsurface root networks allow it to feel areas of local pressure, but vaguely, without detail. To feel the fine details it sends tools, which are extremely sensitive- sensitive enough to feel the airflow over their wings in the glider configuration and rep
roduce the shape themselves at will. Our patient learns very quickly and that glider I thought at it has cost a lot of lives. I wish—”

  “Doctor Conway,” the Fleet Commander broke in harshly. “You are

  either trying to make excuses or giving me a very basic lecture with which

  I am already familiar. I have time to listen to neither. We are faced with

  a surgical and tactical emergency. I require guidance.”

  Conway shook his head violently. He had the feeling that he had just said or thought of something important but he did not know what it was. He had to stay with his present train of thought if he expected to drag it out into the light again.

  He went on, “The patient sees, experiences everything, by touch. So far our only area of common contact are the tools. They are thought controlled extensions of its sense of touch throughout and for a short distance above the patient’s body. Our own mental radiation and control are more concentrated and of strictly limited range. The situation has been that of two fencers trying to communicate only through the tips of their foils—”

  He stopped abruptly because he was talking to an empty screen. All three repeaters glowed with power, but there was neither sound nor vision.

  Harrison shouted, “I was afraid of this, Doctor. We strengthened the hull armor but had to cover the antenna housing with a plastic radome to allow two-way communications. The tools have found our weak spot. Now we are deaf, dumb and blind, too-and missing one leg because our port caterpillar tread won’t work.”

  The digger had come to rest on a flat shelf of rock in a large cavern which angled steeply into the subsurface. Above and behind them hung a great mass of the creature’s body material from which there was suspended thousands of rootlets which joined and rejoined until they became thick, silvery cables writhing motionlessly across the cavern floor, walls and roof before disappearing into the depths. Each cable had at least one bud sprouting from it, like a leaf of wrinkled tinfoil. The more well developed buds quivered and were trying to take the shapes of the tools which were attacking the digger.