by James White
He would be better advised, Conway told himself, to let his questions wait until he had actually seen his patient, which would be in just over an hour from now. The intervening period he would spend studying Descartes’ report.
And having lunch.
The Monitor Survey cruiser popped into normal space, the alien spacecraft spinning like an unwieldy propeller astern, then just as quickly reentered hyperspace for the return trip to Meatball. The rescue tender closed in, snagged the towline which had been left by Descartes and fixed the free end to a rotating attachment point of its own.
Spacesuited Doctors Mannon and Prilicla, Lieutenant Harrison and Conway watched from the tender’s open airlock.
“It’s still leaking,” said Mannon. “That’s a good sign—there is still pressure inside …”
“Unless it’s a fuel leak,” Harrison said.
“What do you feel?” asked Conway.
Prilicla’s fragile, eggshell body and six pipe-stem legs were beginning to quiver violently so it was obvious that it was feeling something.
“The vessel contains one living entity,” said Prilicla slowly. “Its emotional radiation is comprised chiefly of fear and feelings of pain and suffocation. I would say that these feelings have been with it for many days—the radiation is subdued and lacking in clarity due to developing unconsciousness. But the quality of that entity’s mentation leaves no doubt that it is intelligent and not simply an experimental animal …”
“It’s nice to know,” said Mannon dryly, “that we’re not going to all this trouble for an instrument package or a Meatball space puppy …”
“We haven’t much time,” said Conway.
He was thinking that their patient must be pretty far gone by now. It’s fear was understandable, of course, and its pain, suffocation and diminished consciousness were probably due to injury, intense hunger and foul breathing water. He tried to put himself in the Meatball astronaut’s position.
Even though the pilot had been badly confused by the apparently uncontrollable spinning, the being had deliberately sought to maintain the spin when Descartes tried to take it aboard because it must have been smart enough to realize that a tumbling ship could not be drawn into the cruiser’s hold. Possibly it could have checked its own spin with steering power if Descartes had not been so eager to rush to its aid—but that was simply a possibility, of course, and the spacecraft had been leaking badly as well. Now it was still leaking and spinning and, with its occupant barely conscious, Conway thought he could risk frightening it just a little more by checking the spin and moving the vehicle into the tender and the patient as quickly as possible into the water-filled compartment where they could work on it.
But as soon as the immaterial fingers of the tractor beams reached out an equally invisible force seemed to grip Prilicla’s fragile body and shake it furiously.
“Doctor,” said the empath, “the being is radiating extreme fear. It is forcing coherent thought from a mind which is close to panic. It is losing consciousness rapidly, perhaps dying … Look! It is using steering thrust!”
“Cut!” shouted Conway to the tractor beamers. The alien spacecraft, which had almost come to rest, began to spin slowly as vapor jetted from lateral vents in the nose and stern. After a few minutes the jets became irregular, weaker and finally ceased altogether, leaving the vehicle spinning at approximately half its original speed. Prilicla still looked as if its body was being shaken by a high wind.
“Doctor,” said Conway suddenly, “considering the kind of tools these people use I wonder if some kind of psionic force is being used against you—you are shaking like a leaf.”
When it replied Prilicla’s voice was, of course, devoid of all emotion. “It is not thinking directly at anyone, friend Conway,” said the empath. “Its emotional radiation is composed chiefly of fear and despair. Perceptions are diminishing and it seems to be struggling to avoid a final catastrophe …”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” said Mannon suddenly.
“If you mean am I thinking of setting the thing spinning at full speed again,” Conway replied. “The answer is yes. But there’s no logical reason for doing so, is there?”
A few seconds later the tractor beam men reversed polarity to increase the vessel’s spin. Almost immediately Prilicla’s trembling ceased and it said, “The being feels much better now—relatively, that is. Its vitality is still very low.”
Prilicla began to tremble again and this time Conway knew that his own feelings of angry frustration were affecting the little being. He tried to make his thinking cooler and more constructive, even though he knew that the situation was essentially the same as it had been when Descartes had first tried to aid the Meatball astronaut, that they were making no progress at all.
But there were a few things he could do which would help the patient, however indirectly.
The vapor escaping from the vehicle should be analyzed to see if it was fuel or simply water from the being’s life-support system. Much valuable data could be gained from a direct look at the patient—even if it was only possible to see it through the wrong end of a periscope, since the vessel did not possess a direct-vision port. They should also seek means of entering the vessel to examine and reassure the occupant before transferring it to the ambulance and the wards.
Closely followed by Lieutenant Harrison, Conway pulled himself along the towing cable toward the spinning ship. By the time they had gone a few yards both men were turning with the rotating cable so that when they reached the spacecraft it seemed steady while the rest of creation whirled around them in dizzying circles. Mannon stayed in the airlock, insisting that he was too old for such acrobatics, and Prilicla approached the vessel drifting free and using its spacesuit propulsors for maneuvering.
Now that the patient was almost unconscious the Cinrusskin had to be close to detect subtle changes in its emotional radiation. But the long, tubular hull was hurtling silently past the little being like the vanes of some tremendous windmill.
Conway did not voice his concern, however. With Prilicla one did not need to.
“I appreciate your feelings, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “but I do not think that I was born, despite my physiological classification, to be swatted.”
At the hull they transferred from the towing cable and used wrist and boot magnets to cling to the spinning ship, noting that the magnetic grapple placed there by Descartes had seriously dented the hull plating and that the area was obscured by a fog of escaping vapor. Their own suit magnets left shallow grooves in the plating as well. The metal was not much thicker than paper, and Conway felt that if he made a too-sudden movement he would kick a hole in it.
“It isn’t quite as bad as that, Doctor,” said the Lieutenant. “In our own early days of spaceflight—before gravity control, hyperspatial travel and atomic motors made considerations of weight of little or no importance—vehicles had to be built as light as possible. So much so that the fuel contents were sometimes used to help stiffen the structure …”
“Nevertheless,” said Conway, “I feel as if I am lying on very thin ice—I can even hear water or fuel gurgling underneath. Will you check the stern, please. I’ll head forward.”
They took samples of the escaping vapor from several points and they tapped and sounded and listened carefully with sensitive microphones to the noises coming from inside the ship. There was no response from the occupant, and Prilicla told them that it was unaware of their presence. The only signs of life from the interior were mechanical. There seemed to be an unusually large amount of machinery, to judge from the sounds they could hear, in addition to the gurgling of liquid. And as they moved toward the extremities of the vessel, centrifugal force added another complication.
The closer they moved toward the bow or stern, the greater was the force tending to fling them off the spinning ship.
Conway’s head was pointing toward the ship’s bow so that the centrifugal force was imposing a negative G on his
body. It was not really uncomfortable as yet, however—he felt a little pop-eyed but there was no redding out of vision. His greatest discomfort came from the sight of the ambulance ship, Prilicla and the vast, tubular Christmas tree which was Sector General sweeping around the apparently steady ship’s bows. When he closed his eyes the feeling of vertigo diminished, but then he could not see what he was doing.
The farther forward he went the more power his suit magnets needed to hold him against the smooth metal of the ship’s hull, but he could not increase the power too much because the thin plating was beginning to ripple under the magnets and he was afraid of tearing open the hull. But a few feet ahead there was a stubby, projecting pipe which was possibly some kind of periscope and he began to slide himself carefully toward it. Suddenly he began to slip forward and grabbed instinctively for the pipe as he slithered past.
The projection bent alarmingly in his hand and he let go hurriedly, noticing the cloud of vapor which had formed around it, and he felt himself being flung away like a stone from a slingshot.
“Where the blazes are you, Doctor?” said Mannon. “Last time around you were there, now you aren’t …”
“I don’t know, Doctor,” Conway replied angrily. He lit one of his suit’s distress flares and added, “Can you see me now?”
As he felt the tractor beams focus on him and begin to draw him back to the tender, Conway went on, “This is ridiculous! We’re taking far too long over what should be a simple rescue job. Lieutenant Harrison and Doctor Prilicla, go back to the tender, please. We’ll try another approach.”
While they were discussing it Conway had the spacecraft photographed from every angle and had the tender’s lab begin a detailed analysis of the samples Harrison and himself had gathered. They were still trying to find another approach when the prints and completed analyzes reached them several hours later.
It had been established that all the leaks in the alien spacecraft were of water rather than fuel, that the water was for breathing purposes only since it did not contain the usual animal and vegetable matter found in the Meatball ocean samples and that, compared with these local samples, its CO2 content was rather high—the water was, in brief, dangerously stale.
A close study of the photographs by Harrison, who was quite an authority on early spaceflight, suggested that the flared-out stern of the ship contained a heat shield to which was mounted a solid fuel retro pack. It was now plain that, rather than an unignited final stage, the long cylindrical vehicle contained little more than the life-support equipment which, judging by its size, must be pretty crude. Having made this statement the Lieutenant promptly had second, more charitable thoughts and added that while air-breathing astronauts could carry compressed air with them a water breather could not very well compress its water.
The point of the nose cone contained small panels which would probably open to release the landing parachutes. About five feet astern of this was another panel which was about fifteen inches wide and six feet deep. This was an odd shape for an entry and exit hatch for the pilot, but Harrison was convinced that it could be nothing else. He added that the lack of sophistication shown in the vehicle’s construction made it unlikely that the exit panel was the outer seal of an airlock, that it was almost certainly a simple hatch opening into the command module.
If Doctor Conway was to open this hatch, he warned, centrifugal force would empty the ship of its water—or to be quite accurate, of half its water—within a few seconds. The same force would see to it that the water in the stern section remained there, but it was almost certain that the astronaut was in the nose cone.
Conway yawned furiously and rubbed his eyes. He said, “I have to see the patient to get some idea of its injuries and to prepare accommodation, Lieutenant. Suppose I cut a way in amidships at the center of rotation. An appreciable quantity of its water has already leaked away and centrifugal force has caused the remainder to be pushed toward the nose and stern, so that the middle of the ship would be empty and the additional loss of water caused by my entry would be slight.”
“I agree, Doctor,” said Harrison. “But the structure of the ship might be such that you would open a seam into the water-filled sections—it’s so fragile there is even the danger that centrifugal force might pull it apart.”
Conway shook his head. “If we put a wide, thin-metal band around the waist section, and if the band included a hinged, airtight hatch big enough for a man, we can seal the edges of the band to the ship with fast-setting cement—no welding, of course, as the heat might damage the skin—and rig a temporary airlock over the hatch. That would allow me to get in without—”
“That would be a very tricky job,” said Mannon, “on a spinning ship.”
Harrison said, “Yes. But we can set up a light, tubular framework anchored to the hull by magnets. The band and airlock could be set up working from that. It will take a little time, though.”
Prilicla did not comment. Cinrusskins were notoriously lacking in physical stamina and the little empath had attached itself to the ceiling with six, sucker-tipped legs and had gone to sleep.
Mannon, the Lieutenant and Conway were ordering material and specialized assistance from the Hospital and beginning to organize a work party when the tender’s radioman said, “I have Major O’Mara for you on Screen Two.”
“Doctor Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist, when he was able to see and be seen. “Rumors have reached me that you are trying—and may have already succeeded, in fact—to set up a new record for the length of time taken to transfer a patient from ship to ward. I have no need to remind you of the urgency and importance of this matter, but I will anyway. It is urgent, Doctor, and important. Off.”
“You sarcastic …” began Conway angrily to the already fading image, then quickly controlled his feelings because they were beginning to make Prilicla twitch in its sleep.
“Maybe,” said the Lieutenant, looking speculatively at Mannon, “my leg isn’t properly healed since I broke it during that landing on Meatball. A friendly, cooperative doctor might decide to send me back to Level Two-eighty-three, Ward Four.”
“The same friendly, helpful doctor,” said Mannon dryly, “might decide a certain Earth-human nurse in 283-Four had something to do with your relapse, and he might send you to … say, 241-Seven. There is nothing like being fussed over by a nurse with four eyes and far too many legs to cure a man of baying at the moon.”
Conway laughed. “Ignore him, Harrison. At times his mind is even nastier than O’Mara’s. Right now there isn’t anything more we can do and it has been a long, hard day. Let’s go to bed before we go to sleep.”
Another day went by without any significant progress being made. Because of the need for urgency the team setting up the framework tried to hurry the job, with the result that they lost tools, sections of framework and on several occasions men overboard. The men could be retrieved easily enough by tractor beams, but the tools and framework sections were not equipped with signal flares and were usually lost. Cursing the necessity for having to perform a tricky job of construction on a space-going merry-go-round, the men went back to work.
Progress became much slower but a little more certain, the number of dents and furrows put in the spacecraft’s hull by tools and spaceboots had become uncountable, and the fog of water vapor escaping from the vessel continued to increase.
In a desperate attempt to speed things up, and much against Prilicla’s wishes, Conway tried slowing the craft’s rate of spin again. There were no signs of panic from the occupant this time, the empath reported, because it was too deeply unconscious to care. It added that it could not describe the patient’s emotional radiation to anyone but another empath, but that it was its considered professional opinion that if full spin was not restored the patient would die very shortly.
Next day the framework was completed and work started on fitting the metal band which would take the temporary airlock. While the lock structure was going up Conway and Harrison
attached safety lines to the framework and examined the hull. The Lieutenant discovered quite a lot about the steering jets and the circuits to the retro pack, while Conway could only stare baffled at the long, narrow exit hatch or stare through the tiny glass port—it was only a few inches in diameter—which showed little more than a shutter which opened and closed rapidly. And it was not until the following day that the Lieutenant and himself were able to enter the alien spacecraft.
Its occupant was still alive, Prilicla said, but only just.
As expected the waist section of the spacecraft was almost empty of water. Centrifugal force had caused it to collect toward the extremities of the ship, but their spotlights reflected off a dazzling fog of water vapor and droplets which, a quick investigation showed, were being stirred up by the operation of a system of sprocket wheels and chain drives that ran the length of the ship.
Moving carefully so as not to snag a hand between a gear wheel and its chain or inadvertently stick a boot through the fragile hull into space, the Lieutenant moved aft while Conway went forward. They did this so as to ensure that the vessel’s center of gravity stayed as closely as possible to its center of rotation, for any imbalance introduced now would shake loose the framework and probably tear holes in the sides of the ship.
“I realize that the circulation and purification of water requires heavier hardware than an air recycling system,” said Conway, speaking to Harrison and the tender, “but surely there should be a higher proportion of electrical to mechanical systems? I can’t move more than a few yards forward and all I can see are gear wheels and chains drives. The circulation system sets up a strong current, as well, and I’m in danger of being drawn into the works.”