Specialist by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, May 1953)
The photon storm struck without warning, pouncing upon the Ship from behind a bank of giant red stars. Eye barely had time to flash a last second warning through Talker before it was upon them.
It was Talker's third journey into deep space, and his first light-pressure storm. He felt a sudden pang of fear as the Ship yawed violently, caught the force of the wave-front and careened end for end. Then the fear was gone, replaced by a strong pulse of excitement.
Why should he be afraid, he asked himself -- hadn't he been trained for just this sort of emergency?
He had been talking to Feeder when the storm hit, but he cut off the conversation abruptly. He hoped Feeder would be all right. It was the youngster's first deep space trip.
The wirelike filaments that made up most of Talker's body were extended throughout the Ship. Quickly he withdrew all except the ones linking him to Eye, Engine, and the Walls. This was strictly their job now. The rest of the Crew would have to shift for themselves until the storm was over.
Eye had flattened his disk-like body against a Wall, and had one seeing organ extended outside the Ship. For greater concentration, the rest of his seeing organs were collapsed, clustered against his body.
Through Eye's seeing organ, Talker watched the storm. He translated Eye's purely visual image into a direction for Engine, who shoved the Ship around to meet the waves. At appreciably the same time, Talker translated direction into velocity for the Walls, who stiffened to meet the shocks.
The coordination was swift and sure -- Eye measuring the waves, Talker relaying the messages to Engine and Wallos, Engine driving the ship nose-first into the waves, and Walls bracing to meet the shock.
Talker forgot any fear he might have had in the swiftly functioning teamwork. He had no time to think. As the Ship's communication system, he had to translate and flash his messages at top speed, coordinating information and directing action.
In a matter of minutes, the storm was over.
"All right," Talker said. "Let's see if there was any damage." His filaments had become tangled during the storm, but he untwisted and extended them through the Ship, plugging everyone into circuit. "Engine?"
"I'm fine," Engine said. The tremendous old fellow had dampened his plates during the storm, easing down the atomic explosions in his stomach. No storm could catch an experienced spacer like Engine unaware.
"Walls?"
The Walls reported one by one, and this took a long time. There were almost a thousand of them, thin, rectangular fellows making up the entire skin of the Ship. Naturally, they had reinforced their edges during the storm, giving the whole Ship resiliency. But one or two were dented badly.
Doctor announced that he was all right. He removed Talker's filament from his head, taking himself out of circuit, and went to work on the dented Walls. Made mostly of hands, Doctor had clung to an Accumulator during the storm.
"Let's go a little faster now," Talker said, remembering that there still was the problem of determining where they were. He opened the circuit to the four Accumulators. "How are you?" he asked.
There was no answer. The Accumulators were asleep. They had had their receptors open during the storm and were bloated on energy. Talker switched his filaments around them, but they didn't stir.
"Let me," Feeder said. Feeder had taken quite a beating before planting his suction cups to a Wall, but his cockiness was intact. He was the only member of the Crew who never needed Doctor's attention; his body was quite capable of repairing itself.
He scuttled across the floor on a dozen or so tentacles, and booted the nearest Accumulator. The big, conical storage unit opened one eye, then closed it again. Feeder kicked him again, getting no response. He reached for the Accumulator's safety valve and drained off some energy.
"Stop that," the Accumulator said.
"Then wake up and report," Talker told him.
The Accumulators said testily that they were all right, as any fool could see. They had been achored to the floor during the storm.
The rest of the inspection went quickly. Thinker was fine, and eye was ecstatic over the beauty of the storm. There was only one casualty.
Pusher was dead. Bipedal, he didn't have the stability of the rest of the Crew. The storm had caught him in the middle of a floor, thrown him against a stiffened Wall, and broken several of his important bones. He was beyond Doctor's skill to repair.
They were silent for a while. It was always serious when a part of the Ship died. The Ship was a cooperative unit, composed entirely of the Crew. The loss of any member was a blow to all the rest.
It was especially serious now. They had just delivered a cargo to a port several thousand lightyears from Galactic Center. There was no telling where they might be.
Eye crawled to a Wall and extended a seeing organ outside. The Walls let it through, then sealed around it. Eye's organ pushed out, far enough from the Ship so he could view the entire sphere of stars. The picture traveled through Talker, who gave it to Thinker.
Thinker lay in one corner of the room, a great shapeless blob of protoplasm. Within him were all the memories of his space-going ancestors. He considered the picture, compared it rapidly with others stored in his cells, and said, "No galactic planets within reach."
Talker automatically translated for everyone. It was what they had feared.
Eye, with Thinker's help, calculated that they were off their course, on the galactic periphery.
Every Crew member knew what that meant. Without a Pusher to boost the Ship to a multiple of the speed of light, they would never get home. The trip back, without a Pusher, would take longer than most of their lifetimes.
"What would you suggest?" Talker asked Thinker.
This was too vague a question for the literal-minded Thinker. He asked to have it rephrased.
"What would be our best line of action," Talker asked, "to get back to a galactic planet?"
Thinker needed several minutes to go through all the possibilities stored in his cells. In the meantime, Doctor had patched the Walls and was asking to be given something to eat.
"In a little while we'll all eat," Thinker said, twitching his tendrils nervously. Even though he was the second youngest Crew member -- only Feeder was younger -- the responsibility was largely on him. This was still an emergency; he had to coordinate information and direct action.
One of the Walls suggested that they get good and drunk. This unrealistic solution was vetoed at once. It was typical of the Walls' attitude, however. They were fine workers and good shipmates, but happy-go-lucky fellows at best. When they returned to their home planets, they would probably blow all their wages on a spree.
"Loss of Ship's Pusher cripples the Ship for sustained faster-than-light speeds," Thinker began without preamble. "The nearest galactic planet is four hundred and five light-years off."
Talker translated this instantly along his wave-packet body.
"Two courses of action are open. First, the Ship can proceed to the nearest galactic planet under atomic power from Engine. This will take approximately two hundred years. Engine might still be alive at this time, although no one else will.
"Second, locate a primitive planet in this region, upon which are latent Pushers. Find one and train him. Have him push the Ship back to galactic territory."
Thinker was silent, having given all the possibilities he could find in the memories of his ancestors.
They held a quick vote and decided upon Thinker's second alternative. There was no choice, really. It was the only one which offered them any hope of getting back to their homes.
"All right," Thinker said. "Let's eat. I think we all deserve it."
The body of the dead Pusher was shoved into the m
outh of Engine, who consumed it at once, breaking down the atoms to energy. Engine was the only member of the Crew who lived on atomic energy.
For the rest, Feeder dashed up and loaded himself from the nearest Accumulator. Then he transformed the food within him into the substances each member ate. His body chemistry changed, altered, adapted, making the different foods for the Crew.
Eye lived entirely on a complex chlorophyl chain. Feeder reproduced this for him, then went over to give Talker his hydrocarbons, and the Walls their chlorine compound. For Doctor he made a facsimile of a silicate fruit that grew on Doctor's native planet.
Finally, feeding was over and the Ship back in order. The Accumulators were stacked in a corner, blissfully sleeping again. Eye was extending his vision as far as he could, shaping his main seeing organ for high-powered telescopic reception. Even in this emergency, Eye couldn't resist making verses. He announced that he was at work on a new narrative poem, called Peripheral Glow. No one wanted to hear it, so Eye fed it to Thinker, who stored everything, good or bad, right or wrong.
Engine never slept. Filled to the brim on Pusher, he shoved the Ship along at several times the speed of light.
The Walls were arguing among themselves about who had been the drunkest during their last leave.
Talker decided to make himself comfortable. He released his hold on the Walls and swung in the air, his small round body suspended by his crisscrossed network of filaments.
He thought briefly about Pusher. It was strange. Pusher had been everyone's friend and now he was forgotten. That wasn't because of indifference; it was because the Ship was a unit. The loss of a member was regretted, but the important thing was for the unit to go on.
The ship raced through the suns of the periphery.
Thinker laid out a search spiral, calculating their odds on finding a Pusher planet at roughly four to one. In a week they found a planet of primitive Walls. Dropping low, they could see the leathery, rectangular fellows basking in the sun, crawling over rocks, stretching themselves thin in order to float in the breeze.
All the Ship's Walls heaved a sigh of nostalgia. It was just like home.
These Walls on the planet hadn't been contacted by a galactic team yet, and were still unaware of their great destiny -- to join in the vast Cooperation of the Galaxy.
There were plenty of dead worlds in the spiral, and worlds too young to bear life. They found a planet of Talkers. The Talkers had extended their spidery communication lines across half a continent.
Talker looked at them eagerly, through Eye. A wave of self-pity washed over him. He remembered home, his family, his friends. He thought of the tree he was planning to buy when he got back.
For a moment, Talker wondered what he was doing here, part of a Ship in a far corner of the Galaxy.
He shrugged off the mood. They were bound to find a Pusher planet, if they looked long enough.
At least, he hoped so.
There was a long stretch of arid worlds as the Ship pushed through the unexplored periphery. Then a planetful of primeval Engines, swimming in a radioactive ocean.
"This is rich territory," Feeder said to Talker. "Galactic should send a Contact party here."
"They probably will, after we get back," Talker said.
They were good friends, above and beyond the all-enveloping friendship of the Crew. It wasn't only because they were the youngest Crew members, although that had something to do with it. They both had the same kind of functions and that made for a certain rapport. Talker translated languages; Feeder transformed foods. Also, they looked somewhat alike. Talker was a central core with radiating filaments; Feeder was a central core with radiating tentacles.
Talker thought that Feeder was the next most aware being on the Ship. He was never really able to understand how some of the others carried on the processes of consciousness.
More suns, more planets. Engine started to overheat. Usually, Engine was used only for taking off and landing, and for fine maneuvering in a planetary group. Now he had been running continuously for weeks, both over and under the speed of light. The strain was telling on him.
Feeder, with Doctor's help, rigged a cooling system for him. It was crude, but it had to suffice. Feeder rearranged nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen atoms to make a coolant for the system. Doctor diagnosed a long rest for Engine. He said that the gallant old fellow couldn't stand the strain for more than a week.
The search continued, with the Crew's spirits gradually dropping. They all realized that Pushers were rather rare in the Galaxy, as compared to the fertile Walls and Engines.
The Walls were getting pockmarked from interstellar dust. They complained that they would need a full beauty treatment when they got home. Talker assured them that the company would pay for it.
Even Eye was getting bloodshot from staring into space so continuously.
They dipped over another planet. Its characteristics were flashed to Thinker, who mulled over them.
Closer, and they could make out the forms.
Pushers! Pushers! Pushers!
They zoomed back into space to make plans. Feeder produced twenty-three different kinds of intoxicants for a celebration.
The Ship wasn't fit to function for three days.
"Everyone ready now?" Talker asked, a bit fuzzily. He had a hangover that burned all along his nerve ends. What a drunk he had thrown! He had a vague recollection of embracing Engine, inviting him to share his tree when they got back home.
He shuddered at the idea.
The rest of the Crew were pretty shaky, too. The Walls were letting air leak into space; they were just too wobbly to seal their edges properly. Doctor had passed out.
But the worst off was Feeder. Since his system could adapt to any type of fuel except atomic, he had been sampling every batch he made, whether it was an unbalanced iodine, pure oxygen, or a supercharged ester. He was really miserable. His tentacles, usually a healthy aqua, were shot through with orange streaks. His system was working furiously, purging itself of everything, and Feeder was suffering the effects of the purge.
The only sober ones were Thinker and Engine. Thinker didn't dring, which was unusual for a spacer, though typical of Thinker, and Engine couldn't.
They listened while Thinker reeled off some astounding facts. From Eye's pictures of the planet's surface, Thinker had detected the presence of metallic construction. He put forth the alarming suggestion that these Pushers had constructed a mechanical civilization.
"That's impossible," three of the Walls said flatly, and most of the Crew were inclined to agree with them. All the metal they had ever seen had been buried in the ground or lying around in worthless oxidized chunks.
"Do you mean that they make things out of metal?" Talker demanded. "Out of just plain dead metal? What could they make?"
"They couldn't make anything," Feeder said positively. "It would break down constantly. I mean metal doesn't know when it's weakening."
But it seemed to be true. Eye magnified his pictures, and everyone could see that the Pushers had made vast shelters, vehicles, and other articles from inanimate material.
The reason for this was not readily apparent, but it wasn't a good sign. However, the really had part was over. The Pusher planet had been found. All that remained was the relatively easy job of convincing a native Pusher, which shouldn't be too hard. Talker knew that cooperation was the keystone of the Galaxy, even among primitive peoples.
The Crew decided not to land in a populated region. Of course, there was no reason not to expect a friendly greeting, but it was the job of a Contact Team to get in touch with them as a race. All they wanted was an individual.
Accordingly, they picked out a sparsely populated land-mass, drifting in while that side of the planet was dark.
They were able to locate a solitary Pusher almost at once.
Eye adapted his vision to see in the dark, and they followed the Pusher's movements. He lay down, after a while, beside a small fire. Thinker told
them that this was a well-known resting habit of Pushers.
Just before dawn, the Walls opened, and Feeder, Talker, and Doctor came out.
Feeder dashed forward and tapped the creature on the shoulder. Talker followed with a communication tendril.
The Pusher opened his seeing organs, blinked them, and made a movement with his eating organ. The he leaped to his feet and started to run.
The three Crew members were astounded. The Pusher hadn't even waited to find out what the three of them wanted!
Talker extended a filament rapidly, and caught the Pusher, fifty feet away, by a limb. The Pusher fell.
"Treat him gently," Feeder said. "He might be startled by our appearance." He twitched his tendrils at the idea of a Pusher -- one of the strangest sights in the Galaxy, with his multiple organs -- bein startled at someone else's appearance.
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