by James White
Fletcher was unclipping the signal flare from his backpack. He said, “You can see from the charring on the stem that they burn. I removed that sample with the cutting torch. But the flame isn’t self-sustaining. Maybe this will stunt its growth for a while. Stay clear of the corridor entrance, both of you. These things were not meant to be used in a confined space.”
He set the timer on the flare and threw it as hard as he could into the corridor. The beam of light which poured out of the entrance was so intense that it looked almost solid, and the hissing of the flare was louder even than the sand lashing against the outer hull. The beam maintained its intensity but began to flicker as smoke poured from the entrance. The thorns were burning, Conway thought excitedly, and hoped that the pyrotechnics were not worrying their patient too much. It seemed to be unusually agitated—
There was a sudden, crashing detonation. Pieces of the flare, burning thorn branches, and parts of the dissected DCMH erupted from the corridor entrance, and the cupola edge Conway was gripping seemed to jerk in his hands. He hung on desperately as the vertical deck swung toward him, accompanied by the. screech of tearing metal. There was a softer shock and the metallic noises ceased. The emergency lighting had died but there was enough illumination from the sputtering pieces of flare and their helmet lights to show that the patient had fallen out of its cupola and was hanging directly above him, suspended only by its webbing, sections of which were beginning to tear.
“The litter!” Conway shouted. “Help me!”
There was so much smoke from the flare that all he could see clearly were Murchison’s and the Captain’s helmet lights. He let go his hold with one hand and felt around for the litter, which had been left drifting weightlessly with repulsors set to one negative G so as to make the vehicle easier to maneuver in the confined space. He found it and a few seconds later felt other hands steadying it. Above him the alien hung like a great organic tree trunk with its stumps projecting between the webbing, ready to fall and crush him and probably kill itself on the charred but still poisonous thorns below them.
Suddenly it sagged closer. Conway flinched, but the rest of the webbing was holding it. He felt for the control panel of the litter. “Get it under the things!” he shouted. “Right under its center of gravity, that’s it.”
Gradually he increased the repulsion until the litter was pressing firmly against the underside of the patient, and again until the being’s entire weight was being supported and the webbing was simply holding it against any lateral movement. He became aware of the voice of Dodds in his phones, asking over and over again what had happened and were they all right.
“We’re all right,” Fletcher said angrily. “And you tell us what happened, Lieutenant. What are your sensors for?”
“An explosion at the site of the damaged hydraulic reservoir, sir,” DQdds said, sounding relieved. “The stuff is highly inflammable as well as toxic, it seems, and the flare set it off. The explosion broke the back of the ship where it lies across that rock outcropping, and now the prow is lying on the sand, too. Amidships and stern sections have been stripped of plating by the explosion and the wind. The ship looks very open, sir.”
The smoke had cleared but fine clouds of sand were blowing through the Control Deck from somewhere. Fletcher said dryly, “I believe you, Dodds. It is also very cold. How long until pickup?”
“Just under three hours, sir,” Dodds replied. “Sunrise is in two hours and the wind should have abated an hour later.”
The two portable heaters and spare cutting torch had been shaken loose by the explosion and had fallen into the thorns. One of the heaters was still functioning but its.effect was severely reduced by the icy, sand-laden wind sweeping out of the corridor. Conway shivered and clenched his teeth, both to stop them chattering and in reaction to the indescribable noise of the wind screaming through the bare bones of the stern section and the irregular, thunderous din of the remaining plating shaking itself loose. He resiled the portable lights, which had survived the explosion, so that they were within a few feet of the litter. They gave a little warmth.
More than an hour was spent completing the transfer of the alien from its cupola to the litter and securing it in the vehicle. The being, too, was suffering from the cold — its organic connectors twitched continuously and patterns of wrinkles marched across its smooth, featureless body. Conway tried to find something to wrap around it, but all that was available was the control cupola webbing from its own and the crew’s positions. By the time he had finished, the being was virtually cocooned in the stuff and the few areas of skin visible were still twitching and wrinkling.
They moved it up to the sealed personnel hatch, hoping that the available heat would rise and it would be fractionally warmer UP there. The difference, to Conway, was indetectable. He wondered if it would be possible to rescue the other heater, but when he looked down he saw that a fresh, uncharred tangle of thorns had grown in from the corridor and was climbing toward them.
“Doctor,” said Fletcher quickly, indicating a large ceiling panel which was held in position by a single remaining support strut. “Hold onto that while I cut it free.”
They dropped the panel onto the thorns and knotted loose pieces of webbing together into a rope so that the Captain could lower himself onto its center. The panel buckled slightly under his weight but the thorns beneath the plate were forced down by two meters or more. Fletcher kneeled carefully on his makeshift raft and unlimbered his cutting torch. With,the flame focused down to a long, thin needle he attacked the thorns all around him.
After nearly six hours of constant use the power pack was exhausted. When the flame dimmed and died, Fletcher got carefully to his feet and began flexing and straightening his legs, bouncing the section of plating up and down. The thorns were forced lower. He paused for a rest and still the plate continued to sink. But now the needle-sharp thorns were growing in from the edges of the raft, slowly submerging it.
The rope of webbing was barely within reach. Fletcher steadied himself, jumped, and caught the end in a double grip as the plate teetered and disappeared sideways under the thorns. Conway climbed down as far as he could and pulled the rope close so that Fletcher could get his feet onto the edge of a projecting cabinet.
“Did you see the way that thing moved itself from under the plate and surrounded you, Captain?” Murchison said when they rejoined her. “It’s very slow, but do you think we are hurting a potentially intelligent vegetable life-form?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Captain said with feeling, “but not nearly enough.”
“Eighty minutes to go, sir,” Dodds said.
They detached the few pieces of wreckage and equipment that could be dislodged by hand and dropped them onto the thorns, but with little effect. Fletcher and Conway took turns hacking at the growth with a metal support strut, but still it grew slowly toward them. Soon there was not enough space to move around freely or exercise to keep warm, or more accurately, less cold. They could only huddle close to the personnel hatch, teeth clenched together to keep from chattering, and watch the thorns creep closer.
The scene was being relayed to Rhabwar and was causing increasing concern. Lieutenant Haslam said suddenly, “I can launch now, sir, and—”
“No,” the Captain said firmly. “If you touch down before it is safe to do so and the lander is blown over, nobody here will get out of this mess—”
He broke off because his voice had suddenly sounded very loud.
The wind had died.
“Open up,” Fletcher said. “Let’s get out of here.”
The dark-blue morning sky showed through the opening hatch and a negligible quantity of sand blew in. They maneuvered the litter and its trussed-up casualty through the opening and onto the upper surface of the hull.
“The lull may be temporary, sir,” Dodds warned. “There are still a few squalls running through your area.”
The rising sun was still hidden behind sand clouds, but there was more than e
nough light to see that the surface had been drastically altered overnight by the shifting of many sand drifts. From midships to stem the wreck was denuded of plating, but the skeleton had been filled out by a tightly packed tangle of thorns. The upper surface of the ship forward to the prow was intact, and the rocky shelf ahead was clear of thorns.
“One large squall will hit you in about twelve minutes,” Dodds added.
They jammed the litter against the open hatch and attached its magnetic grapples to the hull. Then they secured their suit safety lines to the massive hinge and threw themselves across the litter, hooking their fingers into the webbing around the casualty. It was just one more physical indignity for the alien captain, Conway thought, but by now the being was probably Past caring about such things.
Abruptly the sky was dark again and the wind and sand tore M them, threatening to lift them bodily off the hull. Conway desperately gripped the webbing as he felt the magnetic grap-begin to slide and the litter slue around. He wondered if the wind would blow him beyond the surrounding thorns were he to let go his grip and his safety line. But his fingers were locked in a cramp and he felt that his arms, like those of the alien Captain, were about to be separated from his torso. Then as suddenly as it had come the wind died and it was light again.
He saw that Murchison, Fletcher, and the patient were still safely attached to the litter. But he did not move. It grew brighter and he could feel the sun warming his side when the sand lashed at them again, accompanied by a high-pitched, screaming thunder.
“Extrovert!” Murchison yelled.
Conway looked up to see the lander hovering ahead of the ship and blasting sand in all directions with its thrusters. Haslam touched down on the shelf of rock which was clear of thorns, barely fifty meters from them.
There were no problems while moving the litter to the other ship, and no shortage of time to do it even though the thorns were already inching toward it. Before loading it on board, Conway removed the extra webbing and the makeshift eye protection from the patient and gave it a thorough examination. In spite of everything it had gone through it was alive and, in Conway’s opinion, very well.
“How about the others, Prilicla?” he asked.
“The temperatures of all of them have come down, friend Conway,” the empath replied. “They are radiating strong feelings of hunger, but not on the level of distress. Since the food supply on the wreck has been lost, and may have been contaminated anyway, they will have to wait until the hospital’s synthesizers provide some. Otherwise they are emoting feelings of confusion and loss.
“But they will feel much better,” Prilicla added, “when they rejoin their Captain.”
COMBINED OPERATION
They emerged into normal space at a point whose coordinates placed them far out on the galactic rim and where the brightest object to be seen was a nearby sun burning coldly against a faint powdering of stars. But as Conway stared through Control’s direct vision port, it became obvious that the emptiness was only apparent, because suddenly both the radar and long-range sensor displays were indicating two contacts, very close together and just under two thousand kilometers distant. For the next few minutes Conway expected to be ignored.
“Control, Power Room,” Captain Fletcher said briskly. “I Want maximum thrust in five minutes. Astrogator, give me the numbers to put us alongside that trace, and the ETA.”
Lieutenants Chen and Dodds, seven decks below and a few feet away respectively, acknowledged. Then Lieutenant Has-tam, from the Communications position, joined in.
“Sir,” he said without taking his attention from his displays, “the sensor readings suggest that the larger trace has the mass, ^nfiguration, and antennae deployment of a scoutship engaged °n survey duty. The other trace is currently unidentifiable, but relative positions might indicate a recent collision.”
“Very well,” the Captain said. He touched his transmit stud and, speaking slowly and distinctly, he went on, “This is the ambulance ship Rhabwar, operating out of Sector Twelve General Hospital, responding to your distress beacon released six plus hours ago. We will close with you in—”
“Fifty-three minutes,” Dodds supplied.
“—If you are able to communicate, please identify yourselves, specify the nature of your trouble, and list the type and number of casualties.”
In the supernumerary’s position Con way leaned forward intently, even though the difference of a few centimeters could not affect the clarity of any incoming message. But when the voice did come it sounded apologetic rather than distressed …
“The Monitor Corps scoutship Tyrell here, Major Nelson commanding,” it said. “It was our distress beacon, but we released it on behalf of the wreck you see beside us. Our medical officer isn’t sure, you understand, because its medical experience covers only three species, but it thinks that there may still be life on board.”
“Doctor—” the Captain began, looking across at Conway. But before he could go on, Haslam was reporting again.
“Sir! Another, no, two more traces. Similar mass and configuration as the distressed vessel. Also smaller, widely scattered pieces of metallic wreckage.”
“That’s the other reason why we released our beacon,” Nelson’s voice sounded from Tyrell. “We don’t have your long-range sensor equipment — our stuff is chiefly photooptical and computing gear associated with survey work — but this area seems to be littered with wreckage and, while I don’t entirely agree with my medic that some of it must contain survivors, the possibility does exist that—”
“You were quite right to call for help, Captain Nelson,” Conway said, breaking in. “We would much rather answer a dozen false alarms than risk missing one which might mean a rescue. Space accidents being what they are, most distress calls are answered too late in any case. However, Captain, as a matter of urgency we need the physiological classification of the wreck’s survivors and the nature and extent of their injuries so that we can begin making preparations for accommodating and treating them.
“I am Senior Physician Conway,” he enaea. may i apvan;to your medical officer?”
There was a long, hissing silence during which Haslam reported several more traces and added that, while the data were far from complete, the distribution of the wreckage was such that he was fairly certain that the accident had happened; to a very large ship which had been blown apart into uniform pieces, and that the wreckage alongside Tyrell and the — other similar pieces which were appearing all over his screens were lifeboats. Judging by the spread of the wreckage so far detected, the disaster had not been a recent occurrence.
Then the speaker came to life again with a flat, emotionless voice, robbed of all inflection by the process of translation. “I am Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul, Doctor Conway,” it said. “My knowledge of other-species physiology is small, since I have had medical experience with only the Earth-human, Ni-dian, and my own Orligian life-forms, all of which, as you know, fall within the DBDG warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing classification.”
The fact that the natives of Orligia and their planetary neighbor Nidia had a marked disparity in physical mass and one of them possessed an overall coat of tight, curly red fur was too small a difference to affect the four-letter classification coding, Conway thought as the other doctor was talking. Just like the small difference which had, in the early days of their stellar exploration, caused Orligia and Earth to fight the first, brief, and so far only interstellar war.
For this reason the Orligians and Earth-humans were more than friendly — nowadays they went out of their way to help each other — and it was a great pity that Krach-Yul was too professionally inexperienced to be really helpful. All Conway could hope for was that the Orligian medic had had sense enough to restrain its professional curiosity and not poke its friendly, furry nose into a situation which was completely beyond its experience.
“We did not enter the wreck,” the Orligian was saying, “because our crew members are not specialists in alien tec
hnology and there was the danger of them inadvertently contributing to the problem rather than its solution. I considered telling through die hull and withdrawing a sample of the wreck’s atmosphere, in the hope that the survivor was a warm-blooded oxygen breather like ourselves and we could pump in air. But I decided against this course in case their atmosphere was an exotic mixture which we could not supply and we would then have reduced their ship’s internal pressure to no purpose.
“We are not certain that there is a survivor, Doctor,” Krach-Yul went on. “Our sensors indicate pressure within the wreck, a small power source, and the presence of what appears to be one large mass of organic material which is incompletely visible through the viewports. We do not know if it is living.”
Conway sighed. Where extraterrestrial physiology and medicine were concerned this Krach-YuI was uneducated, but it certainly was not unintelligent. He could imagine the Orligian qualifying on its home planet, moving to the neighboring world of Nidia, and later joining the Monitor Corps to further increase its e-t experience and, while treating the minor ills and injuries of an Earth-human scoutship crew, hoping for something just like this to happen. The Orligian was probably one great, furry lump of curiosity regarding the organic contents of the wreck, but it knew its professional limitations. Conway was already developing a liking for the Orligian medic, sight unseen.
“Very good, Doctor,” Conway said warmly. “But I have a request. Your vessel has a portable airlock. To save time would you mind—”
“It has already been deployed, Doctor,” the Orligian broke in, “and attached to the wreck’s hull over the largest entry port we could find. We are assuming it is an entry port, but it could be a large access panel because we did not try to open it. The wreck was spinning about its lateral axis and this motion was checked by Tyrell’s tractor-beams, but otherwise the vessel is as we found it.”
Conway thanked the other and unstrapped himself from his couch. He could see several new traces on the radar display, but it was the picture of Tyrell and the wreck growing visibly larger on the forward screen which was his immediate concern.
