The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  Normally there would be no necessity to hurry the rescue of these beings, they would be quite comfortable where they were for days, but in this instance there was an added complication. The ship had come to rest near the centre—the nerve centre, in fact—of the hospital, the section which contained the controls for the artificial settings of the entire structure. At the moment there seemed to be a survivor in that section somewhere—possibly a patient, a member of the staff, or even the occupant of the wrecked ship—who was moving around and unknowingly damaging the gravity control mechanisms. This state of affairs, if continued, could create havoc in the wards and might even cause deaths among the light-gravity life-forms.

  Dr. Mannon wanted them to go in and bring the being concerned out before it unwittingly wrecked the place.

  “A PVSJ has already gone in,” Mannon added, “but that species is awkward in a space suit, so I’m sending you two as well to hurry things along. All right? Hop to it, then.”

  —

  Wearing gravity neutraliser packs they exited near the damaged section and drifted along the hospital’s outer skin to the twenty-foot-wide hole gouged in its side by the crashing ship. The packs allowed a high degree of manoeuvrability in weightless conditions, and they did not expect anything else along the route they were to travel. They also carried ropes and magnetic anchors, and Williamson—solely because it was part of the equipment issued with the Service Standard suit, he said—also carried a gun. Both had air for three hours.

  At first the going was easy. The ship had sheared a clean-edged tunnel through ward bulkheads, deck plating, and even items of heavy machinery. Conway could see clearly into the corridors they passed in their descent, and nowhere was there a sign of life. There were grisly remnants of a high-pressure life-form which would have blown itself apart even under Earth-normal atmospheric conditions. When subjected suddenly to hard vacuum the process had been that much more violent. And in one corridor there was disclosed a tragedy; a near-human DBDG nurse—one of the red, bearlike entities—had been neatly decapitated by the closing of an airtight door which it had just failed to make in time. For some reason the sight affected him more than anything else he had seen that day.

  Increasing amounts of “foreign” wreckage hampered their progress as they continued to descend—plating and structural members torn from the crashing ship—so that there were times when they had to clear a way through it with their hands and feet.

  Williamson was in the lead—about ten yards below Conway that was—when the Monitor flicked out of sight. In the suit radio a cry of surprise was abruptly cut off by the clang of metal against metal. Conway’s grip on the projecting beam he had been holding tightened instinctively in shocked surprise, and he felt it vibrate through his gauntlets. The wreckage was shifting! Panic took him for a moment until he realised that most of the movement was taking place back the way he had come, above his head. The vibration ceased a few minutes later without the debris around him significantly changing its position. Only then did Conway tie his line securely to the beam and look around for the Monitor.

  —

  Knees bent and arms in front of his head Williamson lay face downward partially embedded in a shelving mass of loose wreckage some twenty feet below. Faint, irregular sounds of breathing in his phones told Conway that the Monitor’s quick thinking in wrapping his arms around his head had, by protecting his suit’s fragile faceplate, saved his life. But whether or not Williamson lived for long depended on the nature of his other injuries, and they in turn depended on the amount of gravitic attraction in the floor section which had sucked him down.

  It was now obvious that the accident was due to a square of deck in which the artificial gravity grid was, despite the wholesale destruction of circuits in the crash area, still operative. Conway was profoundly thankful that the attraction was exerted only at right angles to the grid’s surface and that the floor section had been warped slightly. Had it been facing straight up then both the Monitor and himself would have dropped, and from a distance considerably greater than twenty feet.

  Carefully paying out his safety line Conway approached the huddled form of Williamson. His grip tightened convulsively on the rope when he came within the field of influence of the gravity grid, then eased as he realised that its power was at most only one and a half g’s. With a steady attraction now pulling him downwards towards the Monitor, Conway began lowering himself hand over hand. He could have used his neutraliser pack to counteract that pull, of course, and just drifted down, but that would have been risky. If he accidentally passed out of the floor section’s area of influence, then the pack would have flung him upwards again, with probably fatal results.

  The Monitor was still unconscious when Conway reached him, and though he could not tell for sure, owing to the other wearing a space suit, he suspected multiple fractures in both arms. As he gently disengaged the limp figure from the surrounding wreckage it was suddenly borne on him that Williamson needed attention, immediate attention with all the resources the hospital could provide. He had just realised that the Monitor had been the recipient of a large number of pep-shots; his reserves of strength must be gone. When he regained consciousness, if he ever did, he might not be able to withstand the shock.

  VIII

  Conway was about to call through for assistance when a chunk of ragged-edged metal spun past his helmet. He swung round just in time to duck another piece of wreckage which was sailing towards him. Only then did he see the outlines of a non-human, space-suited figure which was partially hidden in a tangle of metal about ten yards away. The being was throwing things at him!

  The bombardment stopped as soon as the other saw that Conway had noticed it. With visions of having found the unknown survivor whose blundering about was playing hob with the hospital’s artificial gravity system he hurried across to it. But he saw immediately that the being was incapable of doing any moving about at all, it was pinned down, but miraculously unhurt, by a couple of heavy structural members. It was also making vain attempts to reach round to the back of its suit with its only free appendage. Conway was puzzled for a moment, then he saw the radio pack which was strapped to the being’s back, and the lead dangling loose from it. Using surgical tape he repaired the break and immediately the flat, translated tones of the being filled his earphones.

  It was the PVSJ who had left before them to search the wrecked area for survivors. Caught by the same trap which had snagged the unfortunate Monitor, it had been able to use its gravity pack to check its sudden fall. Overcompensating, it had crashed into its present position. The crash had been relatively gentle, but it had caused some loose wreckage to subside, trapping the being and damaging its radio.

  The PVSJ—a chlorine-breathing Illensan—was solidly planted in the wreckage: Conway’s attempts to free it were useless. While trying, however, he got a look at the professional insignia painted on the other’s suit. The Tralthan and Illensan symbols meant nothing to Conway, but the third one—which was the nearest expression of the being’s function in Earth-human terms—was a crucifix. The being was a padre. Conway might have expected that.

  But now Conway had two immobilised cases instead of one. He thumbed the transmit switch of his radio and cleared his throat. Before he could speak the harsh, urgent voice of Dr. Mannon was dinning in his ears.

  “Dr. Conway! Corpsman Williamson! One of you, report quickly, please!”

  Conway said, “I was just going to,” and gave an account of his troubles to date and requested aid for the Monitor and the PVSJ padre. Mannon cut him off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly, “but we can’t help you. The gravity fluctuations have been getting worse here, they must have caused a subsidence in your tunnel, because it’s solidly plugged with wreckage all the way above you. Maintenance men have tried to cut a way through but—”

  “Let me talk to him,” broke in another voice, and there were the magnified, fumbling noises of a mike being snatched out of someone’s h
and. “Dr. Conway, this is Dr. Lister speaking,” it went on. “I’m afraid that I must tell you that the well-being of your two accident cases is of secondary importance. Your job is to contact that being in the gravity control compartment and stop him. Hit him on the head if necessary, but stop him—he’s wrecking the hospital!”

  Conway swallowed. He said, “Yes, sir,” and began looking for a way to penetrate further into the tangle of metal surrounding him. It looked hopeless.

  Suddenly he felt himself being pulled sideways. He grabbed for the nearest solid-looking projection and hung on for dear life. Transmitted through the fabric of his suit he heard the grinding, tearing jangle of moving metal. The wreckage was shifting again. Then the force pulling him disappeared as suddenly as it had come and simultaneously there came a peculiar, barking cry from the PVSJ. Conway twisted round to see that where the Illensan had been a large hole led downward into nothingness.

  He had to force himself to let go of his handhold. The attraction which had seized him had been due, Conway knew, to the momentary activating of an artificial gravity grid somewhere below. If it returned while he was floating unsupported…Conway did not want to think about that.

  The shift had not affected Williamson’s position—he still lay as Conway had left him—but the PVSJ must have fallen through.

  “Are you all right?” Conway called anxiously.

  “I think so,” came the reply. “I am still somewhat numb.”

  Cautiously, Conway drifted across to the newly created opening and looked down. Below him was a very large compartment, well lit from a source somewhere off to one side. Only the floor was visible about forty feet below, the walls being beyond his angle of vision, and this was thickly carpeted by a dark blue, tubular growth with bulbous leaves. The purpose of this compartment baffled Conway until he realised that he was looking at the AUGL tank minus its water. The thick, flaccid growth covering its floor served as both food and interior decoration for the AUGL patients. The PVSJ had been very lucky to have such a springy surface to land on.

  The PVSJ was no longer pinned down by wreckage and it stated that it felt fit enough to help Conway with the being in the gravity control department. As they were about to resume the descent Conway glanced towards the source of light he had half-noticed earlier, and caught his breath.

  One wall of the AUGL tank was transparent and looked out on a section corridor which had been converted into a temporary ward. DBLF caterpillars lay in the beds which lined one side, and they were by turns crushed savagely into the plasti-foam and bounced upwards into the air by it as violent and random fluctuations rippled along the gravity grids in the floor. Netting had been hastily tied around the patients to keep them in the beds, but despite the beating they were taking they were the lucky ones.

  —

  A ward was being evacuated somewhere and through this stretch of corridor there crawled, wriggled, and hopped a procession of beings resembling the contents of some cosmic ark. All the oxygen-breathing life-forms were represented together with many who were not, and human nursing orderlies and Monitors shepherded them along. Experience must have taught the orderlies that to stand or walk upright was asking for broken bones and cracked skulls, because they were crawling along on their hands and knees. When a sudden surge of three or four g’s caught them they had a shorter distance to fall that way. Most of them were wearing gravity packs, Conway saw, but had given them up as useless in conditions where the gravity constant was a wild variable.

  He saw PVSJs in balloonlike chlorine envelopes being pinned against the floor, flattened like specimens pressed under glass, then bounced into the air again. And Tralthan patients in their massive, unwieldly harnesses—Tralthans were prone to injury internally despite their great strength—being dragged along. There were DBDGs, DBLFs, and CLSRs, also unidentifiable somethings in spherical, wheeled containers that radiated cold almost visibly. Strung out in a line, being pushed, being dragged, or manfully inching along on their own, the beings crept past, bowing and straightening up again like wheat in a strong wind as the gravity grids pulled at them.

  Conway could almost imagine he felt those fluctuations where he stood, but knew that the crashing ship must have destroyed the grid circuits in its path. He dragged his eyes away from that grim procession and headed downwards again.

  “Conway!” Mannon’s voice barked at him a few minutes later. “That survivor down there is responsible for as many casualties now as the crashed ship! A ward of convalescent LSVOs are dead due to a three-second surge from one-eighth to four gravities. What’s happening now?”

  The tunnel of wreckage was steadily narrowing, Conway reported, the hull and lighter machinery of the ship having been peeled away by the time it had reached their present level. All that could remain ahead was the massive stuff like hyperdrive generators and so on. He thought he must be very near the end of the line now, and the being who was the unknowing cause of the devastation around them.

  “Good,” said Mannon, “but hurry it up!”

  “But can’t the Engineers get through? Surely—”

  “They can’t,” broke in Dr. Lister’s voice. “In the area surrounding the gravity grid controls there are fluctuations of up to ten g’s. It’s impossible. And joining up with your route from inside the hospital is out, too. It would mean evacuating corridors in the neighbouring area, and the corridors are all filled with patients….” The voice dropped in volume as Dr. Lister apparently turned away from the mike, and Conway overhead him saying, “Surely an intelligent being could not be so panic-stricken that it…it…Oh, when I get my hands on it—“

  “It may not be intelligent,” put in another voice. “Maybe it’s a cub, from the FGLI maternity unit….”

  “If it is I’ll tan its little—“

  A sharp click ended the conversation at that point as the transmitter was switched off. Conway, suddenly realising what a very important man he had become, tried to hurry it up as best he could.

  IX

  They dropped another level into a ward in which four MSVKs—fragile, tripedal storklike beings—drifted lifeless among loose items of ward equipment. The movements of the bodies and objects in the room seemed a little unnatural, as if they had been recently disturbed. It was the first sign of the enigmatic survivor they were seeking. Then they were in a great, metal-walled compartment surrounded by a maze of plumbing and unshielded machinery. On the floor in a bulge it had created for itself, the ship’s massive hyperdrive generator lay with some shreds of control-room equipment strewn around it. Underneath was the remains of a life-form that was now unclassifiable. Beside the generator another hole had been torn in the severely weakened floor by some other piece of the ship’s heavy equipment.

  Conway hurried over to it, looked down, then called excitedly, “There it is!”

  They were looking into a vast room which could only be the grid control centre. Rank upon rank of squat, metal cabinets covered the floor, walls, and ceiling—this compartment was always kept airless and at zero gravity—with barely room for even Earth-human Engineers to move between them. But Engineers were seldom needed here because the devices in this all-important compartment were self-repairing. At the moment this ability was being put to a severe test.

  A being which Conway classified tentatively as AACL sprawled across three of the delicate control cabinets. Nine other cabinets, all winking with red distress signals, were within range of its six pythonlike tentacles, which poked through seals in the cloudy plastic of its suit. The tentacles were at least twenty feet long and tipped with a horny substance which must have been steel-hard considering the damage the being had caused.

  Conway had been prepared to feel pity for this hapless survivor, he had expected to find an entity injured, panic-stricken, and crazed with pain. Instead there was a being who appeared unhurt and who was viciously smashing up gravity-grid controls as fast as the built-in self-repairing robots tried to fix them. Conway swore and began hunting for the frequency of
the other’s suit radio. Suddenly there was a harsh, high-pitched cheeping sound in his earphones. “Got you!” Conway said grimly.

  The cheeping sounds ceased abruptly as the other heard his voice and so did all movement of those highly destructive tentacles. Conway noted the wavelength, then switched back to the band used by the PVSJ and himself.

  “It seems to me,” said the chlorine-breather when he had told it what he had heard, “that the being is deeply afraid, and the noises it made were of fear—otherwise your translator would have made you receive them as words in your own language. The fact that these noises and its destructive activity stopped when it heard your voice is promising, but I think that we should approach slowly and reassure it constantly that we are bringing help. Its activity down there gives me the impression that it has been hitting out at anything which moves, so a certain amount of caution is indicated, I think.”

  “Yes, Padre,” said Conway with great feeling.

  “We do not know in what direction the being’s visual organs are directed,” the PVSJ went on, “so I suggest we approach from opposite sides.”

  Conway nodded. They set their radios to the new band and climbed carefully down onto the ceiling of the compartment below. With just enough power in their gravity neutralisers to keep them pressing gently against the metal surface, they moved away from each other onto opposite walls, down them, then onto the floor. With the being between them now, they moved slowly towards it.

  —

  The robot repair devices were busy making good the damage wrecked by those six anacondas it used for limbs but the being continued to lie quiescent. Neither did it speak. Conway kept thinking of the havoc this entity had caused with its senseless threshing about. The things he felt like saying to it were anything but reassuring, so he let the PVSJ padre do the talking.