by James White
Grayson's stomach heaved as the three G's pinning him to the ceiling disappeared. He continued along the corridor, weightless.
He knew what had happened, of course. The matching grids that supplied an Earth-normal gravity to the human-occupied sections of the ship—the robot-worked sections didn't require it—had suffered whole or partial power failure as damage to the ship increased. The grids needed a lot of power, and were delicately balanced, or the strength of their artificial gravity fields became wildly erratic. Grayson had just had an object lesson of that.
It was a modification of the gravity grid that produced the Starcloud's defensive screen. That screen was impervious to all known forms of radiation, and if attacked by a solid body, it automatically brought to the point of contact a repulsive force of nearly one thousand gravities. If it was attacked at two or more points simultaneously, then the repulsive force was halved or quartered as the case might be. The Raghman ships had been quick to discover this particular weak spot in the Starcloud's, defense; sometimes their force-eddies had come five at a time.
But even if the ship had been able to keep its defense screen intact, Grayson knew that the Starcloud could not have held out for very long. Those screens used power at a fantastic rate—power which was strictly limited despite the ship's size. And Cross, unfortunately, was no Dunstan.
Almost, Grayson forgot his deadly danger as he remembered the excitement that the Dunstan report had caused throughout the Force—excitement which had rashly made him leave his safe and comfortable base hospital and apply for ship service. Captain Dunstan, surveying in Secant 18 when an accident to his main power pile forced him to jettison all atomic fuel, had found his ship being drawn in and not so slowly baked by the powerful gravity pull and unbelievably lethal radiation of a nearby White Dwarf. He had been in a very bad spot until the ship's astronomer found a planet circling that White Dwarf sun—a planet with a most unusual composition, for spectro-analysis showed that its crust was almost covered by deposits of radioactive isotopes similar to one used to power the overdrive generators of Dunstan's ship.
By a miracle of piloting he had been able to land on the planet using his small store of chemical fuel, and while the crew huddled in the deepest and most heavily shielded compartment of the ship, remote-controlled robots had collected enough radioactive fuel for the trip home. Before the planetary and solar radiation had penetrated too deeply into his ship, Dunstan had been able to take off and return with the news.
Immediately everyone wanted to investigate Dunstan's planet, and to search for more like it. But then the Raghman war came, and the patrol and survey ships had been ordered in for refitting. Missile launching tubes and the repulsion-screen grids replaced the telescopic mount- mgs and the forest of search antennae, and fuel could be obtained more easily—though admittedly at greater expense—on planets other than those circling White Dwarf suns.
Grayson came to an intersection and turned into the corridor leading to launching tube six, cautiously using the ruined communications plumbing to pull himself along. With gravity shut off, the danger of ceiling or walls collapsing wasn't so great. But though the metal now had the strength and consistency of soft putty, it retained all its weight and inertia, and could quite easily squash him flat by sheer momentum. He looked sickly at the brown streaks and patches on the once-bright metal walls, and he used the dirtiest word he knew.
The Raghman war.
Nobody knew why they had started the war, or even what a Raghman looked like. A white globular object had appeared suddenly over the planet of Clellane IV, and without warning or provocation had loosed a force-eddy which sent the ship coming to investigate it crashing back to the planetary surface, a softened, shapeless hulk. The globe didn't enter atmosphere, but remained in space viciously and insensately melting every ship which tried to take off. All sorts of weapons were tried against it, but the globe avoided the solid missiles aimed at it with an agility that was unbelievable, and it ignored radiation completely. It had only one offensive weapon, the ghostly, flickering force-eddy. But that one was plenty.
In the Clellanian tongue the word for the Specter of Death was "Raghman." The name had stuck.
Some of the ships fired on by the Raghman globe had fallen into orbits instead of crashing, and investigations carried out after the raider had departed showed that some of them were not completely melted. But their occupants, though outwardly unharmed, were dead. Diagnosis said a burned-out nervous system due to some subtle form of electrocution.
As more and more planets of the civilization that was beginning its spread into the galaxy suffered similar raids, Earth and its colonies—who were the technological arm of that civilization—soon knew that their backs were to the wall. The Raghman seemed completely disinterested in ground targets, but every ship entering or leaving the atmosphere of the planet under their surveillance that they could reach was hit with at least one force-eddy, and that was that. Massed attacks had no success either; before the Raghman globe came within range of Earth weapons that probably would not have worked anyway, the attacking ships became just so many menaces to navigation. Offense was futile, but if a defensive weapon could be found that would give Earth a little time to work something out, then there might be a chance. The scientists were bound to come up with something.
Starcloud was a last, desperate try for the answer. A great torpedo half a mile long and six hundred feet in diameter, only sheer luck had kept the Raghman from finding and destroying it during its fabrication while in orbit around Earth, and such luck was unlikely to hold for the half-completed sister ship if a defense against the force-eddy weapon wasn't found. But the Starcloud had a defense, of sorts.
The repulsion screens which gave protection against meteorite collisions—standard equipment on most ships— tended, it had been found, to slow attacking force-eddies down to a certain extent. The Starcloud had been designed for the purpose of coming to grips with the enemy, defending itself until an analysis of the force-eddy weapon could be obtained, and then hightailing it home with the news if the going got too tough. Its repulsion screen, and the generators backing it, were on such a gargantuan scale that many of its builders had loudly abhorred such a frightful waste of material, never doubting that it would be a complete success.
But Starcloud had met three Raghman globes. The overdrive engines, its means of running away, had gone during the first minutes of the engagement, and its super-efficient repulsion screen just wasn't.
To Grayson, drifting weightless at its center, the corridor seemed to shudder in annoyance at his invasion of its privacy, and a section of plating came free and drifted slowly away from the wall. He caught at it, pushed backward, and used its reaction to increase his speed along the corridor.
"Three eddies hit us, sir." Harper's voice in his phones sounded puzzled. "The other six are just hanging alongside, not even trying to get through the screen."
Cross's voice in reply seemed almost absentminded. Grayson could imagine him studying those drifting force-eddies, his incisive intelligence backed by all that remained of the ship's analyzing equipment trying to solve the problem that they represented. "They came from the ship we blasted, remember," the captain said. "Possibly they require direction from a mother ship, and may now be harmless."
Harmless!
Grayson didn't agree with that at all. In the control room he had seen the force-eddies come boring in, being flung back by the repulsion screen, only to come boring in again. He had watched the screen, overloaded by similar attacks at several other points, weaken for an instant, and the eddy make contact with the bare hull. Three things happened then. There was a flash of cold, blue light, and an explosion that occurred somehow without the heat or radiation normal with a chemical or atomic reaction, which peeled off an area of hull plating and smashed in the. structure underlying it, then, a few seconds later, the metal around the site of the explosion lost the molecular binding force which gave it strength, and turned brown. The softenin
g penetrated deeply into the ship, but in a seemingly random manner that often left one wall of a room intact while the others were a soft, brown mess.
Ninety percent of the Starcloud was now in that semifluid state, and the consequent unbalance set up by its repulsion screen was slowly pulling the ship apart.
But the overall state of the ship wasn't Grayson's concern at the moment—just the condition of this particular corridor. Corridor, he thought grimly, was scarcely the word for something resembling the digestive tract of some monster reptile, with bulges and convolutions of walls and ceiling that pressed lower with every yard of progress he made. Though weightless, he was forced almost to crawl under that sagging, distorted ceiling, then he was actually wriggling and squeezing his way under it. Grayson was awfully glad that he had never suffered from claustrophobia. ...
Suddenly he was whimpering, and pushing and struggling back the way he had come. The thought of that awful mess of metal above him—hundreds of tons of superheavy jelly —with only the absence of gravity preventing it from squashing him like a beetle under a steamroller was too much for him. Grayson wanted out. He didn't care what happened to the ship or Cross or anybody, just so as he could be where he could stand up, or even kneel down without drowning in leaden waves of metal.
But he couldn't return. At least, not backward. In an hysterical surge of panic he arched his back, madly trying to lift the whole mass of settling metal by sheer muscle power. But harsh scraping sounds on the fabric of his suit —warning of the danger of puncture—returned him to a measure of sanity. He wriggled forward again, hoping desperately to find a spot wide enough for him to turn around.
He found it where the disabled Nurse 53 was propping up the corridor ceiling, but beyond the damaged robot he could see the entrance to number six, and Stuart's control pod.
". . . What's happening down there, Grayson? Answer me!" It was Cross's voice in his phones. The captain must have been talking for some time without him realizing it.
"The roof was coming down on me," Grayson replied defensively; then he thought in sudden self-loathing, you're a low, yellow coward, why be a liar, too? He ended awkwardly, "At least, I thought it was."
Cross said, "I see."
Hastily Grayson told of his position near Stuart's pod, adding that it would be impossible to bring the engineer back along the corridor. Had the captain any ideas? -
Cross had a lot of ideas, but they all hinged on Stuart being alive and well enough to run the lifeship. Therefore Grayson had better make sure Stuart was all right before he worried too much about getting him back to the control room. If the engineer was alive, an escape method had been worked out which stood a good chance of success.
As Grayson worked his way around the white enamel and chrome Wreck that had recently been a functioning robot nurse, and kicked out toward Stuart's pod, Cross told him what that method was to be.
The bright-eyed, romantic, hero-worshipping Grayson did not approve of the idea at all. But the Grayson floating in the debris of a wrecked ship, scared silly, and— melodramatic as it was—with his unpracticed hands and unsure mind possibly the only hope for the survival of his race, thought a little more realistically. The second Grayson, however, didn't completely approve of the idea either.
Briefly, a heavy charge of chemical explosive would be used to blow the stern section of the Starcloud apart, flinging out an expanding sphere of wreckage to the six corners of space. Unknown to the Raghman one of these chunks of debris would be the escaping lifeship. A few seconds later the Starcloud's remaining store of nuclear weapons would fission simultaneously, thus making it impossible for the Raghman to trace the fleeing lifeship even if they had been able to detect it among the wreckage. The Raghman would, it was hoped, be dead.
Grayson tried not to think of the crewmen in the stern section who, though cut off from central control, still managed to launch an occasional missile against the enemy. Or of the hundreds who had been taken to sickbay there. Grayson was, after all, a doctor.
Then why, he asked himself viciously as he bumped gently against the damaged control pod, don't you start proving it?
The wound torn in the leaden walls of the pod by the flying I-beam had scaled itself automatically with a smooth, transparent plug of hardened shock-fluid: as well as giving protection as a shock-absorber it acted as a self-sealing mechanism should the pod be punctured while in a vacuum. But the transparency of the seal was spoiled by cloudy red streaks. Grayson, greatly aided by the absence of gravity, pulled a section of the pod's lead shielding aside, uncovering a clear plastic inspection panel. He looked through it at Stuart.
It was hard to get an accurate idea of the engineer's condition, because the skin-tight suit in which he floated while inside the pod had been torn in the region of the wound, and his body temperature plus dilution by blood had made the fluid a soft red jelly instead of the clear, rock-hard cement it normally became when exposed to cold or vacuum. From what Grayson could see, he thought that the metal beam had struck somewhere below Stuart's right armpit, gouging a small piece of the arm and probably fracturing the humerus. Possibly there were a couple of ribs gone, too, but as there was no blood around the man's mouth, they could not have damaged his lung. His breathing was quick and shallow and he had lost a lot of blood. The case wasn't a complicated one, Grayson knew, nor should it prove fatal provided treatment was given promptly.
He reported his findings to the control room. Cross gave an almost explosive sigh of relief. "Good," he said. "Get him out of that pod, Doctor, then take him through the launching tube directly to the outer hull. About two hundred feet forward of the tube's mouth is the lifeship blister. Take him to it and into the boat. We'll be there then or a few minutes later." The captain paused, then finished urgently, "Get him fixed up quickly, Doctor. But be careful, too, he's our only hope."
It was only as Cross was speaking that Grayson realized the utter hopelessness of trying to treat Stuart. Funny how it was the most obvious things which were overlooked first, he thought; like the simple fact of the control compartment being open to space. To help the engineer he would have to remove the other from his hermetically sealed pod, and take off at least part of his own space-suit to have his hands free. But doing those things in a vacuum would result only in the rapid demise of both doctor and patient. He ground his teeth in anger and sheer self-disgust at his stupidity—temporarily forgetting the awful responsibility he carried—-and again reported to the control room.
Cross said, 'That's bad, Doctor." That's bad, Doctor!
Grayson was suddenly very sick of the captain's cold, emotionless voice and his infuriating habit of understating everything really important. And he was sick to death of officers who contemplated the destruction of their friends with steady hands, impassive faces, and crisp, military voices. He said, "Listen . . ." and with expletives he had heard and some he must have read somewhere, he began to qualify the badness of the situation. He spoke for several minutes.
"I agree," Cross said dryly when he had finished. "But is there nothing you can do?" He hesitated, then went on, "You're the man on the spot, Doctor. You'll be able to think of something, I know you will." His voice had a pleading, almost cajoling note in it which wasn't characteristic of the captain at all. It puzzled Grayson, but not for very long.
Cross and the others were depending on him to patch up Stuart in order to escape, Grayson knew, and now they must be beginning to wonder if they weren't leaning too heavily on a rotten stick. His crying fit back there in the corridor, and now this latest and downright mutinous outburst to the captain had them worried. Suppose Grayson had flipped, or was about to flip his lid, go mad? He'd need very careful handling if they were to make use of his medical ability, and that was the reason for Cross's tone. The captain was trying to humor him!
The idea of that made Grayson very angry. He opened his mouth to loose a second verbal broadside, but then he began to think about the responsibilities that Cross had—chief among them t
he one of getting the data home which might at last enable mankind to hold out against the Raghman. His anger died and was replaced by a feeling almost of pity. He didn't blame the captain for his attitude; if Grayson had been on the verge of madness, it would have been exactly the right attitude. Cross was all right.
But the problem of getting Stuart to the lifeship was his own. There must be a solution, Grayson knew, because this type of accident must have occurred, and been solved before. If he could only steady his jumping nerves enough to think.
He had solved a similar problem less than half an hour ago, he remembered suddenly, when the forward observation blister had been holed. The man—injured but space-suited—had been treated on the spot. Grayson had rushed two nurses to the blister and had them spray their quick-setting plaster over the hole in the glassite, sealing it and allowing air pressure to return. The stripping of the casualty's suit and subsequent treatment had been simple. He had felt rather pleased with himself over that one.
Grayson couldn't use that solution now, though, because the hole in the wall of number six was four yards wide, not six inches, and even if Nurse 53 had enough plaster compound to seal it, the robot was jammed tight under several tons of metallic treacle and so couldn't be used. He tried desperately not to think of his surroundings, and only of the problem. The sort of problem, Gray- son told himself as calmly as he could, with one of those disgustingly simple answers that might be shot at you during your periodic refresher courses. Not the desperately urgent, life-or-death-for-millions type of problem at all, but just a problem.
Suddenly he had it. Moving quickly to the stoved-in wall of number six's control chamber he looked up along the tangle of wreckage inside the launching tube. Through it Grayson could see a patch of black, star-studded space. He switched his suit radio to "transmit" and began to speak rapidly.
"How long will you need, Doctor?" Cross asked quickly when he'd finished. There was almost hope in his voice.
