Ambulance Ship

I

Senior Physician Conway wriggled into a slightly less uncomfortable position in a piece of furniture that had been designed for the comfort of a six-legged, exoskeletal Melfan, and said in an aggrieved tone, “After twelve years’ medical and surgical experience in the Federation’s biggest multienvironment hospital, one would expect the next logical step up the promotional ladder would be to something more prestigious than … than an ambulance driver!”

There was no immediate response from the other four beings who were waiting with him in the office of the Chief Psychologist. Doctor Prilicla clung silently to the ceiling, the position it favored when in the company of more massive and well-muscled beings than itself. Sharing an Illensan bench were the spectacularly beautiful Pathologist Murchison and a silver-furred, caterpiller-like Kelgian charge nurse called Naydrad, also in silence. It was Major Fletcher, who as a recent visitor to the hospital had been given the office’s only physiologically suitable chair, who broke the silence.

Seriously, he said, “You will not be allowed to drive, Doctor.”

It was plain that Major Fletcher was still very conscious of the bright new ship commander’s insignia decorating the sleeve of his Monitor Corps tunic, and that he was already concerned about the welfare of the vessel so soon to be his. Conway remembered feeling the same way about his first pocket scanner.

“Not even an ambulance driver,” said Murchison, laughing.

Naydrad joined the conversation with a series of moaning, whistling sounds, which translated as, “In an establishment like this one, Doctor, do you expect logic?”

Conway did not reply. He was thinking that the hospital grapevine, a normally dependable form of vegetable life, had been carrying the news for days that a senior physician, Conway himself, was to be permanently attached to an ambulance ship.

On the ceiling, Doctor Prilicla was beginning to quiver in response to his emotional radiation, so Conway tried to bring his feelings of confusion and disappointment and hurt pride under control.

“Please do not concern yourself unnecessarily over this matter, friend Conway,” said the little empath, the musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech overlaying the emotionless translated words. “We have yet to be informed officially of the new assignment, and the probability is that you may be pleasantly surprised, Doctor.”

Prilicla, Conway knew, was not averse to telling lies if by so doing it could improve the emotional atmosphere of a situation. But not if the improvement would last for only a few seconds or minutes and be followed by even more intense feelings of anger and disappointment.

“What makes you think so, Doctor?” Conway asked. “You used the word probability and not possibility. Have you inside information?”

“That is correct, friend Conway,” the Cinrusskin replied. “I have detected a source of emotional radiation that entered the outer office several minutes ago. It is identifiable as belonging to the Chief Psychologist, and the emoting is purposeful, with the type of minorkey worrying associated with the carriage of authority and responsibility. I cannot detect the kind of feelings that should be present if the imparting of unpleasant news to someone was being planned. At present Major O’Mara is talking to an assistant, who is also unaware of any potential unpleasantness.”

Conway smiled and said, “Thank you, Doctor. I feel much better now.

“I know,” said Prilicla.

“And I feel,” said Nurse Naydrad, “that such discussion of the being O’Mara’s feelings verges on a breach of medical ethics. Emotional radiation is privileged information, surely, and should not be divulged in this fashion.—

“Perhaps you have not considered the fact,” Prilicla replied, using the form of words which was the closest it could ever come to telling another being it was wrong, “that the being whose emotional radiation was under discussion is not a patient, friend Naydrad, and that the being most closely resembling a patient in this situation is Doctor Conway, who is concerned about the future and requires reassurance in the form of information on the non-patient’s emotional radiation …

Naydrad’s silvery fur was beginning to twitch and ripple, indicating that the Kelgian charge nurse was about to reply. But the entrance of the non-patient from the outer office put an end to what could have been an interesting ethical debate.

O’Mara nodded briefly to everyone in turn, and took the only other physiologically suitable seat in the room, his own. The Chief Psychologist’s features were about as readable as a lump of weathered basalt, which in some respects they resembled, but the eyes which regarded them were backed by a mind so keenly analytical that it gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty.

Caustically, he began: “Before I tell you why I have asked for you four in particular to accompany Major Fletcher, and give you the details of your next assignment, which no doubt you have already learned in outline, I have to give you some background information of a non-medical nature.

“The problem of briefing people like yourselves on this subject,” he went on, “is that I cannot afford to make assumptions regarding your level of ignorance in matters outside your specialties. Should some of this information seem too elementary, you are at liberty to allow your attention to wander, so long as I don’t catch you at it.”

“You have our undivided attention, friend O’Mara,” said Prilicla, who, of course, knew this to be a fact.

“For the time being,” Naydrad added.

“Charge Nurse Naydrad!” Major Fletcher burst out, his reddening face clashing with the dark green of his uniform. “You are being something less than respectful to a senior officer. Such offensive behavior will not be tolerated on my ship, nor shall I—”

O’Mara held up his hand and said dryly, “I didn’t take offense, Major, and neither should you. Up until now, your career has been free of close personal contact with e-ts, so your mistake is understandable. It is unlikely to be repeated when you learn to understand the thought processes and behavior of the beings who will be working with you on this project.

“Charge Nurse Naydrad,” O’Mara went on, politely for him, is a Kelgian, a caterpillar-like life-form whose most noticeable feature is an all-over coat of silver-gray fur. You will already have noticed that Naydrad’s fur is constantly in motion, as if a strong wind was continually blowing it into tufts and ripples. These are completely involuntary movements triggered by its emotional reactions to outside stimuli. The evolutionary reasons for this mechanism are not clearly understood, not even by the Kelgians themselves, but it is generally believed that the emotionally expressive fur complements the Kelgian vocal equipment, which lacks emotional flexibility of tone. However, you must understand that the movements of the fur makes it absolutely clear to another Kelgian what it feels about the subject under discussion. As a result, they always say exactly what they mean because what they think is plainly obvious-at least to another Kelgian. They cannot do otherwise. Unlike Doctor Prilicla, who is always polite and sometimes edits the truth to remove the unpleasant bits, Charge Nurse Naydrad will invariably tell the truth regardless of your rank or your feelings. You will soon grow used to it, Major.

“But I did not intend to give a lecture on Kelgians,” he continued. “I did intend to discuss briefly the formation of what is now called the Galactic Federation.

On the briefing screen behind him there appeared suddenly a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As they watched and listened a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another-the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extraterrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared, the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.

Several decades had passed before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. (Beings tended to be suspicious in those days, on one occasion even to the point of war.) But time as well as distance was being compressed on this representation.

The tracery of golden lines grew more rapidly as contact, then commerce, was established with the highly advanced and stable cultures of Kelgia, Illensa, Hudlar, Melf and, if any, their associated colonies. Visually it did not seem to be an orderly progression. The lines darted inwards to the galactic center, doubled back to the rim, seesawed between zenith and nadir, and even made a jump across intergalactic space to link up with the Ian worlds-although in that instance it had been the Ians who had done the initial traveling. When the lines connected the worlds of the Galactic Federation, the planets known to contain intelligent and, in their own sometimes peculiar fashions, technically and philosophically advanced life, the result was an untidy yellow scribble resembling a cross between a DNA molecule and a bramble bush.

… Only a tiny fraction of the Galaxy has been explored by us or by any of the other races within the Federation,” O’Mara continued, “and we are in the position of a man who has friends in far countries but has no idea of who is living in the next street. The reason for this is that travelers tend to meet more often than people who stay at home, especially when the travelers exchange addresses and visits regularly.

Providing there were no major distorting influences en route and the exact co-ordinates of the destination were known, it was virtually as easy to travel through subspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other end of the Galaxy. But one had first to find an inhabited solar system before its coordinates could be logged, and that was proving to be no easy task.

Very, very slowly, a few of the smaller blank areas in the star charts were being mapped and surveyed, but with little success. When the survey scoutships turned up a star with planets, it was a rare find-even rarer when the planets included one harboring life. And if one of the native life-forms was intelligent, jubilation, not unmixed with concern over what might be a possible threat to the Pax Galactica, swept the worlds of the Federation. Then the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were sent to perform the tricky, time-consuming and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.

The Cultural Contact people were the elite of the Monitor Corps, a small group of specialists in e-t communications, philosophy and psychology. Although small, the group was not, regrettably, ove — orked …

During the past twenty years,” O’Mara went on, “they have initiated First Contact procedure on three occasions, all of which resulted in the species concerned joining the Federation. I will not bore you with details of the number of survey operations mounted and the ships, personnel and materiel involved, or shock you with the cost of it all. I mention the Cultural Contact group’s three successes simply to make the point that within the same time period this hospital became fully operational and also initiated First Contacts, which resulted in seven new species joining the Federation. This was accomplished not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by giving medical assistance to a sick alien.”

The Chief Psychologist stared at each of them in turn, and it was obvious that he did not need Prilicla to tell him that he had their undivided attention. “I’m oversimplifying, of course. You had the medical and/or surgical problem of treating a hitherto unknown life-form. You had the hospital’s translation computer, the second largest in the Galaxy, and Monitor Corps communications specialists to assist where necessary. Indeed, the Corps was responsible for rescuing many of the extraterrestrial casualties. But the fact remains that all of us, by giving medical assistance, demonstrated the Federation’s good will towards e-ts much more simply and directly than could have been done by any long-winded exchange of concepts. As a result, there has recently been a marked change of emphasis in First Contact policy …

Just as there was only one known way of traveling in hyperspace, there was only one method of sending a distress signal if an accident or malfunction occurred and a vessel was stranded in normal space between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio was not a dependable method of interstellar communication, subject as it was to interference and distortion caused by intervening stellar bodies, as well as requiring inordinate amounts of a vessel’s power-power which a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence. It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast a location signal, a subspace scream for help, which ran up and down the usable frequencies until, in a matter of minutes or hours, it died.

Because all Federation ships were required to file course and passenger details before departure, the position of the distress signal was usually a good indication of the physiological type of species that had run into trouble, and an ambulance ship with a matching crew and life-support equipment was sent from Sector General or from the ship’s home planet.

But there were instances, far more than were generally realized, when the disasters involved beings unknown to the Federation in urgent need of help, help which the would-be rescuers were powerless to give.

Only when the rescue ship concerned had the capability of extending its hyperdrive envelope to include the distressed vessel, or when the beings could be extricated safely and a suitable environment prepared for them within the Federation ship, were they transported to Sector General. The result was that many hitherto unknown life-forms, being of high intelligence and advanced technology, were lost except as interesting specimens for dissection and study. But an answer to this problem had been sought and, perhaps, found.

It had been decided to equip one very special ambulance ship that would answer only those distress signals whose positions did not agree with the flight plans filed by Federation vessels.

Whenever possible,” O’Mara continued, “we prefer to make contact with a star-traveling race. Species who are intelligent but are not space travelers pose problems. We are never sure whether we are helping or hindering their natural development, giving them a technological leg up or a crushing inferiority complex when we drop down from their sky—”

Naydrad broke in: “The starship in distress might not possess a beacon. What then?”

“If a species advanced enough to possess starships did not make this provision for the safety of its individuals,” O’Mara replied, “then I would prefer not to know them.”

“I understand,” said the Kelgian.

The Chief Psychologist nodded, then went on briskly, “Now you know why four senior or specialist members of the hospital’s medical and surgical services are being demoted to ambulance attendants.” He tapped buttons on his desk, and the Federation star map was replaced by a large and detailed diagram of a ship. “Attendants on a very special ambulance, as you can see. Captain Fletcher, continue, please.”

For the first time, O’Mara had used Fletcher’s title of ship commander rather than his Monitor Corps rank of major, Conway noted. It was probably the Chief Psychologist’s way of reminding everyone that Fletcher, whether they liked it or not, was the man in charge.

Conway was only half-listening to the Captain as Fletcher, in tones reminiscent of a doting parent extolling the virtues of a favorite offspring, began listing the dimensions and performance and search capabilities of his new command.

The image on the briefing screen was familiar to Conway. He had seen the ship, hanging like an enormous white dart, in the Corps docking area, with its outlines blurred by a small forest of extended sensors and open inspection hatches, and surrounded by a shoal of smaller ships in the drab service coloring of the Monitor Corps. It had the configuration and mass of a Federation light cruiser, which was the largest type of Corps vessel capable of aerodynamic maneuvering within a planetary atmosphere. He was visualizing its gleaming white hull and delta wings decorated with the red cross, occluded sun, yellow leaf and multitudinous other symbols that represented the concept of assistance freely given throughout the Federation.

The crew will mostly be comprised of physiological classification DBDG,” Captain Fletcher was saying, “which means that they, like the majority of Monitor Corps personnel, are Earthhuman or natives of Earth-seeded planets.

“But this is a Tralthan-built ship, with all the design and structural advantages that implies,” he went on enthusiastically, “and we have named it the Rhabwar, after one of the great figures of Tralthan medical history. The accommodation for extraterrestrial medical personnel is flexible in regard to gravity, pressure, and atmospheric composition, food, furniture and fittings, providing they are warmblooded oxygen-breathers. Neither the Kelgian DBLF physiological classification”—he looked at Naydrad, then up towards Prilicla- “nor the Cinrusskin GLNO will pose any life-support problems

“The only physiologically non-specialized section of the ship is the Casualty Deck and associated ward compartment,” Fletcher continued. “It is large enough to take an e-t casualty up to the mass of a fully grown Chalder. The ward compartment has gravity control in half-G settings from zero to five, provision for the supply of a variety of gaseous and liquid atmospheres, and both material and non-material forms of restraint-straps and pressor beams, that is- should the casualty be confused, aggressive or require immobilization for medical examination or surgery. This compartment will be the exclusive responsibility of the medical personnel, who will prepare a compatible environment for and initiate treatment of the casualties I shall bring them.

“I must stress this point,” the Captain went on, his tone hardening. “The responsibility for general ship management, for finding the distressed alien vessel and for the rescue itself is mine. The rescue of an extraterrestrial from a completely strange and damaged ship is no easy matter. There is the possibility of activating, by accident, alien mechanisms with unknown potentialities for destruction or injury to the rescuers, toxic or explosive atmospheres, radiation, the often complex problems associated with merely entering the alien ship and the tricky job of finding and bringing out the extraterrestrial casualty without killing it or seriously compounding its injuries …

Fletcher hesitated and looked around him. Prilicla was beginning to shake in the invisible wind of emotional radiation emanating from Naydrad, whose silvery fur was twisting itself into spikes. Murchison was trying to remain expressionless, without much success, and Conway did not think he was being particularly poker-faced, either.

O’Mara shook his head slowly. “Captain, not only have you been telling the medical team to mind their own business, you have been trying to tell them their business. Senior Physician Conway, in addition to his e-t surgical and medical experience, has been involved in a number of ship rescue incidents, as have Pathologist Murchison and Doctor Prilicla, and Charge Nurse Naydrad has specialized in heavy rescue for the past six years. This project calls for close cooperation. You will need the cooperation of your medics, and I strongly suspect that you will get it whether you ask for it or not.”

He turned his attention to Conway. “Doctor, you have been chosen by me for this project because of your ability to work with and understand e-ts, both as colleagues and patients. You should encounter no insurmountable difficulties in learning to understand and work with a newly appointed ship commander who is understandably—”

The attention signal on his desk began flashing, and the voice of one of his assistants filled the room. “Diagnostician Thornnastor is here, sir.”

“Three minutes,” said O’Mara. With his eyes still on Conway he went on: “I’ll be brief. Normally I would not give any of you the option of refusing an assignment, but this one is more in the nature of a shakedown cruise for the Rhabwar than a mission calling for your professional expertise. We have received distress signals from the scoutship Tenelphi, which is crewed exclusively by Earth-human DBDGs, so there won’t even be a communications problem. It is a simple search-and-rescue mission, and any charge of incompetence which may be brought against the survivors later will be a Corps disciplinary matter and is not your concern. The Rhabwar will be ready to leave in less than an hour. The available information on the incident is on this tape. Study it when you are aboard.

“That is all,” he concluded, “except that there is no need for Prilicla or Naydrad to go along just to treat a few DBDG fractures or decompressions. There will be no juicy extraterrestrial cases on this trip—”

He broke off because Prilicla was beginning to tremble and Naydrad’s fur was becoming agitated. The empath spoke first: “I will, of course, remain in the hospital if requested to do so,” Prilicla said timidly, “but if I were to be given a choice, then I would prefer to go with—”

“To us,” said Naydrad loudly, “Earth-human DBDGs are juicy extraterrestrials.”

O’Mara sighed. “A predictable reaction, I suppose. Very well, you may all go. Ask Thornnastor to come in as you leave.”

When they were in the corridor, Conway stood for a moment, working out the fastest, but not necessarily the most comfortable, route for reaching the ambulance ship docking bay on Level 83, then moved off quickly. Prilicla kept pace along the ceiling, Naydrad undulated rapidly behind him and Murchison brought up the rear with the Captain, who was all too plainly afraid of losing his medical team and himself.

Conway’s senior physician’s armband cleared the way as far as nurses and subordinate grades of doctor were concerned, but there were continual encounters with the lordly and multiply absentminded Diagnosticians-who ploughed their way through everybody and everything regardless-and with junior members of the staff who happened to belong to a more heavily muscled species. Tralthans of physiological classification FGLI-warm-blooded oxygen-breathers resembling low-slung, six-legged and tentacled elephants-bore down on them and swept past with the mass and momentum of organic ground vehicles; they were jostled by a pair of ELNTs from Melf, who chittered at them reproachfully despite being outranked by three grades; and Conway certainly did not feel like pulling rank on the TLTU intern who breathed superheated steam and whose protective suit was a great, clanking juggernaut that hissed continually as if it was about to spring a leak.

At the next transection lock they donned lightweight protective suits and let themselves into the foggy yellow world of the chlorinebreathing Illensans. Here the corridors were crowded with the spiny, membranous and unprotected Illensan PVSJs, and it was the oxygen-breathing Tralthans, Kelgians and Earth-humans who wore, or in some cases drove, life-suits. The next leg of the journey took them through the vast tanks where the thirty-foot-long, waterbreathing entities of Chalderescol swam ponderously, like armorplated and tentacled crocodiles, through their warm, green wards. The same protective suits served them here, and although the traffic was less dense, the necessity of having to swim instead of walk slowed them down somewhat. Despite all the obstacles, they finally arrived in the ambulance bay, their suits still streaming Chalder water, just thirty-five minutes after leaving O’Mara’s office.

As they boarded the Rhabwar the personnel lock swung closed behind them. The Captain hurried to the ship’s gravity-free central well and began pulling himself forward towards Control. In more leisurely fashion, the medical team headed for the Casualty Deck amidships. In the ward compartment they spent a few minutes converting the highly unspecialized accommodation and equipment- which were capable of serving the operative and after-care needs of casualties belonging to any of the sixty-odd intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation-into the relatively simple bedding and life-support required for ordinary DBDG Earth-human fracture and/or decompression cases.

Even though the casualties’ stay in the ambulance ship would be a matter of hours rather than days, the treatment available during the first few minutes could make all the difference between a casualty who survived and one who was dead on arrival. Even Sector General could do nothing about the latter category, Conway thought; he wondered if any other preparations could be made to receive casualties whose number and condition were as yet unknown.

He must have been wondering aloud, because Naydrad said suddenly, “There is provision for twelve casualties, Doctor, assuming that each member of the scoutship’s ten-man crew is injured, and further assuming that two of our crew-members are injured during the rescue, which is a very low probability. Eight of the beds have been prepared for multiple-fracture cases, and the other four for cranial and mandible fractures with associated brain damage necessitating a cardiac or respiratory assist. Self-shaping splints, body restraints and medication suited to the DBDG classification are readily available. When may we learn the contents of O’Mara’s tape?”

“Soon, I hope,” Conway replied. “Though I lack the empathic faculty of Prilicla, I feel sure our Captain would not be pleased if we were to discover and discuss the details of our mission without him.”

“Correct, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “However, the combination of observation, deduction and experience can in many cases give a non-empathic species the ability to detect or to accurately predict emotional output.”

“Obviously,” said Naydrad. “But unless someone has something important to say, I shall go to sleep.”

“And I,” said Murchison, “shall press my not-unattractive face against a viewport and watch. It must be three years since I had a chance to see outside the hospital.”

While the Kelgian charge nurse curled itself into a furry question mark on one of the beds, Murchison, Prilicla and Conway moved to a viewport, which at that moment showed only a featureless expanse of metal plating and the foreshortened cylinder of one of the hydraulic docking booms. But as they watched they felt a series of tiny shocks, which were being transmitted through the fabric of the ship. The hospital’s outer skin began moving away from them, and the docking boom became even more foreshortened as it came smoothly to full extension, simultaneously releasing the ship and pushing it away.

The distance increased, allowing more and more details to crawl into the port’s field of vision-the personnel and stores loading tubes, which were already being withdrawn into their housing; the flashing or steadily burning approach and docking beacons; a line of ports ablaze with the greenish yellow lighting characteristic of the Illensan chlorine-breathers; and a big supply tender sidling up to its docking boom.

Suddenly the picture began to unroll from the top to the bottom of the viewport as the Rhabwar applied thrust. It was a gentle, cautious maneuver aimed at placing the ship on a spiral course that would take it through the local hospital traffic to a distance where full thrust could be applied without inconveniencing other ships in the area or elevating the temperature of the hospital’s skin-something that would be much more than an inconvenience if behind such a temporary hot spot there was a ward filled with the fragile, crystalline, ultra-frigid methane life-forms. The picture continued to shrink until the whole vast hospital structure was framed in the port, turning slowly as the ship spiraled away; then thrust was applied, and it slipped out of sight astern.

With the disappearance of the brilliantly lit hospital, their night vision returned slowly, and they watched, in a silence broken only by the hissing noises made by the sleeping Kelgian, while stars began to develop in the blank blackness outside the port.

The casualty deck speaker clicked and hummed. “This is Control. We are proceeding at one Earth-gravity thrust until Jump-distance is reached, which will be in forty-six minutes. During this period the artificial-gravity grids will be deactivated on all decks for the purposes of system checking and inspection. Any e-t requiring special gravity settings please check and activate its personal equipment.”

Conway wondered why the Captain was not covering the Jumpdistance at maximum thrust instead of dawdling along at one-G. He certainly could not Jump too close to the hospital, because the creation of an artificial universe that would allow faster-than-light travel-even a tiny one capable of enclosing the mass of their ship- would be much more than an inconvenience to Sector General. It could disrupt every piece of communications and control equipment in the place, with dire results for patients and staff alike. But Fletcher did not seem to be reacting with urgency to what was, after all, a distress call. Was Fletcher being overly careful with his nice new ship, Conway wondered, or was he proceeding carefully because the distress call had come before the ship was quite ready for it?

Though Conway’s worrying was causing the Cinrusskin to tremble slightly, Prilicla seemed calm. “I check my gravity nullifiers every hour, since my continued existence as a living and thinking entity requires it. But it is nice of the Captain to worry about my safety. He appears to be an efficient officer and an entity in whom we can place full trust where the workings of the ship are concerned.”

“I was a little worried for a moment,” Conway admitted, laughing at the empath’s unsubtle attempt at reassurance. “But how did you know I was worried about the ship? Are you becoming a telepath too?”

“No, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “I was aware of your feeling and had already noted our somewhat leisurely departure, and I wondered if it was the ship or the Captain who was proceeding cautiously.”

“Great minds worry alike,” said Murchison, turning away from the viewport. “I could eat a horse,” she added with feeling.

“I, too, have an urgent requirement for food,” said Prilicla.

“What is a horse, friend Murchison, and would it agree with my metabolism?”

“Food,” said Naydrad, coming awake.

They did not have to mention the fact that if the Tenelphi casualties were serious they might not have many opportunities to eat and it was always a good idea to refuel whenever an opportunity offered itself. As well, Conway thought, eating stopped worrying, at least for a while.

“Food,” Conway agreed, and he led the way to the central well, which connected the eight habitable levels of the ship.

As he began climbing the connecting ladder against the one-G thrust aft, Conway was remembering the diagram of the ship’s deck layout, which had been projected on O’Mara’s screen. Level One was Control, Two and Three held the crew and medics’ quarters, which were neither large nor overly well supplied with recreational aids, since ambulance ship missions were expected to be of short duration. Level Four housed the dining and recreational areas, and Five contained the stores of non-medical consumables. Six and Seven were the Casualty Deck and its ward, respectively, and Eight was the Power Room. Aft of Eight was a solid plug of shielding, then the two levels that could not be entered without special protective armor: Nine, which housed the hyperdrive generator, and Ten, which contained the fuel tanks and nuclear-powered thrusters.

Those thrusters were making Conway climb very carefully and hold tightly onto the rungs. A fall down the normally gravity-free well could quickly change his status from doctor to patient-or even to cadaver. Murchison was also being careful, but Naydrad, who had no shortage of legs with which to grip the rungs, began ruffling its fur with impatience. Prilicla, using its personal gravity nullifiers, had flown ahead to check on the food dispensers.

“The selection seems to be rather restricted,” it reported when they arrived, “but I think the quality is better than the hospital food.”

“It couldn’t be worse,” said Naydrad.

Conway quickly began performing major surgery on a steak and everyone else was using its mouth for a purpose other than talking when two green-uniformed legs came into sight as they climbed down from the deck above. They were followed by a torso and the features of Captain Fletcher.

“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked stiffly. “I think we should listen to the Tenelphi material as soon as possible.”

“Not at all,” Conway replied in the same formal tone. “Please sit down, Captain.”

Normally a Monitor Corps ship commander ate in the isolation of his cabin, Conway knew, that being one of the unwritten laws of the service. The Rhabwar was Fletcher’s first command and this his first operational mission, and here he was breaking one of those rules by dining with crew-members who were not even fellow officers of the Corps. But it was obvious as the Captain drew his meal from the dispenser that he was trying very hard to be relaxed and friendly-he was trying so hard, in fact, that Prilicla’s stable hover over its place at the table became somewhat unsteady.

Murchison smiled at the Captain. “Doctor Prilicla tells us that eating while in flight aids the Cinrusskin digestion as well as cools everyone else’s soup.

“If my method of ingestion offends you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla offered timidly, “I am quite capable of eating while at rest.”

“I m not offended, Doctor.” Fletcher smiled stiffly. “I think fascinated would better describe my feelings. But will listening to the tape adversely affect anyone’s digestion? The playback can certainly wait until you’ve all finished.”

“Talking shop,” said Conway in his best clinical manner, “also aids the digestion.” He slotted in the tape, and O’Mara’s dry, precise voice filled the compartment.

The Monitor Corps scoutship Tenelphi, which was currently engaged on preliminary survey operations in Sector Nine, had failed to make three successive position reports. The coordinates of the star systems assigned to the Ten elphi for investigation were known, as was the sequence in which they would be visited; and since the ship had not released a distress beacon, there was no immediate cause for concern over the fate of the missing vessel. The trouble, as so often happened, might turn out to be a simple communications failure rather than anything dramatic.

Stellar activity in the region was well above the norm, with the result that subspace radio communication was extremely difficult. Signals considered to be important-and they had to be very important indeed, because of the power required to penetrate the highly peculiar medium that was hyperspace-were taped and transmitted repeatedly for as long as was thought necessary, and safe, to do so. The transmission process released harmful radiation, which could not be effectively shielded if the signal was prolonged, especially where lightly built scoutships were concerned. The result was that a terse, highly compressed signal riddled with stellar interference was sent to be pieced together, hopefully in its entirety, from fifty or more identical but individually unreadable messages. Position-report signals were brief and therefore safe, and the power drain was relatively light, even for a scoutship.

But the Tenelphi had not sent a position report. Instead, it had transmitted a repeated message to the effect that it had detected and later closed with a large derelict that was falling rapidly into the system’s sun, with impact estimated in just under eight days. Since none of the system’s planets was within the life-spectrum-unless the life concerned was one of the exotic varieties that might be capable of flourishing on semi-molten rock under a small, intensely hot and aging sun-the assumption had been made that the vessel’s entry into the system was accidental rather than the result of a planned mission. There was evidence of residual power remaining in the derelict, and of several pockets of atmosphere of various densities, but no sign of life. The Tenelphi’s intention was to board it and investigate.

In spite of the poor signal quality, there could be no doubt of the pleasure felt by the Tenelphi’s communications officer at this lucky break in the otherwise deadly monotony of a routine mapping assignment.

Possibly they became too excited to remember to include a position report,” O’Mara’s voice continued, “or they knew that the timing of the signal, by checking it against their flight plans, would tell us where they were in general terms. But that was the only coherent message received. Three days later there was another signal, not taped but repeated, each time in slightly different form, by the sender speaking into a microphone. It said that there had been a serious collision, the ship was losing pressure and the crew was incapacitated. There was also some sort of warning. In my professional opinion the voice was distorted by more than the intervening subspace radio interference, but you can decide that for yourselves. Then, two hours later, a distress beacon was released.

“I have included a copy of the second signal, which may help you.” The Chief Psychologist’s voice added dryly, “Or help confuse you …

Unlike the first signal, the second was virtually unreadable. It was like listening to a mighty storm through which a voice, badly distorted to begin with, was trying to make itself heard in a whisper. They listened intently to the words while trying even harder to ignore the rattling explosions of interstellar static accompanying them, so much so that Naydrad’s fur rippled tensely with the strain and Prilicla, who was reacting to everyone else’s feelings as well as to the noise, gave up its attempt to hover and settled, trembling, on the table.

… idea if this … getting out or … crew incap … collision with derelict and … can’t do … distress beac … work it inside … manually … but can’t assume … stupidity of specialization when … if signal is getting out … warning in case … in collision … internal pressure dropping … can’t do anything about that, either … how to operate beacon from inside, release it manually from … al warning in case, lets too stiff to … confused and not much time … only chance is … sin chest … derelict is close … extra suit tanks … my specialty … ship Tenelphi in collision with … crew incapable of any … pressure dropping …

The voice went on for several minutes, but the words were lost in a prolonged burst of static. Shortly afterwards the tape ended. There were a few minutes of beautiful silence, during which Naydrad’s fur settled down and Prilicla flew up to the ceiling.

“It seems to me that the gist of this message,” Conway said thoughtfully, “is that the sender was unsure that the signal was being transmitted, possibly because he was not the communications officer and knew nothing about the equipment he was using, or maybe because he thought the subspace radio antenna had been damaged in the collision, which had, apparently, knocked out the rest of the crew. He did not seem to be able to help them, pressure was dropping, and again due to structural damage, he was unable to release the distress beacon from inside the ship. He would have to have set its timer and pushed it away from the ship with his hands.

“His doubts about the signal going out and his remarks regarding the stupidity of specialization,” he went on, “indicate that he was probably not the communications officer or even the Captain, who would have a working knowledge of the equipment in all departments of his ship. The ‘lets too stiff’ bit could be ‘gauntlets too stiff’ to operate certain controls or suit fastenings, and with the ship’s internal pressure dropping he might have been afraid to change from his heavy-duty spacesuit to a lightweight type with its thinner gauntlets. What an ‘al warning’ or a ‘sin chest’ is, I just don’t know, and in any case the distortion was so bad that those may only be approximations of the words he used.”

Conway looked around the table. “Maybe you can find something I missed. Shall I play the tape again?”

They listened again, and again, before Naydrad, in its forthright fashion, told him he was wasting their time.

“We would know how much credence to place on the material in this signal,” Conway said, “if we knew which officer sent it and why he, of all the crew, escaped serious injury during the collision. And another point: Once he says the crew are incapable, and later he describes them as being incapacitated. Not hurt or injured, but incapacitated. That choice of word makes me wonder if he is perhaps the ship’s medical officer, except that he hasn’t described the extent of their injuries or, as far as his signal is concerned, done much to help them.”

Naydrad, who was the hospital’s expert in ship rescue procedures, made noises like a modulated foghorn, which translated as, “Regardless of his function in the ship, there is not much that any officer could do with fracture and decompression casualties, especially if everyone was sealed in suits or if the officer himself was a minor casualty. Regarding the, to me, subtle difference in meaning between the words incapacitated and injured, I think we are wasting time discussing it. Unless there is a deficiency in this ship’s translation computer that affects only the Kelgian programing …

The Captain bridled visibly at the suggestion that there might be anything at all wrong with his ship or its equipment. “This is not Sector General, Charge Nurse, where the translation computer fills three whole levels and handles simultaneous translations for six thousand individuals. The Rhabwar’s computer is programmed only to cover the languages of the ship’s personnel, plus the three most widely used languages in the Federation other than our own-Tralthan, Illensan and Melfan. It has been thoroughly tested, and it performs its function without ambiguity, so that any confusion—”

“Undoubtedly lies in the signal itself,” Conway contributed hastily, “and not in the translation. But I would still like to know who sent the message. The crew-member who used the words incapacitated and incapable instead of hurt or injured, who could not do something because he was confused and short of time and was hampered by gauntlets … Dammit, he might at least have told us something about the physical condition of the casualties so we’d know what to expect!”

Fletcher relaxed again. “I wonder why he was wearing a suit in the first place. Even if the ship was maneuvering close to the derelict and a collision occurred for whatever reason, it would not have been expected. By that I mean the crew would not normally be wearing spacesuits during such a maneuver. But if they were wearing them, then they were expecting trouble.”

“From the derelict?” Murchison asked quietly.

A long silence followed, broken finally by the Captain. “Very unlikely, if it was, in fact, a derelict, and there is no reason to doubt the Tenelphi’s original report on the situation. If they were not expecting trouble, then we are back with this officer, not necessarily the ship’s medic, who was able to get into a spacesuit and perhaps help some of the others into theirs—”

“Without compounding their injuries?” asked Naydrad.

“I can assure you that Monitor Corpsmen are trained to react to situations like this one,” said Fletcher sharply.

Reacting to the Captain’s growing irritation at the implied criticism of one of his fellow officers, Prilicla joined in: “The brokenup message we received did not mention injuries, so it is possible that the most serious damage is to the scoutship’s structure and systems rather than to its crew. Incapacitated is not a very strong word. We may find that we have nothing to do.”

While approving the little empath’s attempt to halt the bickering between Naydrad and the overly touchy ship commander, Conway thought that Prilicla was being far too optimistic. But before anyone could speak there was an interruption.

“Control to Captain. Jump in seven minutes, sir.”

Fletcher regarded his half-finished meal for a moment, then stood up. “There is no real need for me to go up there, you know,” he said awkwardly. “We took our time coming out to Jump-distance to ensure that the ship was fully operational. It is, in every respect.” He gave a short, forced laugh. “But the trouble with good subordinates is that sometimes they make a superior officer feel redundant …

The Captain, Conway thought as Fletcher’s legs disappeared up the well, was trying very hard to be human.

Shortly afterwards the ship made the transition into hyperspace, and just under six hours later it re-emerged. Because the Rhabwar had left the hospital at the end of the medical team’s duty period, they had all used the intervening time to catch up on their rest. Nonetheless, there were a few interruptions whenever the Captain relayed what he thought were significant pieces of conversation from Control over the ship’s PA system. Obviously, he was simply trying to keep the medics fully informed at every stage of the proceedings. If he had realized the reaction of Conway and the others at being repeatedly awakened to be given information that was either too technically specialized or too elementary, he would have dropped the idea.

Then, suddenly, a relay from Control that signaled the end of any further hope of sleeping for a long time to come.

“We have contact, sir! Two traces, one large and one small. Distance one point six million miles. The small trace matches the mass and dimensions of the Tenelphi.”

“Astrogation?”

“Sir. At maximum thrust we can match course, velocity and position in two hours, seventeen minutes.”

“Very well, we’ll do that. Power Room?”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Four-gravities thrust in thirty seconds, Mr. Chen. Dodds, give Haslam your course figures. Would Senior Physician Conway report to Control as soon as convenient.”

Because the physiological classification of the casualties and the general nature of their injuries were already known, it had been decided that Captain Fletcher would remain in the Rhabwar while Conway and the other Corps officers boarded the Tenelphi to assess the situation. Murchison, Prilicla and Naydrad were standing by on the Casualty Deck, ready to treat the cases as they came through. Since both the casualties and medical team had the same atmosphere and life-support requirements, it was expected that the examination and preliminary treatment time would be short, and that the Rhabwar would be returning to Sector General within the hour.

Conway sat in the supernumerary’s position in Control, sealed up except for his helmet visor, watching the image of the Tenelphi growing larger on the Captain’s screen. Flanking the Captain were Haslam and Dodds in the communications and astrogation positions, respectively, also suited except for their gauntlets, which had been removed to facilitate operation of their control consoles. The three officers muttered to one another in the esoteric language of their profession and occasionally exchanged words with Chen, who was in the Power Room aft.

The image of the distressed ship grew until it overflowed the edges of the screen, whereupon magnification was stepped down and it was suddenly tiny again-a bright silver cigar shape tumbling slowly in the blackness, with the immense spherical shape of the derelict turning slowly, like a battered, metal moon, two miles beyond it.

Like Conway, the derelict was being ignored for the present. For no other reason than to register his presence, he said, “It doesn’t appear to be too badly damaged, does it?”

“Obviously not a head-on collision,” Fletcher responded. “There is serious damage forward, but most of it is to the antennae and sensors, sustained, I think, when she struck and then rolled against the other ship. I can’t see the extent of the damage in detail because of the fog. She’s still losing a lot of air.”

“Which could mean that she still has a lot of air to lose, sir,” said Dodds. “Forward tractors and pressors ready.”

“Right, check her pitch and roll,” ordered the Captain. “But gently. The hull will be weakened, and we don’t want to pull it apart. They might not be wearing suits …

He left the sentence hanging as Dodds leaned stiffly over his console. All of the astrogator’s attention was concentrated in his fingertips as he focused the immaterial cone-shaped fields of the pressor and tractor beams on the hull of the damaged ship, bringing it slowly and gently to rest with respect to the Rhabwar. Seen at rest, the Tenelphi’s bow and stern were still obscured by a fog of escaping air, but amidships the vessel seemed to have retained its structural integrity.

“Sir,” Haslam reported excitedly, “the midships lock is undamaged. I think we can dock and … and walk aboard!”

… And evacuate the casualties in a fraction of the time needed for an EVA transfer, Conway thought thankfully. Medical attention was only minutes away for those who had been able to survive thus far. He stood up, closed and sealed his helmet.

“I’ll handle the docking,” said Fletcher briskly. “You two go with the Doctor. Chen, stay put unless they send for you.

They felt the tiny shock of the Rhabwar making contact with the other ship while they were still inside their own midships lock with the inner seal closed behind them. Dodds activated the outer seal, which swung slowly inwards to reveal the outer surface of an identical seal a few inches away. They could see a large, irregular patch of what seemed to be paint or oil, mottled brown and black in color, in the middle of the Tenelphi’s seal. The stuff had a ridged, blistered appearance.

“What is that stuff?” Conway asked.

“I haven’t a clue,” Haslam began, reaching out to touch it. His fingers left yellowish smears and some of the material stuck to his gauntlets. “It’s grease, Doctor. The dark color fooled me at first. I expect the heat of the beacon melted and burned off most of it and left the rest looking like that.”

“Grease,” said Conway. “How did grease get spread over the outer seal?”

Haslam sounded impatient as he replied: “Probably one of the dispenser canisters broke loose during the crash and spun against the seal. There is a pressure nozzle at one end of the canister, which, if depressed with sufficient force, discharges several ounces of grease automatically. If you’re very interested, Doctor, I can show you one of them later. Stand back, please, I’m going to open up.

The seal swung open, and Haslam, Conway and Dodds stepped into the Tenelphi’s lock chamber. Haslam checked the telltales as Dodds closed the outer seal. The pressure inside the ship was dangerously low, but not lethally low for a person who was fit and healthy. What it would do to an unprotected casualty who might be in shock-with decompression effects accelerating the loss of blood from even superficial cuts and lacerations-was another matter. Suddenly the inner seal opened; their suits creaked and swelled with the pressure differential, and they moved quickly inside.

Haslam gasped. “I don’t believe it!”

The lock antechamber was filled with spacesuited figures drifting loosely on the ends of pieces of rope or webbing that had been attached to equipment support brackets or any other convenient tethering point. The emergency lighting system was functioning and bright enough to show all the figures in detail, including the webbing that bound each man’s legs together, his arms tightly to his sides and extra air tanks on his back. The spacesuits were all of the rigid, heavy-duty type, so the tight webbing did not compress the underlying limbs and torsos and whatever injuries they might have sustained. In each case the helmet visor was covered by its almost opaque sun filter.

Moving carefully between two of the drifting figures, Conway steadied one and slid back the sun filter. The inside of the visor was badly fogged, but he could make out a face that was much redder than normal and eyes that squeezed themselves shut as soon as the light hit them. He slid back the filter of another casualty, then another, with similar results.

“Untether them and move them to the Casualty Deck, quickly,” Conway said. “Leave the arm and leg restraints in place for the present. It makes them easier to move, and the strapping will support the fractured limbs, if any. This is not the complete crew?”

It was not really a question. Obviously, someone had trussed up the casualties and moved them to the Tenelphi’s airlock to be ready for a fast evacuation.

“Nine here, Doctor,” said Haslam after a quick count. “One crew-member is missing. Shall I look for him?”

“Not yet,” said Conway, thinking that the missing officer had been a very busy man. He had sent a subspace radio message, released a distress beacon when the automatic release mechanism had malfunctioned or he had been unable to work it, and he had moved his companions from their duty positions in various parts of their ship to the airlock antechamber. It was not inconceivable that during these activities he had damaged his spacesuit and had been forced to find himself an airtight compartment somewhere to await rescue.

The man who had accomplished all that, Conway swore to himself, was damn well going to be rescued!

While he was helping Haslam and Dodds transfer the first few casualties through to the Rhabwar, Conway described the situation for the benefit of those on the Casualty Deck and for the Captain. Then he added, “Prilicla, can you be spared back there for a few minutes?”

“Easily, friend Conway,” the little empath replied. “My musculature is not sufficiently robust to assist directly in the treatment of DBDG casualties. My support is moral rather than medical.”

“Fine,” said Conway. “Our problem is a missing crew-member who may or may not be injured, perhaps sheltered in an airtight compartment. Will you pinpoint his position for us so we won’t waste time searching through wreckage? Are you wearing a pressure envelope?”

“Yes, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “I’m leaving at once.

It took nearly fifteen minutes for the casualties to be moved out of the Tenelphi and into the ambulance ship. By that time Prilicla was drifting back and forth along the exterior of the wreck’s hull in an effort to detect the emotional radiation of the missing crewmember. Conway stayed inside the wreck and tried to keep his feelings of impatience and concern under control so as not to distract the Cinrusskin.

If anything lived in the Tenelphi, even if it was deeply unconscious or dying, Prilicla’s empathic faculty would detect it.

“Nothing, friend Conway,” Prilicla reported after twenty interminable minutes. “The only source of emotional radiation inside the wreck is yourself.”

Conway’s initial reaction was one of angry disbelief.

“I’m sorry, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied. “If the being is still in the ship it … it is dead.”

But Conway had never been one to give up easily on a patient. “Captain, Conway here. Is it possible that he’s adrift? Perhaps injured or with his suit radio damaged as a result of releasing the beacon?”

“Sorry, Doctor,” Fletcher replied. “We made a radar sweep of the area when we arrived in case the man had accidentally released himself along with the beacon. There is some loose metallic wreckage but nothing large enough to be a man. Nonetheless, I’ll make another sweep to be absolutely sure.” He paused for a moment, then went on: “Haslam, Dodds. Providing you will not be interfering with the medical treatment down there, check the ID tags and uniform insignias of the casualties and bring me a list. Quickly.

“Chen, you won’t be needed in the Power Room for a while,” he continued. “Seal up and search the wreck as thoroughly as possible in the time left to us. The casualties are supposed to be moved as quickly as possible to the hospital, and to add to our troubles, this system’s sun is coming too close for comfort. You will be looking for the missing officer’s body, ship’s papers, tapes or anything that might explain what happened here. You should find a crew duty roster attached to the Recreation Deck notice board. By comparing it with the list of casualties, we will be able to tell the identity of the missing man as well as his specialty—”

“I know his specialty,” Conway broke in suddenly. He was thinking of the highly professional way in which the missing man had moved the casualties, immobilized them against the possibility of further and perhaps self-inflicted injuries as well as extended the duration of their air supply, and of the amateurish way he had done everything else. “I’m sure he was the ship’s medic.”

Fletcher did not reply, and Conway began moving slowly around the Tenelphi’s lock antechamber. He had the uncomfortable feeling that something should be done, and quickly, but he had no idea what that something was. There was nothing unusual to be seen except, possibly, a wall-mounted clip that was designed to hold three cylindrical canisters about two feet long and that now held only two. Closer inspection showed identification labels on the cylinders, indicating that they contained type GP1O/5B grease suitable for use on major actuator mechanisms and control linkages periodically or permanently exposed to low temperature and/or vacuum conditions. Feeling confused and impatient with himself-his job was on the Casualty Deck and not wasting time here-Conway returned to the Rhabwar.

Lieutenant Chen was already waiting to enter the lock Conway had just vacated. He opened his visor to speak to the Doctor without tying up the suit frequency and asked Conway if he had been forward to the damaged area of the wreck. Without unsealing his visor Conway shook his head. As Conway moved towards the communication well, Haslam, a piece of folded paper between his teeth to leave both hands free for climbing, came briefly into sight as he pulled himself in the direction of Control. Conway waited until the man had passed, then he stepped into the gravity-free well and began pulling himself aft towards the Casualty Deck.

Of the nine casualties, two of them had already had their spacesuits cut away in small pieces so as not to compound any underlying injuries. Murchison and Dodds were stripping a third without cutting the suit away, and Naydrad was removing the suit of a fourth casualty-also in normal fashion.

Without giving Conway time to ask the inevitable question, Murchison said, “According to Lieutenant Dodds here, all the indications are that these men were already encased in their spacesuits and strapped tightly to their couches before the collision occurred. I did not agree at first, but when we stripped the first two and found no injuries, not even bruising …! And the suit fabric was marked by abrasive contact in areas corresponding to the positions of the safety strapping.

“The x-ray scanner lacks definition when used through a spacesuit,” she went on, holding the casualty under the arms to steady him while Dodds tugged carefully at the leg sections, “but it is clear enough to show fractures or serious internal injuries. There are none, so I decided that cutting away the suits would be an unnecessary waste of time.”

“And of valuable service property,” Dodds added with feeling. To a spacegoing Monitor Corps officer, a spacesuit was much more than a piece of equipment, it was analogous to a warm, close-fitting, protective womb. Seeing them being deliberately torn apart would be something of a traumatic experience for him.

“But if they aren’t injured,” Conway asked, “what the blazes is wrong with them?”

Murchison was working on the man’s neck seal and did not look up. “I don’t know,” she answered defensively.

“Not even a preliminary diag—”

“No,” she said sharply, then went on: “When Doctor Prilicla’s empathic faculty established the fact that they were in no immediate danger of dying, we decided that diagnosis and treatment could wait until they were all out of their suits, so our examination thus far has been cursory, to say the least. All I know is that the subspace radio message was correct-they are incapacitated, not injured.”

Prilicla, who had been hovering silently over the two stripped patients, joined the conversation timidly. “That is correct, friend Conway. I, too, am puzzled by the condition of these beings. I was expecting gross physical injuries, and instead I find something which resembles an infectious disease. Perhaps you, friend Conway, as a member of the same species, will recognize the symptoms.”

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to sound critical,” Conway said awkwardly. “I’ll help you with that one, Naydrad.”

As soon as he took off the man’s helmet he could see that his face was red and streaming with perspiration. The temperature was elevated and there was pronounced photophobia, which explained why the glare shields were in place over the visor. The hair was wet and plastered against the man’s forehead and skull as if he had just been in for a swim. The drying elements in the suit had been unable to cope with the excessive moisture, so that the interior of the faceplate was opaque with condensation. For that reason Conway did not notice the medication dispenser attached to the collar piece until the helmet had been removed. The medication was in the usual form of an edible transparent plastic tube nipped off at intervals to enclose a single color-coded capsule in each division.

“Did any of the other helmets contain this anti-nausea medication?” asked Conway.

“All of them so far, Doctor,” Naydrad replied, its four manipulators working independently on the suit fastenings while its eyes curled up to regard Conway. “The first casualty to be undressed displayed symptoms of nausea when I inadvertently applied pressure to the abdominal region. The being was not fully conscious at the time, so its words were not sufficiently coherent for translation.”

Prilicla quickly joined in. “The emotional radiation is characteristic of a being in delirium, friend Conway, probably caused by the elevated temperature. I have also observed erratic, uncoordinated movements of the limbs and head, which are also symptomatic of delirium.”

“I agree,” said Conway. But what was causing it? He did not utter the question aloud because he was supposed to know the answer, but he had an uneasy premonition that even a really thorough examination might not reveal the cause. He began helping the charge nurse to remove the patient’s sweat-soaked clothing.

There was evidence of heat prostration and dehydration, which, considering the patient’s high temperature and associated loss of body fluid, was to be expected. Gentle palpation in the abdominal area caused involuntary retching movements, although there was no foreign material in the stomach so far as Conway could determine. The man had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours.

The pulse was a little fast but steady, respiration irregular and with a tendency towards intermittent coughing. When Conway checked the throat he found it seriously inflamed, and his scanner indicated that the inflammation extended along the bronchi and into the pleural cavity. He checked the tongue and lips for signs of damage by toxic or corrosive material, and noticed that the man’s face was not, as he had first thought, wet only with perspiration- the tear ducts were leaking steadily, and there was a mucous discharge from the nose as well. Finally, he checked for evidence of radiation exposure or the inhalation of radioactive material, with negative results.

“Captain. Conway,” he called suddenly. “Would you ask Lieutenant Chen, while he is searching the Tenelphi for the missing officer, to bring back samples of the ship’s air and food and liquid consumables? Would he also look for evidence of a leakage of toxic material, solid or gaseous, into the life-support system, and bring them, tightly sealed, to Pathologist Murchison for analysis as quickly as possible?”

“Will do,” Fletcher responded. “Chen, you overheard?”

“Yes, sir,” said the engineer officer. “I still can’t find the missing casualty, Doctor. Now I’m beginning to look in all the unlikely places.”

Because Conway’s helmet was still sealed, Murchison had been listening to the conversation on the Casualty Deck’s speaker as well as hearing his side of it through his suit’s external sound system. “Two questions, Doctor,” she said irritably. “Do you know what’s wrong with them, and has it anything to do with your using that overly loud suit speaker instead of opening your visor and talking normally?”

“I’m not sure,” said Conway.

“Perhaps,” she said angrily to Dodds, “he doesn’t like my perfume.”

Conway disregarded the sarcasm and looked around the ward. While he had been examining the casualty with Naydrad, Murchison and Dodds had stripped the others and were obviously waiting for instructions. Prilicla was already carrying out the instructions that Conway had yet to utter on the first two casualties, but then, Prilicla invariably said and did the right thing because it was an exceptionally fine doctor as well as an empath.

“If it wasn’t for the very high temperature and general severity of their symptoms,” Conway said finally, “I’d say we are dealing with a respiratory infection with associated nausea caused, perhaps, by swallowing infected mucus. But the sudden and incapacitating onset of the symptoms makes me doubtful of that diagnosis.

“But that is not the reason I stayed sealed,” he went on. “There was no reason for doing so at first. Now, however, I think it would be a good idea if Lieutenant Dodds and you sealed up. It may be an unnecessary precaution.”

“Or it may already be too late,” said Murchison, unclipping one of the lightweight helmets, which, with its connecting hose, air tank and body webbing, converted the coveralls she was wearing into a protective suit, proof against anything but the most corrosive atmospheres. Dodds had already sealed his visor with remarkable haste.

“Until we can get them to the hospital,” Conway said, “treatment must be supportive rather than curative. Replace the lost fluids intravenously, control the nausea and try to keep the temperature down. We may have to use body restraints to keep them from dislodging their monitor leads. Isolate them in pressure tents and raise the oxygen level. I think their condition is going to worsen, and we may eventually need to assist their breathing with a ventilator.”

He paused for a moment, and when he looked at Murchison he knew that the concern on his face was concealed by the blurring effect of his visor and by the suit’s external speaker, which distorted his voice.

“The isolation may be unnecessary,” he said. “These symptoms could just as easily be due to inhaling and swallowing an as yet unidentified toxin. We can’t be sure, and we haven’t the proper facilities to find the answer in the limited time available. As soon as we find out what happened to the missing crew-man, we’ll whisk them all back to Sector General and submit ourselves to a thorough—”

“While we are waiting,” Murchison broke in, her voice and features now also distorted by a helmet, “I would like to try to discover what it was that hit them, and what it is that may hit everyone else but yourself.”

“There may not be time for that,” Conway began, but the voice of the engineer officer reporting to the Captain made him break off.

“Captain, Chen here. I’ve found the duty roster, sir, and I’ve checked it against the IDs of the casualties. The missing man turns out to be Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland, so the Doctor’s guess was right. But his body is not here. I’ve searched thoroughly and he’s not inside the wreck. There are things missing as well-the ship’s portable sound and vision recorders, the crew’s personal recorders, cameras, baggage containers, all missing. Clothing and personal effects are drifting about inside the crew’s quarters as — f they’d been scattered during a hurried unpacking.

“Practically all the spare air tanks have gone, and the equipment register shows that the crew’s spacesuits were all logged out for a period of between two and three days, except for the Surgeon-Lieutenant’s suit, which wasn’t logged out and is missing. The ship’s portable airlock is missing also.

“The Control area is badly damaged, so I can’t be absolutely sure, but it looks as if they were trying to set up for an automatic Jump, and the instrument settings in the Power Room, which wasn’t damaged, supports this. I’d say they were trying to move away from the derelict because of the distortion such a large mass of metal would zntroduce into the Jump calculations, but they collided with it instead.”

“I have the samples for Pathologist Murchison. Shall I come back now, sir?”

“Right away,” the Captain ordered.

While Lieutenant Chen and the Captain had been talking, Conway had been trying to make sense out of the strange behavior of the Tenelphi’s medical officer. Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland had displayed professional competence of a very high order in his treatment of the casualties. Through no fault of his own, he had not been able to communicate properly via the subspace radio although he had made a good try, but he had managed to perform the tricky job of manually releasing and activating the distress beacon. It seemed to Conway that Sutherland was a sensible and resourceful officer of the kind who did not panic easily. Neither was he the kind who would get himself killed accidentally or go without leaving some sort of message.

“If he isn’t adrift and he isn’t on the Tenelphi,” said Conway suddenly, “there is only one other place he can be. Can you land me on the derelict, Captain?”

Knowing Fletcher’s concern for his ship, Conway expected anything from a flat negative to a verbal explosion at the very suggestion. Instead, he received the kind of response an instructor gives to a pupil of mediocre intelligence-a lecture couched in such elementary language that if the Captain had not been five levels forward in Control, Conway would have risked unsealing his visor to spit in Fletcher’s eye.

“I can conceive of no reason, Doctor, why the missing officer should leave the Tenelphi when the obvious course would be to stay with the other casualties and await rescue,” the Captain began. Then he went on to remind Conway that they did not have a lot of time to waste. Not only should the casualties be hospitalized quickly, but the derelict, the Tenelphi and their own vessel were closing with the system’s sun at an accelerating rate, which would make it uncomfortably warm for all concerned in two days and would cause their hull to melt in four. There was also the fact that the closer they approached the sun, the more difficult it would be for them to make a Jump.

An added complication was that the Tenelphi and the Rhabwar were now docked and coupled fore and aft so that the ambulance ship could expand its hyperspace envelope to enclose the wreck, which would have to be taken back with them as evidence in the forthcoming investigation into the collision. With the two ships locked together and only one capable of exerting controlled thrust, delicate maneuvering of the order needed to land him on the derelict would be impossible. If Fletcher attempted it, the Rhabwar might well end up in the same condition as the Tenelphi. And then there was the sheer size of the derelict.

“The vessel is, or was originally, spherical,” the Captain went on, and the image from the Rhabwar’s telescope appeared on the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. “It is four hundred meters in diameter, with residual power and pressure in a few compartments deep inside the ship. But the Tenelphi has already reported the absence of life on board—”

“Sutherland may be on board now, Captain.”

Fletcher’s sigh made rustling noises on the intercom; then he went on in his patient, lecturing and infuriating voice. “The other ship’s findings are more dependable than ours, Doctor. A life indication is the result of a large number of sensor readings comprising the type and distribution of power sources, vibration associated with the mechanical aspects of life-support systems, pressure and temperature variations within the hull, detection of communication or lighting systems, and many more subtle indications. We both realize that many e-ts require ultra-low temperatures or do not see on our visual frequencies, but if anything, they are easier to detect as far as their life-support requirements are concerned.

“But right now,” the Captain continued, “I could not say with certainty whether or not anyone or anything was alive inside that thing. The close approach to the sun has heated up the outer hull to such an extent that it is no longer possible to detect subtle differences of temperature inside, and the other sensor readings are badly distorted because of the effect of the heat expansion on the structure as a whole. Besides, that ship is big. Its hull is so torn and punctured by meteorite collisions that Sutherland could have found a way in anywhere. Where would you start looking for him, Doctor?”

“If he’s there,” said Conway, “he’ll let us know where to look.”

The Captain remained silent for a moment, and Conway, despite his irritation with Fletcher’s manner towards him, could sympathize with the other’s dilemma. No more than Conway did the Captain want to leave the area without finding or otherwise establishing the fate of the missing Surgeon-Lieutenant. But there was the welfare of the other casualties to consider, which properly was Conway’s responsibility, and the safety of the ambulance ship, which was very definitely Fletcher’s.

With all three vessels sliding down the gravity well of the system’s sun with an acceleration that did not bear thinking about, the time allocated for a search for the missing officer would be strictly limited, and the Captain would not want to be placed in the position of having to abandon Senior Physician Conway of Sector General as well as the Monitor Corps medic on the derelict. Neither could he risk sending one of his officers with Conway because if he, too, was lost the Captain would have a very serious problem. The Rhabwar’s crew was small and there was no overlapping of specialties. Fletcher would probably be able to Jump back to Sector General eventually, but serious risks and delays would be involved that could adversely affect the casualties.

The wall speaker rustled with another sigh, and Fletcher said, “Very well, Doctor, you may search for the Surgeon-Lieutenant. Dodds, take the scope. You are searching for evidence of a recent entry into the derelict. Lieutenant Chen, forget the pathologist’s samples for the time being and return to the Power Room. I want maneuvering thrust in five minutes. Doctor, I shall circle the derelict longitudinally at a distance of half a mile. Since it is rotating once every fifty-two minutes, this will enable us to scan its hull surface in four orbits. Haslam, do what you can with the sensors, and give the doctor some idea of the geography of the interior.”

“Thank you,” said Conway.

Dodds had been helping Murchison move one of the casualties into a pressure tent. As soon as he was finished he excused himself and headed for Control. Conway looked at the repeater screen and the image of the derelict, half of which was a featureless blackness and half a confusion of brilliantly reflective hull plating that was crisscrossed by black fissures and craters. He glanced at it from time to time while he was helping attach bio-sensors to the casualties, seeing it grow larger and begin to unroll from top to bottom of the screen. Suddenly the image flicked off, to be replaced by a diagrammatic representation of the derelict.

It showed the cross section of the spherical vessel, with its deck levels making concentric circles to its core. Near the center several compartments of different sizes were marked in various shades of green, and close to the inner wall of the hull at one point there was a large, rectangular compartment marked in red. Fine red lines joined this area with the green compartments at the center.

“Doctor, Haslam here. I’m projecting a sensor diagram of the derelict’s interior. It is not detailed, I’m afraid, and a lot of it is guesswork …

The derelict had been a generation transport, Haslam went on to explain, of the spherical configuration favored at a time when maximum living and cultivating space was a necessity. Direction of travel was along the vertical axis, with the control area forward and the reactor and drive units, which were marked in red, astern. The vessel could rotate fairly rapidly around the vertical axis so as to furnish the outer deck levels amidships with artificial gravity even when the ship was using thrust.

Haslam did not know whether it was one catastrophe or a number of them that had overtaken the ship, but whatever it was it had devastated the control area along with the rest of the outer hull and deck levels and in the process had checked the spin to a fraction of what it should have been. Heavy shielding around the reactors had protected them from serious damage.

The ship had virtually been depopulated, but a number of compartments deep inside the vessel had retained pressure and power, and a number of survivors must have been able to live in them for a time. These were the sections marked in green. The atmosphere inside some of these compartments was little more than a soft vacuum, Haslam added, but in others it was probably still breathable by the present-day members of the species who had built the ship, whoever and whatever they were.

“Is there any possibility …”

“No survivors, Doctor,” Haslam stated firmly. “The Tenelphi reported the ship lifeless, derelict. The catastrophe probably happened centuries ago, and the survivors survived for only a short time.”

“Yes, of course,” said Conway. Then why would Sutherland go there?

“Captain. Dodds. I think I’ve found something, sir. Just coming into sunlight now. There it is on full magnification.”

The repeater screen showed a small area of the derelict’s ravaged outer hull. There was a black, jagged-edged opening leading into the depths of the ship, and beside it a section of buckled plating on which there was a large, brownish yellow smear.

“It looks like grease, sir,” said Dodds.

“I agree,” said the Captain, then impatiently: “But why would he use grease instead of fluorescent green marker paint?”

“Perhaps the stuff was handy, sir.”

Fletcher ignored Dodds’ reply-it had been a rhetorical question anyway. ‘Chen, we shall be closing with the derelict to one hundred meters. Haslam, stand by the pressors in case I miscalculate and blunder into that thing. Doctor, under the circumstances I’m afraid I cannot spare an officer to go with you, but a hundred meter flight should pose no serious problems. Just don’t spend too much time in there.”

“I understand,” said Conway.

“Very well, Doctor. Be ready to go in fifteen minutes. Take extra air tanks, water and whatever medical supplies you consider necessary. I hope you find him. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. He wondered what type of medication would be needed for a doctor who seemed to be physically fit but mentally deranged enough to go exploring in the derelict. Regarding his own requirements, he was less hesitant-he would simply increase the duration of his suit to forty-eight hours, at the end of which time the Rhabwar would depart, whether he found Sutherland or not.

While Conway was checking the extra tanks, Prilicla flew over and landed on the wall beside him. As they clung to the white plastic surface, the little empath’s legs trembled as if it was being subjected to intense emotional radiation. When it spoke Conway was surprised to discover that the emotion was self-generated. It was frightened.

“If I might offer a suggestion, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “the job of finding the being Sutherland would be accomplished much more simply and quickly if I were to accompany you.

Conway thought of the tangle of metal plating and structural members that lay beneath the hull of the derelict, of the danger of rupturing their spacesuits practically every foot of the way, and of the other dangers they could not even guess at. He wondered what had become of the celebrated Cinrusskin cowardice, which in that incredibly fragile species was its most important survival characteristic.

“You would come with me?” Conway asked incredulously. “You are offering to come with me?”

Prilicla responded timidly. “Your emotional radiation is somewhat confused, friend Conway, but on the whole flattering to myself. Yes, I shall go with you and use my empathic faculty to help find Sutherland, if he is still alive. However, you already know that I am not a brave person, and I reserve the right to withdraw from the search should the element of risk pass beyond what I consider acceptable limits.”

“I’m relieved,” said Conway. “For a moment there I was worried about your sanity.”

“I know,” said Prilicla, beginning to add items to its own spacesuit.

They exited by the small personnel lock forward, the main one being connected to the Tenelphi, and had to listen to Captain Fletcher worrying out loud about the situation for several interminable minutes. Then they were outside, and the hull of the derelict was spread out ahead and all around them like a gigantic wall, so pitted and torn and ruptured by centuries of meteorite collisions that at close range the spherical shape of the enormous vessel was not apparent. As they guided themselves towards it, there was a sudden dizzying change of perspective. The derelict was no longer a vertical wall but a vast, metallic landscape on which they were about to touch down, and the two coupled ships were hanging in the sky above it.

Conway found it much easier to guide himself down to the marked area than to control his emotions at the thought of landing on one of the legendary generation ships. But it was likely that his emotional radiation would not inconvenience Prilicla too much because the empath’s feelings would be very similar-even though it was physiologically impossible for a Cinrusskin to experience goose bumps or to have the non-existent hair at the back of its neck prickle with sheer wonder.

This was one of the generation ships which, before the discovery of hyperdrive, had carried colonists from their home worlds to the planets of other stars. All of the technologically advanced species of what was now the Galactic Federation had gone through their generation-ship phase. Melf, Illensa, Traltha, Kelgia and Earth had been among the scores of cultures which-between the time of their developing chemical- or nuclear-powered interplanetary travel and virtually instantaneous interstellar flight via the hyperdimension had flung these planetary seed pods into space.

When a few decades or centuries later the cultures concerned had perfected hyperdrive or received it from one of the species of the emerging Galactic Federation, they had gone looking for these lumbering sub-light-speed behemoths and had rescued the majority of them a few decades or centuries after they had been launched.

This could be accomplished because the courses of the generation ships were known with accuracy, and their positions at any time during their centuries-long voyages could be computed with ease. Provided no physical or psychological catastrophe had occurred in the meantime-and some of the non-physical things that had gone wrong in the generation ships had given the would-be rescuers nightmares for the rest of their lives-the colonists were transferred to their target worlds within a matter of days rather than centuries.

Conway knew that the last of the generation ships to be contacted had been cleared, their metal and reactors salvaged. A few of them had been converted for use as accommodation for personnel engaged on space construction projects more than six hundred years ago. But this particular generation ship was one of the few which had not been contacted when hyperdrive was perfected. Either by accident or because of faulty design, it had gone off course to become a seedling destined never to reach fallow ground.

In silence they landed on the derelict’s hull. Because of the vessel’s slow spin, Conway had to use his feet and wrist magnets to keep from being tossed gently away again, while Prilicla used its gravity nullifiers in combination with magnetic pads on the ends of its six pipe-stem legs. Carefully they climbed through the gap in the plating and out of the direct sunlight. Conway waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then he switched on his suit spotlight.

There was an irregular natural tunnel in the wreckage, leading down for perhaps thirty meters. At the bottom was a projecting piece of metal, which had been daubed with luminescent green marker paint and a smear of grease.

“If the Tenelphi’s officers marked a route for you,” Fletcher said when Conway reported the find, “it should speed the search for Sutherland. Always provided he hasn’t been diverted from the marked path. But there is another problem, Doctor. The farther you go into the derelict, the more difficult it will be to work your radio signals. We have more power here than you have in your suit power pack, so you will be able to listen to us long after we will cease hearing you. I’m referring to spoken messages, you understand. If you switch on your radio deep inside the ship, we will still be able to hear it, as a hiss or a burst of static, and vice versa. So even if we can no longer talk to each other, switch on your radio every fifteen minutes to let us know you’re still alive, and we’ll acknowledge.

“It is possible to send messages by short and long bursts of static. It is a very old method of signaling still used in certain emergency situations. Do you know Morse?”

“No,” said Conway. “At least, only enough to send SOS.”

“I hope you don’t have to, Doctor.”

Following the marked path through the wreckage was slow, dangerous work. The residual spin on the derelict made them feel as if they were climbing up towards the center of the ship, while Conway’s eyes and all of his instincts insisted that he was moving downwards. When they reached the first daub of paint and grease, another mark became visible deeper inside the ship, but the path inclined sharply to avoid a solid mass of wreckage and the next leg of the journey angled in a new direction for the same reason. They were progressing towards the center of the ship, but in a series of flat zigzags.

Prilicla had taken the lead to avoid the risk of Conway falling onto it. With its six legs projecting through its spherical pressure envelope-Prilicla’s bony extremities were not affected by vacuum conditions-it looked like a fat metallic spider picking its way gracefully through a vast, alien web. Only once did its magnetic pads slip, when it began to fall towards him. Instinctively, Conway reached out a hand to check the creature’s slow tumble as it was going past, then pulled his hand back again. If he had gripped one of those fragile legs, it would probably have snapped off.

But Prilicla checked its own fall with the suit thrusters, and they resumed the long, slow climb.

Just before communications with the ambulance ship became unworkable, Fletcher reported that they had been gone four hours, and asked if Conway was sure that he was following the missing Sutherland and not just the path marked by the party of the Tenelphi crew-members. Conway looked at the patch of luminous paint just ahead of them, and at the smear of grease beside it, and said he was sure.

I’m missing something, he told himself angrily, something that is right in front of my stupid face …!

As they moved deeper into the ship the wreckage became less densely packed, but the apparent gravity pull exerted by the spin had diminished so much that quite large masses of plating, loose equipment and demolished furnishings moved or slipped or settled ponderously whenever they tried to grip them. The suit spotlights showed other things, too-crushed, torn and unidentifiable masses of desiccated organic material, which were the remains of the crew or domestic animals caught in the centuries-old catastrophe. But separating the organic from the metallic wreckage would have been both highly dangerous and a waste of time. Finding Sutherland had to take priority over satisfying their curiosity regarding the physiological classification of the species that had built the ship.

They had been traveling for just under seven hours and had begun to move through levels that, although their structure was ruptured and contorted, were no longer choked with wreckage. This was fortunate because Prilicla kept blundering gently into walls and bulkheads through sheer fatigue, and every second or third breath that Conway took seemed to turn into a yawn.

He called a halt and asked the empath if it could detect any emotional radiation apart from Conway’s own. Prilicla said no and was too tired even to sound apologetic. When Conway next heard the periodic hiss in his suit phones, he acknowledged by flipping his transmit switch on and off rapidly three times, pausing, then repeating the signal at short intervals for several minutes.

The Captain would realize, he hoped, that the repeated S signal meant that Prilicla and Conway were going to sleep.

They made much better time on the next stage of the journey, which involved simply walking along virtually undamaged decks and climbing broad ramps or narrower stairs towards the center of the ship. Only once did they have to slow to negotiate a plug of wreckage, which had been caused, apparently, by a large and slow-moving meteorite that had punched its way deep inside the ship. A few minutes later they found their first internal airlock.

Obviously the lock had been built by the survivors after the catastrophe, because it was little more than a large metal cube welded to the surround of an airtight door and containing a very crude outer seal mechanism. Both seals were open and had been that way for a very long time, because the compartment beyond was filled with desiccated vegetation, that practically exploded into dust when they brushed against it.

Conway shivered suddenly as he thought of the vast ship, grievously but not mortally wounded by multiple meteorite collisions, blinded but not powerless, and with groups of survivors living in little islands of light and heat and isolated by steadily dropping pressure. But the survivors had been resourceful. They had built airlocks, which had enabled them to travel between their islands and cooperate in the matter of life-support, and they had been able to go on living for a time.

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, “your emotional radiation is difficult to analyze.”

Conway laughed nervously. “I keep telling myself that I don’t believe in ghosts, but I still won’t believe me.”

They went around the hydroponics room because the markers said that they should, and an hour or so later they entered a corridor that was intact except for two large ragged-edged holes in the ceiling and deck. There was a strange dilution of the absolute darkness of the corridor, and they switched off their spotlights.

A faint glow was coming from one of the holes, and when they moved to the edge it was as if they were looking down a deep well with a tiny circle of sunlight at the bottom. Within a few seconds the sunlight had disappeared, and for a few more seconds the wreckage at the other end of the tunnel was illuminated. Then the darkness was complete again.

“Now,” Conway said with relief, “at least we know a shortcut back to the outer hull. But if we hadn’t happened to be here at precisely the right time when the sun was shining in—”

He broke off, thinking that they had been very lucky and that there might be more luck to come, because at the end of the corridor containing the newly discovered exit they could see another airlock. It was marked with luminous paint and a very large smear of grease, and the outer seal was closed, a clear indication that there was pressure in the compartment beyond.

Prilicla was trembling with its own excitement as well as with Conway’s as Conway began to operate the simple actuator mechanism. He had to stop for a moment because the suit radio was hissing at him and he had to acknowledge. But when he had done so it kept on hissing at him.

“The Captain is not a very patient man,” said Conway irritably. “We’ve been gone just over thirty-eight hours and he said he would give me two days He paused for a moment and held his breath, listening to the faint, erratic hissing, which was quieter than the sound of his own breathing, so deep inside the derelict had they penetrated. It was difficult to tell when a hiss stopped or started, but gradually he detected a pattern in the signals. Three short bursts. Pause. Three long bursts. Pause. Three short bursts, followed by a longer pause, after which the sequence was repeated again and again. A distress signal. An SOS …

“There can’t be anything wrong with the ship,” he said. “That would be ridiculous. So it has to be a problem with the patients. Anyway, they want us back there and I would say the matter is urgent.”

Prilicla, clinging to the wall beside the airlock, did not reply for several seconds. Finally it said, “Pardon the seeming unpoliteness, friend Conway, but my attention was elsewhere. It is at the limit of my range, but I have detected an intelligent life-form.”

“Sutherland!” said Conway.

“I should think so, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. It began to tremble in sympathy with Conway’s dilemma.

Somewhere within a few hundred feet was the missing Tenelphi medic, physical condition unknown, but very definitely alive. It might take an hour or more to find him, even with Prilicla’s help. Conway desperately wanted to find and rescue the man, not just for the usual reasons but because he felt sure that he possessed the answer to what had happened to the other Tenelphi officers. But he and Prilicla were wanted back on the Rhabwar, urgently. Fletcher would not send an SOS signal without good reason.

Obviously the ship was not in distress, so it had to be a problem involving the patients. A sudden worsening of their condition, perhaps, which was serious enough for Murchison and Naydrad-two beings who did not panic without reason-to agree to this method of recalling the two doctors. But, thought Conway suddenly, one doctor could satisfy them temporarily until they got two more a little later, one of whom, Sutherland, had a greater knowledge of the malady concerned than the ambulance ship medics.

Prilicla ceased trembling as soon as Conway made his decision. He turned to his companion. “Doctor, we’ll have to split up. They need us urgently on the ship, or maybe they just want to talk to us urgently. Would you mind taking the shortcut to the outer hull? Find out what the problem is and give what advice you can. But don’t move away from the outer end of that tunnel for at least an hour after you get there. If you do that you will be in line of sight with the Rhabwar and, via the tunnel, with me down here, and can relay messages in either direction.

“You should be able to get to the other end of the tunnel, with no zigzagging necessary and with the centrifugal force of the spin helping you along, in roughly two hours,” Conway went on. “This should give me enough time to find Sutherland and start bringing him out. It has to be my job because it will need DBDG muscles rather than Cinrusskin sympathy to help him through that tunnel.”

“I agree, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, already moving along the corridor towards the opening. “I have rarely agreed to a request with more enthusiasm …

The first surprise when he went through the airlock was that there was light. He found himself in a large, open compartment, which, judging from the remains of equipment attached to the deck, walls and ceiling, had been the ship’s assembly and recreation area. The equipment, which had originally been used for weightless exercising and probably for competitive sports as well, had been drastically modified to provide supports for the sandwich hammocks, which were necessary for sleeping in the weightless condition. Apart from a few sections sheeted in with transparent plastic and containing vegetation, some of which was still green, the interior surfaces of the enormous compartment were covered with bedding and furniture modified for gravity-free conditions. It looked as if up to two hundred survivors of the original meteorite collisions, including their young, had once been packed into this compartment. The visual evidence indicated that they had lived there for a long time. The second surprise was that there were no traces of them other than the furniture and fittings they had used. Where were the bodies of the long-dead survivors?

Conway felt his scalp prickle. He turned up the volume of his external suit speaker to full and yelled “Sutherland!”

No response.

Conway launched himself across the compartment towards the opposite wall, where there were two doors. One of them was partly open and light was shining through. When he landed beside it he knew it was the ship’s library.

It was not just the neat racks of books and tape-spools that covered the walls and ceiling of the empty room, or the reading and scanning equipment attached to the deck, or even the present-day tapes and portable recorders that had belonged to the Tenelphi officers but that had been abandoned to drift weightlessly about the room. He knew it was the library because he had been able to read the sign on the door, just as he was able to read the name below the ship’s crest mounted at eye-level on the opposite wall. As he stared at that famous crest everything suddenly became clear.

He knew why the Tenelphi had run into trouble, why the officers had left their ship for the derelict, leaving only their medic as watch-keeping officer. He knew why they had returned so hastily, why they were sick and why there was so little he, or anyone else for that matter, could do for them. He also knew why Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland used grease instead of marker paint, and he had a fair idea of the situation confronting the doctor that had driven him back to the derelict. He knew because that ship’s name and crest appeared in the history books of Earth and of every Earth-seeded planet.

Conway swallowed, blinked away the fog that was temporarily impairing his vision, and backed slowly out of the room.

The sign on the other door had read Sports Equipment Stowage, but it had been relettered Sick Bay. When he slid it open he found that it, too, was lighted, but dimly.

Along the walls on both sides of the door, equipment storage shelves had been modified to serve as tiers of bunks, and two of them were occupied. The bodies occupying them were emaciated to the point of deformity, partly because of malnutrition and partly because of being born and living out their lives in the weightless condition. Unlike the desiccated sections of bodies Prilicla and he had encountered on the outer decks, these two had been exposed to atmosphere, and decomposition had taken place. The process was not sufficiently advanced, however, to conceal the fact that the bodies were of classification DBDG, an old male and a girl-child, both Earth-human, and that their deaths had occurred within the past few months.

Conway thought of the voyage that had lasted nearly seven centuries and of the last two survivors who had almost made it, and he had to blink again. Angrily, he moved deeper into the room, pulling himself along the edge of a treatment table and instrument cabinet. In a far corner his spotlight illuminated a spacesuited figure holding a squarish object in one hand and supporting itself against an open cabinet door with the other.

“S … Sutherland?”

The figure jerked and in a weak voice replied, “Not so bloody loud.”

Conway turned down the volume of his speaker and said quickly, “I’m glad to see you, Doctor. I’m Conway, Sector General. We have to get you back to the ambulance ship quickly. They’re having problems there and …

He broke off because Sutherland was refusing to let go of the cabinet. Reassuringly, Conway went on: “I know why you used yellow grease instead of paint, and I haven’t unsealed my helmet. We know there is pressure in other parts of the ship. Are there any survivors? And did you find what you were looking for, Doctor?”

Not until they were outside the sick bay with the door closed behind them did Sutherland speak. He opened his visor, rubbed at the moisture beading the inside of it. “Thank God somebody remembers his history,” he said weakly. “No, Doctor, there are no survivors. I searched the other air-filled compartments. One of them is a sort of cemetery of inedible remains. I think cannibalism was forced on them at the end, and they had to put their dead somewhere where they would be, well, available. And no again, I didn’t find what I was looking for, just a means of identifying but not curing the condition. All the indicated medication spoiled hundreds of years ago He gestured with the book he was holding. “I had to read some fine print in there, so I increased the air pressure inside my suit so that when I opened my visor for a closer look it would blow away any airborne infection. In theory it should have worked.”

Obviously it had not worked. In spite of the higher pressure inside his suit blowing air outwards through his visor opening, the Surgeon-Lieutenant had caught what his fellow officers had. He was sweating profusely, squinting against the light and his eyes were streaming, but he was not delirious or unconscious, as the other officers from the Tenelphi had been. Not yet.

“We found a quick way out,” Conway said. “Well, relatively. Do you think you can climb with my assistance, or should I tie your arms and legs and lower you ahead of me?”

Sutherland was in poor shape, but he most emphatically did not want to be tied and lowered, no matter how carefully, down a tunnel whose walls were of twisted and jagged-edged metal. They compromised by strapping themselves together back to back, with Conway doing the climbing and the other medic fending them off the obstructions Conway could not see. They made very good time, so much so that they had begun to catch up to Prilicla before the Cinrusskin was more than halfway along the tunnel. Every time the sun shone into the other end, the dark circle that was the empath’s spacesuited body seemed larger.

The continuous hissing of the SOS signal grew louder by the minute, then suddenly it stopped.

A few minutes later the tiny black circle that was Prilicla became a shining disk as the empath cleared the mouth of the tunnel and moved into sunlight. It reported that the Rhabwar and the Tenelphi were in sight, and that there should be no problem making normal radio contact. They heard it calling the Rhabwar, and what seemed like ten years later came the hissing and crackling sound of the ambulance ship’s reply. Conway was able to make out some of the words through the background mush, so he was not completely surprised by Prilicla’s relayed message.

“Friend Conway,” said the empath, and he could imagine it trying desperately to find some way of softening the effect of its bad news. “That was Naydrad. All the DBDG Earth-humans on the ship, including Pathologist Murchison, are displaying symptoms similar to those of the Tenelphi officers, with varying degrees of incapacity. The Captain and Lieutenant Chen are the least badly affected so far, but both are in a condition that warrants their being confined to bed. Naydrad requires our assistance urgently, and the Captain says he’ll leave without us if we don’t hurry up. Lieutenant Chen is doubtful about our leaving at all, even if they weren’t having to modify the hyperdrive envelope to accommodate the Tenelphi. It seems there are additional problems caused by the proximity of the system’s sun that require a trained astrogator to—”

“That’s enough,” Conway broke in sharply. “Tell them to dump the Tenelphi! Decouple and undock and jettison any samples Chen took aboard for analysis. Neither Sector General nor the Monitor Corps will thank us for bringing back anything that has been in contact with the derelict. They might not be too happy to see us- He broke off as he heard Naydrad’s voice relaying his instructions to the Captain and the beginning of Fletcher’s reply. He went on quickly: “Prilicla, I’m receiving the ship direct, so I don’t need you as a relay anymore. Return to the ship as quickly as possible and help Naydrad with the patients. We should be clear of this tunnel in fifteen minutes. Captain Fletcher, can you hear me?”

A voice which Conway did not recognize as the Captain’s said, “I can hear you.”

“Right,” said Conway, and very briefly he explained what had happened to the Tenelphi and themselves …

Finding a derelict in the system they were surveying had been a welcome break in the monotony for the scoutship and for the offduty officers who went on board to investigate and, if possible, identify the vessel. Like all scoutships on survey duty, the Tenelphi had a complement consisting of a Captain and his astrogation, communications, engineering and medical officers, while the remaining five were the survey specialists, whose work went on around the clock.

According to Sutherland, the first officers to board the derelict had identified the ship very quickly, because of a lucky find of a store requisition form, dated and headed with the ship’s crest. The result had been that everyone, including the Captain, had hastily transshipped to the derelict. The sole exception was the ship’s medic, whose specialty was considered the least useful on what had suddenly become a mass information-gathering exercise.

For the derelict was none other than the Einstein, the first starship to leave Earth and the only one of those early generation ships from that planet not to be rescued by the later hyperdrive vessels. Many attempts at rescuing it had been made over the centuries, but the Einstein had not followed its intended course. It had been assumed that the ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction within a relatively short time of leaving the solar system.

And now here it was, the first and undoubtedly the bravest attempt by mankind to reach the stars the hard way, because at that time its technology had been untried, because nobody knew with absolute certainty that its target system contained habitable planets, and because its crew, the very best people that Earth could produce, wanted to go anyway. As well, the Einstein was a piece of technological and psychosociological history, the embodiment of one of the greatest legends of star travel. Now this great ship with its priceless log and records was falling into the sun and would be destroyed within the week. Small wonder, therefore, that the Tenelphi was left with only its medical officer on board. But even he did not realize that there was any danger in the situation until the crew, sick and sweating and near delirium, began to return. From the onset Sutherland had discarded Conway’s first assumptions, that their condition was due to radiation poisoning, inhaling toxic material or eating infected food, because the returning officers told him about the conditions on board the derelict and how long some of the descendants of its crew had been able to survive.

Not only did the ship carry priceless records of man’s first attempt at interstellar flight, it also contained an unknown quantity and variety of bacteria-preserved by the heat and atmosphere and recently living human organisms-of a type which had existed seven hundred years ago and for which the human race no longer had immunity.

Noting the rapidly worsening condition of his fellow officers and knowing there was little he could do for them, Sutherland insisted that they all wear spacesuits continually to avoid the possibility of cross-infection-he could not be absolutely sure they were all suffering from the same disease-and as protection in case of accidents while they were moving clear of the derelict. Their intention was to Jump to Sector General, where some high-powered medical assistance would be available.

When the collision-the inevitable collision, according to Sutherland, considering the semi-conscious and delirious condition of the crew-occurred, he moved the men to the lock antechamber in preparation for a quick evacuation, tried to send a subspace radio signal, and not knowing if he was doing the job properly, tried to eject the distress beacon. But the collision had damaged the release mechanism, and he had to push it out of the airlock. His patients’ condition was worsening, and he wondered again if there was anything at all that he could do for them.

It was then that he decided to go aboard the derelict himself, to look for a cure in the very place the disease had originated. The solution might be in the derelict’s medicine chest, the “sin chest” of the garbled radio signal. With pressure dropping steadily aboard the badly damaged Tenelphi and all the recorders abandoned on the derelict, he could not leave a proper warning for any would-be rescuers. But he had done his best.

He had smeared the Tenelphi’s airlock outer seal with yellow grease, not knowing that the heat from the distress beacon would turn it brown, and he had marked his path through the derelict in similar fashion. Few people these days realized, and even Conway had been slow to remember, that in pre-space-travel times a ship with disease on board flew a yellow flag …

“Sutherland discovered that the medication in the Einstein’s sick bay had long since spoiled,” Conway went on, “but he did find a medical textbook which mentioned a number of diseases with symptoms similar to those shown by our people. It is one of the old influenza variants, he thinks, although in our case the loss of natural immunity over the centuries means that these symptoms are being experienced with much greater severity, and any prognosis would be uncertain. That is why I would like you to record this information for proper subspace transmission to Sector General, so that they will know exactly what to expect. And I suggest you make preparations for an automatic Jump, in case you aren’t feeling well enough to—”

“Doctor,” the Captain replied weakly, “I’m trying to do just that. How quickly can you get back here?”

Conway remained silent for a moment while he and Sutherland cleared the edge of the tunnel. “I have you in sight. Ten minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later Conway was removing Sutherland’s spacesuit and uniform on the Casualty Deck, which was rapidly becoming overcrowded. Doctor Prilicla was hovering over the patients in turn, keeping an eye and an empathic faculty on their condition, while Naydrad brought in Lieutenant Haslam, who had collapsed at his position in Control a few minutes earlier.

Neither of the extraterrestrials had anything to fear from terrestrial pathogens, even seven-hundred-year-old pathogens. The Tenelphi and Rhabwar crew-members and Murchison could only lie and hope, if they weren’t already delirious or unconscious, that their bodies’ defenses would find some way of fighting this enemy from the past. Only Conway had remained free from infection, because a smear of grease or something in a garbled radio signal had worried his subconscious to the extent that he had not unsealed his visor after the scoutship’s officers had been brought aboard.

“Four-G thrust in five seconds,” came Chen’s voice from the speaker. “Artificial gravity compensators ready.”

The next time Conway looked at the repeater screen it showed the Einstein and the Tenelphi shrunk to the size of a tiny double star. He finished making Sutherland as comfortable as possible, checked his IVs and moved on to Haslam and Dodds. He was leaving Murchison to the last, because he wanted to spend more time with her.

She was perspiring profusely despite the reduced temperature inside the pressure litter, muttering to herself and turning her head from side to side, eyes half-open but not really conscious of his presence. He was shocked to see Murchison like this. He realized that she was a very seriously ill patient instead of the colleague he had loved and respected since the days when she was a nurse in the FGLI maternity section, when he was convinced that all the ills of the Galaxy could be cured by his pocket x-ray scanner and his dedication to his profession.

But in Sector General, where the lowliest member of the medical staff would be considered a leading authority in a single-species planetary hospital, all things were possible. An able nurse with wide e-t experience could move up and across the lines of promotion to become one of the hospital’s best pathologists, and a junior doctor with unconventional ideas bubbling about in a head that was much too large could learn sense. Conway sighed, wanting to touch and reassure her. But Naydrad had already done all that it was possible to do for her, and there was nothing he could do except watch and wait while her condition deteriorated towards that of the Tenelphi officers.

With any luck they would soon be transferred to the hospital, where more high-powered help and resources were available. Fletcher and Chen had been lucky in that the Captain had been in Control and the engineer officer in the Power Room while the infected Tenelphi officers were being brought aboard, so they had been the last two to be affected. Fortunately, they were still fit enough to work the ship.

Or were they …

The repeater screen was still showing an expanse of blackness in which the Einstein and the Tenelphi were indistinguishable among the background stars. But by now the screen should be showing the non-color of the hyperdimension. It would be much better for all concerned, Conway thought suddenly, if he stopped doing nothing for Murchison and tried to do something for Chen and the Captain.

“Friend Conway,” said Prilicla, indicating with one of its feelers, “would you look at this patient, please, and at the one over there? I feel they are conscious and need reassurance by a member of their own species.”

Ten minutes later Conway was in the well, pulling himself towards Control. As he entered he could hear the voices of the Captain and engineer officer calling numbers to each other, with frequent stops for repeats and rechecks. Fletcher’s face was red and dripping with perspiration, his eyes were streaming and his delirium seemed to have taken the form of a rigid professional monomania as he blinked and squinted at the displays on his panel and read off the numbers. Meanwhile, Chen, who did not look much better, replied from the strange position of the astrogator’s panel. Conway regarded them clinically and did not like what he saw.

“You need help,” he said firmly.

Fletcher looked up at him through red-rimmed, streaming eyes. “Yes, Doctor, but not yours. You saw what happened to the Tenelphi when the medical officer tried to pilot it. Just tend to your patients and leave us alone.”

Chen rubbed sweat from his face. “What the Captain is trying to say, Doctor, is that he can’t teach you in a few minutes what it took him five years of intensive training to learn, and that the delay in making the Jump is caused by our having to get it right first time in case we aren t fit enough for a second try and we materialize in the wrong galactic sector, and that he is sorry for his bad manners but he is feeling terrible.”

Conway laughed. “I accept his apology. But I have just come from speaking to one of the Tenelphi victims of what we now feel sure is one of the old influenza variants. He was one of the first to fall sick along with the other member of the original boarding party. Now his temperature is returning to normal and that of the other one is also falling rapidly. I would say that this outbreak of sevenhundred-year-old flu can be treated successfully with supportive medication, although the hospital will probably insist on a period of quarantine for all of us when we get back.

“However,” he went on briskly, “the officer I speak of is the Tenelphi’s astrogator, and frankly, he is in much better shape than either of you two. You do need help?”

They were looking at him as if he had just produced a miracle, as if in some peculiar fashion Conway was solely responsible for all the complex mechanisms evolved by the DBDG Earth-human lifeform to protect itself against disease-which was, of course, ridiculous. He nodded to them and returned to the Casualty Deck to send up the Tenelphi astrogator. He was thinking that within two weeks at most, everyone apart from the immune Prilicla and Naydrad would be fully recovered and convalescent, and he would no longer have to treat Pathologist Murchison as a patient.