Double Contact

CHAPTER 15

Again he positioned his hand a few inches from the panel and, without actually touching the buttons, moved his index finger from one to the other in the same sequence the robot had used while opening the first door, then waited. Hopefully he was displaying intelligence and memory as well as asking permission to proceed.

If the combination on this door was different, and it was booby-trapped and he was being allowed to make a mistake, then he might not survive the experience. The robot moved closer to him but it did not interfere. He pressed the buttons, the door slid open, and he moved slowly into the middle of another shorter, brightly lit passageway, then stopped.

His emotional radiation was so confused that for a long moment he could scarcely analyze it himself.

“Are you getting this?” he said finally.

“Yes, Doctor,” Haslam’s voice replied from Rhabwar. It sounded excited. “But remember to—”

“Getting what?” the captain’s voice broke in impatiently.

“I don’t know, sir,” Haslam replied. “You’d have to see it for yourself. And Dr. Prilicla, please remember to move your head and your helmet vision pickup very slowly, and hold it steady on each area you are describing. In case of, well, accidents. it’s very important if we’re to have sharp images for later”

Prilicla was well aware of that fact, but perhaps the other was trying to reassure both itself and himself that he wouldn’t be speaking for posterity.

He ignored the remark and went on. “As you can see, the surfaces of the walls, floor, and ceiling of this stretch contain more transparent hatches than there are opaque surfaces, and there is a major change in the configuration of the netting. It is no longer attached to the wall surfaces and has instead been replaced by what appears to be a light, open-lattice metal cylinder. It runs along the center of the passageway, is strongly supported at each end and, I would say, forms a convenient working position for crew members needing access to the systems behind the transparent hatches. Between the cylindrical net and the transparent hatches there isn’t much room for maneuvering…”

But then, I don’t need much, he added silently.

He moved forward along the cylindrical net in a slow spiral so as to cover all the inner surfaces of the passageway, speaking as he went. At one particularly large transparent panel he moved a hand close to its actuator buttons without touching them. Immediately the robot moved closer to nudge the hand away. He braced himself against the net and pressed his helmet and vision sensor firmly against the transparency. The robot did not react. Plainly this is a case of 'Look but don’t touch,' he went on.

“The wiring behind this panel is similar to that in the damaged robot crew member we found on Terragar. I’m holding the vision pickup motionless against the panel so that you’ll be able to use high magnification on the image…”

I am,” said Haslam with enthusiasm. “That looks good, Doctor, whatever it is.”—there was an impatient sound of an Earth-human throat — cleared and the captain said irritably, “Dammit, will I have to go back to Rhabwar to find out what you’re doing here?” Prilicla didn’t reply at once because he had moved to another panel. Even though the view revealed mechanisms and con nections much cruder in design and fabrication than the previous one, once again his hand was pushed away from the actuator mechanism.

He continued to describe clearly everything he was seeing and thinking, but not what he was feeling. The emotional radiation in the area was strengthening as he moved towards the other end of the passageway, but it was not yet clear enough to describe even to himself.

“… This area appears to be dedicated to complex plumbing,” he continued. “There are single and grouped pipes, from half an inch to two inches in diameter and distinctively color-coded. The fact that I was gently discouraged from opening the access hatch is a measure of their importance. I can’t remember seeing piping with these codings on the way here. This makes me suspect that they are a local phenomenon, and probably the conduits and metering devices for the crew’s air supply, water, or whatever other working fluid they use, and their food. Now I’m moving closer to another large door and actuator panel at the other end of the passageway and will try to open it… No, I won’t.”

While he had been speaking the robot had swarmed along to the opposite side of the cylindrical net and interposed its body between Prilicla and the actuator panel. Gently he slowly extended a hand and tried to move it aside.

It resisted strongly but took no other action.

“Interesting,” he said. “Apparently it trusts me, but not enough to let me go all the way in.” To the captain he went on, “Friend Fletcher, earlier you mentioned returning to Rhabwar to see what I am doing. Are you and the lieutenant engaged on anything of vital importance at the moment?”

“We’re investigating the interior hull circuitry and the leads to the power source aft. But the short answer is no, so stop wasting time being polite. What do you want me to do?”

“I want both of you to go back to Rhabwar,” said Prilicla, “and await further instructions…”

“That means leaving you alone here,” the captain broke in. “I don’t feel happy about that.”

“Depending on how well things go here,” Prilicla continued, ignoring the interruption, “I want you to send friend Dodds back with the portable holo projector and the standard first-contact tapes. I detect no strong feelings of personal animosity here, but if it will make you feel better, then the lieutenant may remain here. But it must stay well away from the control section. For some reason the Earth-humans, or maybe just the DBDG body configuration, make these people very much afraid.”

“Not all humanoids are good guys,” said Lieutenant Dodds. “Maybe they ran into some hostile elements during the Etlan War…”

“The Etlan police action,” Fletcher corrected automatically, and went on. “They could have had a bad experience with Earth-human look-alikes during the hostilities, or have entirely different reasons that we don’t yet understand. But Doctor, are you saying that you’re ready to open communications with them?”

“I’m ready to try,” said Prilicla.

He moved his helmet as close to the door as the robot would allow, then closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind of all distractive thoughts and feelings except for the tenuous fog of emotional radiation that he was trying to isolate and identify.

As he had expected from a survivor of a wrecked ship, the strongest emotions were negative. There was fear that was being controlled with difficulty, and a deep, corroding despair and concern that might or might not be personal, and pain. The pain was not the acute form characteristic of trauma, although there as a little of that present, too. It seemed to be more emotional than physical, and associated with a feeling of imminent loss. But within that dark fog there was a pale glimmer of curiosity, and wonder, trying to shine through.

It was time Prilicla shone a little light of his own. Literally Describing aloud what he was doing and thinking, he began switching on and off his helmet spotlight, low enough to be barely perceptible by his own eyes at first, then gradually increasing the intensity. He didn’t want the alien survivor to mistake the light for a weapon, but he also wanted to know if he was being seen through the robot’s eyes or if there were other visual sensors in operation. When he began to detect feelings of physical discomfort that were characteristic of sensory overload, presumably a reaction to a light that was now dazzling it, he reduced the brightness until its feeling of discomfort went away. Next he began flashing his light in an attempt to transmit intelligence in a form that he hoped the other should understand — simple arithmetic.

One flash of light followed two seconds later by another, then two flashes in rapid succession. He repeated the process with three, four, and five flashes as he tried to demonstrate simple addition as well as his own possession of intelligence. A change in the other’s emotional radiation, a sudden feeling of interest, an understanding combining with the background curiosity, told him that he had succeeded.

It was an immediate and present response to his first attempt at communication, but now he needed to know if he could continue the process at long range.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said, “you’ve seen and know what I’ve been doing. I’m going to stop using my helmet light. Instead I want you to duplicate the sequence and timing, but using your ship’s external hull lighting. I won’t be able to see Rhabwar from here, so please tell me as soon as you begin.”

“Right, Doctor,” said the captain. “I’ll need a moment to… You’ve got it.”

He didn’t need the other’s words because the survivor was reacting exactly as it had done to his helmet light, although the curiosity it was radiating was becoming tinged with impatience.

Plainly it was wondering what he was going to do next. That made two of them.

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” he said. “You can stop signaling now.”

He had expected but was still relieved at the confirmation that the visual communication could be continued from the ambulance ship, either by himself or — if he was undergoing one of his frequent periods of regenerative unconsciousness — by one of the others. But abruptly his relief was obliterated by a sudden explosion of fear from the survivor. Even the movements of its robot had become agitated.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said sharply into his communicator. “What’s happening out there?”

“Nothing much,” the captain replied promptly. “In order to save time loading and off-loading it from the pinnace, Dodds is using his suit thrusters to bring the holo projector to you. It’s an awkward piece of equipment but he can manage; in fact he’s about to land on the hull as we speak. ”

“Dodds,” said Prilicla urgently, “don’t move! The alien survivor is terrified. Turn back until I can find out why.”

But he already knew why. The holo projector was a large, intricate, and completely harmless piece of equipment, but the survivor didn’t know that. While its attention was being directed at Rhabwar’s lights, it had seen Dodds, one of the DBDG lifeforrns which for some reason frightened it, about to land on its ship with what it must have thought was a weapon. Except in the areas where the hull was damaged the ship had external defenses. Terragar had learned that, to its cost. But now it seemed there were no comparable internal defenses.

A porcupine didn’t need spines on the inside.

As well as being sensitive to others’ emotions, Prilicla knew he was a good projective empath. But he also knew that there was no way to make a being who was in the grip of intense fear feel good, or at least a little better, without first removing the source. That was why he concentrated all of his considerable empathic ability into the projection of reassurance, sympathy and trust at a level of intensity that he could not maintain for more than a few minutes. He also gesticulated on the off-chance that the survivor could understand the gestures he was making while he spoke into his communicator.

“I’m pointing back the way I came,” he said, “then making pushing motions with my hands to give the impression that I’m barring entry to anyone else. By now the survivor should have seen friend Dodds turning back. I think it’s working. The fear is diminishing…”

Prilicla continued to emote feelings of reassurance and sympathy until he was forced to stop and rest his brain for a moment, but by then the survivor’s feelings had returned to normal, or at least to the level they had been before the approach of Dodds. But there was still concern in the other’s mind which was not for itself.

The robot followed close behind him as he turned and moved out of the passageway, past the T-junction to the door opposite. It made no attempt tointerfere when he pressed the actuator buttons on the opposite door. As well as being its sole protector, he was beginning to think that it was the only source of vision that the first survivor had.

The door opened into another passageway that was identical in size and layout to the one he had just left, but there the resemblance ended. Only two of the lighting units came on as the door opened so that he had to use his helmet light to see through the transparent access hatches.

“Are you seeing this?” he said again, unnecessarily. “The plumbing and circuitry in this area has sustained damage.”

“We see it, Doctor,” replied the captain, who must have joined Haslam in control. “And there are signs that someone has been trying to effect repairs.”

Two of the pipe junctions had been wrapped in some form of metalized, adhesive tape, but not tightly enough to prevent a rush of air or vaporized fluid from fogging the joints. Behind the hatches he could see that many of the visible cable looms showing patches of heat discoloration, and several had been ruptured. One group, which bore the color-coding indicating that it led from the hull sensors, had been pulled apart, opened and the fine, hair-thin individual strands of wiring fanned outwards in preparation for splicing.

The repair work was nowhere near completion. Prilicla indicated the areas of damage in turn, pointing at the robot each time, then he pointed several times towards the damage and to himself. He was trying to ask two questions— whether the robot was responsible for the attempted repairs, and if Prilicla would be allowed to help complete the work. If the robot or its director understood him, there was no way as yet that they could answer. He moved to the inner door.

It was no surprise that the robot was there first, its body covering the actuator buttons to bar his entrance. But for now he would be content to touch the mind rather than the body on the other side of the door.

The general emotional texture was the same as he had detected from the other survivor, but the content was shockingly different. This time there was physical as well as emotional trauma. He couldn’t even guess at what was causing the physical discomfort, but there was a feeling of constriction, possibly of suffocation, that was overlaid by fear, despair, and the dreadful, negative emotion characteristic of utter isolation. He edged a little closer to the door and, as he had done earlier, concentrated on rejecting reassurance, friendship, and sympathy.

It took longer this time, possibly because he was tiring again, but finally there was a reaction. Faintly, through the cloud of Nativity he detected surprise, curiosity, and a feeling of hope. He began using his helmet light, but there was no change in the other’s emotional radiation. He asked the captain to duplicate sequence with the ship’s lighting. Still there was no response. Friend Fletcher,” he said, hiding his feelings with unemotional words, “I have detected the presence of a second all survivor. Its emotional radiation suggests that they are not i contact or presently aware of each other. The first one is distressed but not seriously injured. The second one, whose sensory and life-support systems are compromised as a result, I feel sure of it being closer to the damaged side of their ship, is injured and short of food, air, and water. It is also deaf, dumb, and blind.

“Full communications with and between the two aliens must be established as soon as possible,” he ended, “and both survivors must be extricated and treated without delay.”

“Doctor,” said the captain, “just how will we manage that?” “Thankfully I am not the specialist in other-species technology, friend Fletcher,” he replied. “I’mreturning to my quarters now to rest. Perhaps the solution will come to me in my sleep.