Alien Emergencies - James White [115]
Chlorine!
With his free hand he grasped the Orligian’s battle harness and began dragging it away from the damaged vehicle, wondering angrily why he was wasting his time. If the internal pressure hull had been ruptured, the whole lounge would be rendered uninhabitable to oxygen breathers within a few minutes—the Illensans’ higher-pressure chlorine atmosphere would see to that. Then he stumbled against a low, sprawling, membranous body which was hissing and twitching amid the debris and realized that it was not only the damaged vehicle which was responsible for the contamination.
The Illensan must have been hit by the transporter and flung against a Kelgian relaxer frame, which had collapsed. One of the support struts had snagged the chlorine breather’s pressure envelope, ripping it open along the entire length of the body. The oxygen-rich atmosphere was attacking the unprotected body, coating the skin with a powdery, sickly blue organic corrosion which was thickest around the two breathing orifices. All body movement ceased as MacEwan watched, but he could still hear a loud hissing sound.
Still keeping his mouth and nostrils sealed with one hand, he used the other to feel along the Illensan’s body and pressure envelope. His eyes were stinging even though they were now tightly shut.
The creature’s skin felt hot, slippery, and fibrous, with patterns of raised lines which made it seem that the whole body was covered by the leaves of some coarse-textured plant, and there were times when MacEwan did not know whether he was touching the skin or the ruptured pressure suit. The sound of the pulse in his head was incredible, like a constant, thudding explosion, and the constriction in his chest was fast reaching the stage where he was ready to inhale even chlorine to stop that fiery, choking pain in his lungs. But he fought desperately not to breathe, pressing his hand so tightly against his face that his nose began to bleed.
After what seemed like a couple of hours later, he felt the shape of a large cylinder with a hose connection and strange-feeling bumps and projections at one end—the Illensan’s air tank. He pulled and twisted desperately at controls designed for the spatulate digits of an Illensan, and suddenly the hiss of escaping chlorine ceased.
He turned and staggered away, trying to get clear of the localized cloud of toxic gas so he could breathe again. But he had gone only a few yards when he tripped and fell into a piece of broken e-t furniture covered by a tangle of plastic drapery which had been used to decorate the lounge. His free arm kept him from injuring himself, but it was not enough to enable him to escape from the tangle of tubing and plastic which had somehow wrapped itself around his feet. He opened his eyes and shut them again hastily as the chlorine stung them. With such a high concentration of gas he could not risk opening his mouth to shout for help. The noise inside his head was unbelievable. He felt himself slipping into a roaring, pounding blackness, and there was a tight band gripping and squeezing his chest.
There was something gripping his chest. He felt it lifting him, shaking him free of the debris entangling his arm and legs, and holding him aloft while it carried him for an unknown distance across the lounge. Suddenly he felt his feet touch the floor and he opened his eyes and mouth.
The smell of chlorine was still strong but he could breathe and see. Grawlya-Ki was standing a few feet away, looking concerned and pointing at the blood bubbling from his nose, and one of the two paint-spraying extraterrestrials was detaching one of its thick, iron-hard tentacles from around his chest. He was too busy just breathing again to be able to say anything.
“I apologize most abjectly and sincerely,” his