Alien Emergencies - James White [144]
“I’m not an organ mechanic like you people,” O’Mara said gruffly, “but I would say that with this case the prognosis is favorable.”
Investigation
The ambulance ship Rhabwar had made the trip from Sector General to the scene of the supposed disaster in record time and with a precision of astrogation, Conway thought, which would cause Lieutenant Dodds to exhibit symptoms of cranial swelling for many days to come. But as the information was displayed on the Casualty Deck’s repeater screens, it became clear to the watching medical team that this was not going to be a fast rescue—that this might not, in fact, be a rescue mission at all.
The fully extended sensor net revealed no sign of a distressed ship, nor any wreckage or components of such a ship. Even the finely divided, expanding cloud of debris which would have indicated a catastrophic malfunction in the vessel’s reactor was missing. All there was to be seen was the characteristic shape of a dead and partially fused distress beacon at a distance of a few hundred meters and, about three million kilometers beyond it, the bright crescent shape which was one of this system’s planets.
Major Fletcher’s voice came from the speaker. The Captain did not sound pleased. “Doctor,” he said. “We cannot assume that this was a simple false alarm. Hyperspace radio distress beacons are highly expensive hunks of machinery for one thing, and I have yet to hear of an intelligent species who does not have an aversion to crying their equivalent of wolf. I think the crew must have panicked, then discovered that the condition of the ship was not as distressed as they at first thought. They may have resumed their journey or tried for a planetary landing to effect repairs. We’ll have to eliminate the latter possibility before we leave. Dodds?”
“The system has been surveyed,” the Astrogator’s voice replied. “G-type sun, seven planets with one, the one we can see, habitable in the short term by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. No indigenous intelligent life. Course for a close approach and search, sir?”
“Yes,” Fletcher said. “Haslam, pull in your long-range sensors and set up for a planetary surface scan. Lieutenant Chen, I’ll need impulse power, four Gs, on my signal. And Haslam, just in case the ship is down and trying to signal its presence, monitor the normal and hyperradio frequencies.”
A few minutes later they felt the deck press momentarily against their feet as the artificial gravity system compensated for the four-G thrust. Conway, Pathologist Murchison, and Charge Nurse Naydrad moved closer to the repeater where Dodds had displayed the details of the target planet’s gravity pull, atmospheric composition and pressure, and the environmental data which made it just barely habitable. The empathic Doctor Prilicla clung to the safety of the ceiling and observed the screen at slightly longer range.
It was the Charge Nurse, its silvery fur rippling in agitation, who spoke first. “This ship isn’t supposed to land on unprepared surfaces,” Naydrad said. “That ground is—is rough.”
“Why couldn’t they have stayed in space like good little distressed aliens,” Murchison said to nobody in particular, “and waited to be rescued?”
Conway looked at her and said thoughtfully, “It is possible that their condition of distress was nonmechanical. Injury, sickness, or psychological disturbances among the crew, perhaps, problems which have since been resolved. If it was a physical problem then they should have stayed out here, since it is easier to effect repairs in weightless conditions.”
“Not always, Doctor,” Fletcher’s voice cut in sharply from the Control Deck. “If the physical problem was a badly holed hull, a breathable atmosphere around them might seem more desirable than weightless and airless space. No doubt you have medical preparations to make.”
Conway felt a surge of anger at the other’s thinly veiled suggestion that he tend to his medical knitting and stop