Alien Emergencies - James White [186]
“Captain Fletcher says it is possible,” Conway said firmly. “Piecing together the remains of an extraterrestrial ship has been done before, and much valuable knowledge was gained in the process. Admittedly, on previous occasions there were no living survivors to be pieced together as well and the work was on a much smaller scale.”
“Much smaller,” O’Mara said dryly. “Captain Fletcher is a theoretician and Rhabwar is his first operational command. Is he happy ordering three scoutship flotillas around?”
The Chief Psychologist was considering the problem in the terms of his own specialty, Conway knew, and as usual O’Mara was a jump ahead of everyone else.
“He seems to enjoy worrying about it,” Conway said carefully, “and there are no overt signs of megalomania.”
O’Mara nodded and sat back in his chair.
But the Colonel could jump to correct conclusions as well, if not always as quickly as the Chief Psychologist. He said, “Surely, O’Mara, you are not suggesting that Rhabwar direct this operation? It’s too damned big, and expensive. It has to be referred up to—”
“There isn’t time for committee decisions,” Conway began.
“—the Federation Council,” the Colonel finished. “And anyway, did Fletcher tell you how he proposed fitting this puzzle together?”
Conway nodded. “Yes, sir. It is a matter of basic design philosophy…” Captain Fletcher was of the opinion—an opinion shared by the majority of the Federation’s top designers—that any piece of machinery beyond a certain degree of complexity, be it a simple groundcar or a spaceship one kilometer long, required an enormous amount of prior design work, planning and tooling long before the first simple parts and subassemblies could become three-dimensional metal on someone’s workbench. The number of detail and assembly drawings, wiring diagrams, and so on for even a small spaceship was mind-staggering, and the purpose of all this paperwork was simply to instruct beings of average intelligence how to manufacture and fit together the pieces of the jigsaw without knowing, or perhaps even caring, anything about the completed picture.
If normal Earth-human, Tralthan, Illensan, and Melfan practice was observed—and the engineers of those races and many others insisted that there was no easier way—then those drawings and the components they described must include instructions, identifying symbols, to guide the builders in the correct placing of these parts within the jigsaw.
Possibly there were extraterrestrial species which used more exotic methods of identifying components before assembly such as tagging each part with an olfactory or tactile coding system, but this, considering the tremendous size of the coil ship and the number of parts to be identified and joined, would represent a totally unnecessary complication unless there were physiological reasons for doing things the hard way.
The cadaver had possessed eyes which operated within the normal visible spectrum, and Captain Fletcher was sure that the alien shipbuilders would do things the easy way by marking the surface of the components with identifying symbols which could be read at a glance. Following a detailed examination of a damaged suspended animation cylinder and the remains of its supporting framework, Fletcher found that the system of identification used was groups of symbols vibro-etched into the metal, and that adjoining components bore the same type and sequence of symbols except for the final letter or number.
“Clearly they think, and put their spaceships together, much the same as we do,” Conway concluded.
“I see,” the Colonel said. He sat forward in his chair. “But decoding those symbols and fitting the parts together will take a lot of time.”
“Or a lot of extra help,” Conway said.
Skempton sat back, shaking his head. Thornnastor was silent also, but the slow, impatient thumping of its massive feet