Alien Emergencies - James White [42]
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