Alien Emergencies - James White [43]
Prilicla was trembling with its own excitement as well as with Conway’s as Conway began to operate the simple actuator mechanism. He had to stop for a moment because the suit radio was hissing at him and he had to acknowledge. But when he had done so it kept on hissing at him.
“The Captain is not a very patient man,” said Conway irritably. “We’ve been gone just over thirty-eight hours and he said he would give me two days…” He paused for a moment and held his breath, listening to the faint, erratic hissing, which was quieter than the sound of his own breathing, so deep inside the derelict had they penetrated. It was difficult to tell when a hiss stopped or started, but gradually he detected a pattern in the signals. Three short bursts. Pause. Three long bursts. Pause. Three short bursts, followed by a longer pause, after which the sequence was repeated again and again. A distress signal. An SOS…
“There can’t be anything wrong with the ship,” he said. “That would be ridiculous. So it has to be a problem with the patients. Anyway, they want us back there and I would say the matter is urgent.”
Prilicla, clinging to the wall beside the airlock, did not reply for several seconds. Finally it said, “Pardon the seeming unpoliteness, friend Conway, but my attention was elsewhere. It is at the limit of my range, but I have detected an intelligent life-form.”
“Sutherland!” said Conway.
“I should think so, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. It began to tremble in sympathy with Conway’s dilemma.
Somewhere within a few hundred feet was the missing Tenelphi medic, physical condition unknown, but very definitely alive. It might take an hour or more to find him, even with Prilicla’s help. Conway desperately wanted to find and rescue the man, not just for the usual reasons but because he felt sure that he possessed the answer to what had happened to the other Tenelphi officers. But he and Prilicla were wanted back on the Rhabwar, urgently. Fletcher would not send an SOS signal without good reason.
Obviously the ship was not in distress, so it had to be a problem involving the patients. A sudden worsening of their condition, perhaps, which was serious enough for Murchison and Naydrad—two beings who did not panic without reason—to agree to this method of recalling the two doctors. But, thought Conway suddenly, one doctor could satisfy them temporarily until they got two more a little later, one of whom, Sutherland, had a greater knowledge of the malady concerned than the ambulance ship medics.
Prilicla ceased trembling as soon as Conway made his decision. He turned to his companion. “Doctor, we’ll have to split up. They need us urgently on the ship, or maybe they just want to talk to us urgently. Would you mind taking the shortcut to the outer hull? Find out what the problem is and give what advice you can. But don’t move away from the outer end of that tunnel for at least an hour after you get there. If you do that you will be in line of sight with the Rhabwar and, via the tunnel, with me down here, and can relay messages in either direction.
“You should be able to get to the other end of the tunnel, with no zigzagging necessary and with the centrifugal force of the spin helping you along, in roughly two hours,” Conway went on. “This should give me enough time to find Sutherland and start bringing him out. It has to be my job because it will need DBDG muscles rather than Cinrusskin sympathy to help him through that tunnel.”
“I agree, friend Conway,” said Prilicla, already moving along the corridor towards the opening. “I have rarely agreed to a request with more enthusiasm…”
The first surprise when he went through the airlock was that there was light. He found himself in a large, open compartment, which, judging from the remains of equipment attached to the deck, walls and ceiling, had been the ship’s assembly and recreation area. The equipment, which had originally been used for weightless exercising and probably for competitive