Alien Emergencies - James White [44]
Conway felt his scalp prickle. He turned up the volume of his external suit speaker to full and yelled “Sutherland!”
No response.
Conway launched himself across the compartment towards the opposite wall, where there were two doors. One of them was partly open and light was shining through. When he landed beside it he knew it was the ship’s library.
It was not just the neat racks of books and tape-spools that covered the walls and ceiling of the empty room, or the reading and scanning equipment attached to the deck, or even the present-day tapes and portable recorders that had belonged to the Tenelphi officers but that had been abandoned to drift weightlessly about the room. He knew it was the library because he had been able to read the sign on the door, just as he was able to read the name below the ship’s crest mounted at eye-level on the opposite wall. As he stared at that famous crest everything suddenly became clear.
He knew why the Tenelphi had run into trouble, why the officers had left their ship for the derelict, leaving only their medic as watchkeeping officer. He knew why they had returned so hastily, why they were sick and why there was so little he, or anyone else for that matter, could do for them. He also knew why Surgeon-Lieutenant Sutherland used grease instead of marker paint, and he had a fair idea of the situation confronting the doctor that had driven him back to the derelict. He knew because that ship’s name and crest appeared in the history books of Earth and of every Earth-seeded planet.
Conway swallowed, blinked away the fog that was temporarily impairing his vision, and backed slowly out of the room.
The sign on the other door had read Sports Equipment Stowage, but it had been relettered Sick Bay. When he slid it open he found that it, too, was lighted, but dimly.
Along the walls on both sides of the door, equipment storage shelves had been modified to serve as tiers of bunks, and two of them were occupied. The bodies occupying them were emaciated to the point of deformity, partly because of malnutrition and partly because of being born and living out their lives in the weightless condition. Unlike the desiccated sections of bodies Prilicla and he had encountered on the outer decks, these two had been exposed to atmosphere, and decomposition had taken place. The process was not sufficiently advanced, however, to conceal the fact that the bodies were of classification DBDG, an old male and a girl-child, both Earth-human, and that their deaths had occurred within the past few months.
Conway thought of the voyage that had lasted nearly seven centuries and of the last two survivors who had almost made it, and he had to blink again. Angrily, he moved deeper into the room, pulling himself along the edge of a treatment table and instrument cabinet. In a far corner his spotlight illuminated a spacesuited figure holding a squarish object in one hand and supporting itself against an open cabinet door with the other.
“S… Sutherland?”
The figure jerked and in a weak voice replied, “Not so bloody loud.”
Conway turned down the volume of his speaker and said quickly, “I’m glad to see you, Doctor. I’m Conway, Sector General. We have to get you back to the ambulance ship quickly. They’re having problems there and…”
He broke off