Alien Emergencies - James White [46]
He broke off as he heard Naydrad’s voice relaying his instructions to the Captain and the beginning of Fletcher’s reply. He went on quickly: “Prilicla, I’m receiving the ship direct, so I don’t need you as a relay anymore. Return to the ship as quickly as possible and help Naydrad with the patients. We should be clear of this tunnel in fifteen minutes. Captain Fletcher, can you hear me?”
A voice which Conway did not recognize as the Captain’s said, “I can hear you.”
“Right,” said Conway, and very briefly he explained what had happened to the Tenelphi and themselves…
Finding a derelict in the system they were surveying had been a welcome break in the monotony for the scoutship and for the off-duty officers who went on board to investigate and, if possible, identify the vessel. Like all scoutships on survey duty, the Tenelphi had a complement consisting of a Captain and his astrogation, communications, engineering and medical officers, while the remaining five were the survey specialists, whose work went on around the clock.
According to Sutherland, the first officers to board the derelict had identified the ship very quickly, because of a lucky find of a store requisition form, dated and headed with the ship’s crest. The result had been that everyone, including the Captain, had hastily transshipped to the derelict. The sole exception was the ship’s medic, whose specialty was considered the least useful on what had suddenly become a mass information-gathering exercise.
For the derelict was none other than the Einstein, the first starship to leave Earth and the only one of those early generation ships from that planet not to be rescued by the later hyperdrive vessels. Many attempts at rescuing it had been made over the centuries, but the Einstein had not followed its intended course. It had been assumed that the ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction within a relatively short time of leaving the solar system.
And now here it was, the first and undoubtedly the bravest attempt by mankind to reach the stars the hard way, because at that time its technology had been untried, because nobody knew with absolute certainty that its target system contained habitable planets, and because its crew, the very best people that Earth could produce, wanted to go anyway. As well, the Einstein was a piece of technological and psychosociological history, the embodiment of one of the greatest legends of star travel. Now this great ship with its priceless log and records was falling into the sun and would be destroyed within the week. Small wonder, therefore, that the Tenelphi was left with only its medical officer on board. But even he did not realize that there was any danger in the situation until the crew, sick and sweating and near delirium, began to return. From the onset Sutherland had discarded Conway’s first assumptions, that their condition was due to radiation poisoning, inhaling toxic material or eating infected food, because the returning officers told him about the conditions on board the derelict and how long some of the descendants of its crew had been able to survive.
Not only did the ship carry priceless records of man’s first attempt at interstellar flight, it also contained an unknown quantity and variety of bacteria—preserved by the heat and atmosphere and recently living human organisms—of a type which had existed seven hundred years ago and for which the human race no longer had immunity.
Noting the rapidly worsening condition of his fellow officers and knowing there was little he could do for them, Sutherland insisted that they all wear spacesuits continually to avoid the possibility of cross-infection—he could not be absolutely sure they were all suffering from the same disease—and as protection in case of accidents while they were moving clear of the derelict. Their intention was to Jump to Sector General, where some high-powered medical assistance would be available.
When the collision—the