Alien Emergencies - James White [56]
Conway could hear the Captain muttering to himself about the spacesuited aliens as they stopped at the entrance to a compartment that retained pressure. Prilicla felt carefully with its empathic faculty for the presence of life, in vain. The survivor was located somewhere beyond the compartment, the empath said. Before the Captain and Dodds burned away the door, Conway drilled through to obtain an atmosphere sample for Murchison so that she could prepare suitable life-support for the survivor.
Inside the compartment there was light—a warm, orange light, which would give important information about the planet of origin and the visual equipment of this species. But right then it illuminated only a shambles of drifting furniture, twisted wall plating, tangles of plumbing, and aliens, some of whom were spacesuited and all of whom were dead.
The thickened section at the rear of their spacesuits, Conway saw suddenly, was there to accommodate a large, furry tail.
“This is collision damage, dammit!” Fletcher burst out. “Losing a hypergenerator wouldn’t have done all this!”
Conway cleared his throat. “Captain, Lieutenant Dodds, I know we haven’t time to gather material for a major research project, but if you see anything in the way of photographs, paintings, illustrations, anything that would give me information about the alien’s physiology and environment, take it along, please.” He picked out another alien cadaver that was not too badly damaged, noting the pointed, fox-like head and the thick, broad-striped coat that made it look like a furry, short-legged zebra with an enormous tail. “Naydrad,” he called, “here’s another one for you.”
“Yes, that must be it,” the Captain said, half to himself. To Conway he added, “Doctor, these people were doubly unlucky, and the survivor doubly lucky…”
According to Fletcher, the hypergenerator failure had pulled the ship apart and sent the pieces spinning away. But in this particular place a number of the crew had survived and had managed to climb into their suits. They might even have had some warning of the approach of the second disaster—the overtaking of their section by another and equally massive piece of wreckage. When the collision occurred, the forward end of the first piece must have been swinging down while the afterpart of the second was swinging upwards. The kinetic energy of both sections had been cancelled out, bringing them both to rest and practically fusing them together. That, in the Captain’s opinion, was the only explanation for the type of injuries and damage that had occurred here, and for the fact that this was the only section of the alien ship that was not spinning.
“I think you’re right, Captain,” said Conway, fishing out of the drifting mass of debris a flat piece of plastic with what looked like a landscape on one side of it. “But surely all this is academic now.”
“Of course it is,” Fletcher replied. “But I dislike unanswered questions. Doctor Prilicla, where now?”
The little empath pointed diagonally upwards at the compartment’s ceiling. “Fifteen to twenty meters in that direction, friend Fletcher, but I must admit to some feelings of confusion. The survivor seems to be moving slowly since we entered this compartment.”
Fletcher sighed noisily. “A spacesuited and still mobile survivor,” he said in relieved tones. “That will make the rescue very much easier.