Alien Emergencies - James White [81]
“What bothers me,” said Murchison quickly as she sensed another highly specialized lecture coming on, “is why more of our distressed aliens are not rescued by their own people. That rarely happens.”
“True, ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “A few cases have been recorded where we found technologically interesting wrecks and a few odds and ends—the equivalent of e-t pin-ups, magazines, that sort of thing—but there were no dead e-ts. Their bodies and those of the survivors, if any, had been taken away. It is odd, but thus far we have found no civilized species that does not show respect for its dead. Also, do not forget that a space disaster is a fairly rare occurrence for a single star-traveling species, and any rescue mission they could mount would probably be too little and too late. But to the Galaxy-wide, multispecies Federation, space accidents are not rare. They are expected. Our reaction time to any disaster is very fast because ships like this one are constantly on standby; and so we tend to get there first.
“But we were discussing the difficulties of establishing the original course constants of a wrecked ship,” the Captain went on, refusing to be sidetracked from his lecture. “First, there is the fact that a detour is frequently necessary to reach the destination system. This is because of pockets of unusual stellar density, black holes and similar normal-space obstructions that cause dangerous areas of distortion in the hyperspace medium, so very few ships are able to reach their destinations in fewer than five Jumps. Second, there are the factors associated with the size of the distressed ship and the number of its hypergenerators. A small vessel with one generator poses fewest problems. But if the ship is similar in mass to ourselves, and we carry a matched pair, or if it is a very large ship requiring four or six hypergenerators… Well, it would then depend on whether the generators went out simultaneously or consecutively.
“Our ships and, presumably, theirs,” Fletcher continued, warming to his subject, “are fitted with safety cutoffs to all generators, should one fail. But those safety devices are not always foolproof, because it takes only a split-second delay in shutting down a generator and the section of the ship structurally associated with it pops into normal space, tearing free of the rest of the vessel and in the process imparting an unbalanced braking motion, which sends the ship spinning off at a tangent to its original course. The shock to the vessel’s structure would probably cause the other generator or generators to fail, and the process would be repeated, so that a series of such events occurring within a few seconds in hyperspace could very well leave the wreckage of the distressed ship strung out across a distance of several light-years. That is the reason why—”
He broke off as an attention signal flashed on his panel. “Astrogation, sir,” Lieutenant Dodds announced briskly. “Five minutes to Jump.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said the Captain. “We will have to continue this discussion at another time. Power Room, status report, please.”
“Both hypergenerators at optimum, and output matched within the safety limits, sir,” came Chen’s reply.
“Life-support?”
“Systems also optimum,” Chen said. “Artificial gravity on all deck levels at one-G Earth-normal setting. Zero-G in the central well, generator housings and in the Cinrusskin doctor’s quarters.”
“Communications?”
“Still nothing from the hospital, sir,” Haslam replied.
“Very well,” said the Captain. “Power Room, shut down the thrusters, and stand by to abort the Jump until minus one minute.” In an aside to Murchison and Conway he explained: “During the final minute we’re committed to the Jump, whether a signal comes from the