Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [74]
Even if the Unop-Patha had not provided details of the vessel’s location, it would have been easy to find. The inner moon was not large. But anyone not making a deliberate search of its far side, she reflected, would never have picked up the incredibly feeble remnant of a signal that the diminutive craft was emitting. Identifying it proved surprisingly easy.
It was a lifeboat. A lifeboat from a KK-drive ship. What it was doing crewed by a single psychotic on the inner moon of Argus V no one could say. It was only when the Ronin was several days out from Treetrunk and deep in space-plus that a team of inspecting engineers brought the news.
Certain details had led them to one unlikely but inescapable conclusion. The lifeboat had not been launched from a ship. Leastwise, not in recent memory. Instead, it had been used to travel from a planetary surface to the satellite where it had been found. A one-way trip with no possibility of return or of traveling anywhere else. A suicide run—or one of ultimate desperation. Tests of microscopic particles clinging to its interior confirmed the obvious: that Treetrunk had been the origin of the battered vessel’s most recent and final flight.
What was an ancient, oft-repaired, and amateurishly refitted lifeboat doing on a colony world like Treetrunk in the first place? That was a question for which the most detailed examination of the boat failed to supply an answer. The craft’s on-board instruments had recorded only flight data, and there was no magic bottle full of answers hidden away in a cabinet or storage locker waiting to be opened. Only its presumed pilot, navigator, crew, and sole survivor could provide an explanation.
And he wasn’t talking.
The government intended to keep the matter as quiet as possible for as long as possible. Revelation that someone might have survived the Treetrunk massacre, much less have been a living witness to its destruction, would have sparked an outcry and concurrent media frenzy unprecedented in the history of interstellar colonization. Under the resultant pressure for information it might have proven well-nigh impossible for the physicians assigned to the case to perform their work properly. It was decided at the highest levels that the comatose survivor’s privacy would be protected at all costs, along with that of the specialists who were charged with doing their utmost to try to revive him.
The hospital was located in a quiet suburb of Kavieng, on the Pacific island of New Ireland. It was as isolated from the mainstream of world culture and tridee attention as it was possible for such a facility to be while remaining close to relevant government centers of operation on Bali and in Brisbane. Originally a center for research into and treatment of tropical diseases, over the years it had been expanded and modified to serve the needs of a wide area, including and beyond the Bismarck Sea. Workers on the regional tuna and lobster farms were among its regular clients.
Not everyone knew what the unconscious man in room fifty-four had been admitted for, nor the cause of his condition. An unusually large number of visiting doctors came and went from his bedside, prescribing, consulting, and conversing among themselves. Some were rumored to be specialists from as far away as Europe and North America, and several members of the staff recognized one especially famous neurosurgeon who was noted for never leaving his distinguished practice in Gangzhou.
It did not matter how many physicians visited room fifty-four, however. The condition and status of the patient it housed did not change.
The hospital’s regular staff attended to his conventional, daily needs.