White, James – Sector General 04 – Ambulance Ship

“Ready, friend Fletcher,” said the empath.

“Of course,” said Naydrad.

“We’ll be at the Casualty lock in ten minutes,” said Conway.

“Lieutenant Dodds and myself will accompany you,’ said the Captain, “in case structural or engineering problems are encountered. Ten minutes, Doctor.”

There was not a lot of room to spare in the Casualty airlock with the Captain, Dodds, Naydrad and its already inflated pressure litter, Prilicla and Conway all clinging to its deck and walls with foot and wrist magnets while they watched the approach of the wreckage. It looked like a great rectangular metal thicket shrouded in fog and surrounded by smaller clumps of metal, some of which were spinning rapidly and some of which drifted motionless. When Conway asked why this should be, the Captain turned silent in the manner of a person who has asked himself the same question and was unable to answer. They waited while the ambulance ship edged closer, passing between two of the wreckage’s madly spinning satellites, and their suit spotlights as well as those of the ship reflected off the twisted metal plating and projecting structural members. They went on waiting until the little Cinrusskin began trembling inside its spacesuit.

“Someone,” Prilicla finally managed to utter, “is alive in there.”

Of necessity, it was a hurried but very careful search, because the emotional radiation of the survivor was weak and characteristic of a mind that was becoming more deeply unconscious by the minute. With Prilicla indicating if not leading the way, the Captain and Dodds cleared a path through obstructions with their cutters or pushed away free-floating debris and tangled cable looms with their insulated gauntlets-there was, after all, a live power circuit in use. Conway followed closely behind, pulling himself along in a kind of weightless crawl through corridors and compartments whose ceilings were only four feet high.

Twice his spotlight picked out the bodies of crew-members, which he freed and pushed gently back the way they had come so that the waiting Naydrad could load them into the unpressurized section of the litter. Should the survivor need urgent surgical attention, Conway would feel much better if Murchison had a few cadavers to take apart so that she could tell him how the living one should be put together again.

He still had no clear idea of what they looked like, because the bodies had been encased in spacesuits. But the suits and underlying tissue had been ruptured by violent contact with metallic debris, and if the resulting wounds had not killed the beings, the decompression had. Judging by the shape of the spacesuits, the beings were flattened cylinders about six feet long with four sets of manipulatory appendages behind a conical section that was probably the head, and another four locomotor appendages. There was a marked thickening at what was presumably the rear section of the suit. Apart from the smaller size and number of appendages, the beings physically resembled the Kelgian race, to which Naydrad belonged.

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.”