White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

between the interstellar emp­tiness outside the direct vision port and the

long-range sensor display, which showed surrounding space to be anything but

empty, and feeling more depressed with every minute that Passed. Around him the

officers on Rhabwar’s Control Deck were radiating impatience—but inaudibly,

because they all knew that when their ship was at the scene of a disaster it was

the senior medical officer on board who had the rank.

“Only one survivor,” he said dully.

From the Captain’s position, Fletcher said, “We’ve been fortunate on previous

missions, Doctor. More often than not this is all an ambulance ship finds. Just

think of what must have happened here.”

Conway did not reply because he had been thinking of little ekse for the past

hour.

An interstellar vessel of unknown origin and fully three times the mass of their

ambulance ship had suffered a catastrophic malfunction which had reduced it to

finely divided and widely scattered wreckage. Analysis of the temperature and

relative motions showed the debris to be much too cool to have been at the

center of a nuclear explosion less than seven hours earlier, when the distress

beacon had been automatically released. It was obvious, therefore, that the ship

had lost one of its hypergenerators and it had not been of a sufficiently

advanced design for the occupants, with one exception, to have any chance of

surviving the accident.

On Federation ships, Conway knew, if one of the matched set of hyperdrive

generators failed suddenly, the others were designed to cut out simultaneously.

The vessel concerned emerged safely into normal space somewhere between the

stars, to sit there helplessly, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until

it either repaired its sick generator or help arrived. But there were times when

the safety cutoffs had failed or been late in functioning, which meant that

while a part of the ship had continued for a split second at hyperspeed the

remainder was braked instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the

early hyperships had been, to say the least, catastrophic.

“The survivor’s species must be relatively new to hyper-travel,” Conway said,

“or they would be using the modular design philosophy which we, from long

experience, know to be the only structural form which enables a proportion of a

ship’s crew to survive when a sudden hypergenerator imbalance tears the vessel

apart around them. I can’t understand why the section containing the survivor

wasn’t fragmented like the rest.”

The Captain was visibly controlling his impatience as he replied, “You were too

busy getting the survivor out before the compartment lost any more air and

decompression was added to its other problems, Doctor, to have time for

structural observations. The compartment was a separate unit, purpose unknown,

which was mounted outboard of the main hull and joined by a short access tube

and airlock, and it simply broke away in one piece. That beastie was very

lucky.” He gestured toward the long-range sensor displays. “But now we know that

the remaining pieces of wreckage are too small to contain survivors and frankly,

Doctor, we are wasting time here.”

“I agree,” Conway said absently.

“Right,” Fletcher said briskly. “Power Room, prepare to Jump in five—”

“Hold, Captain,” Conway broke in quietly. “1 hadn’t fin- ^

ished. I want a scoutship out here, more than one if they can be spared, to

search the wreckage for personal effects, pho­tographs, solid and pictorial an,

anything which will assist in reconstructing the survivor’s environment and

culture. And request Federation Archives for any information on an intel­ligent

life-form of physiological classification EGCL. Since this is a new species to

us, the cultural contact people will want this information as soon as possible,

and if our survivor con­tinues to survive, the hospital will need it the day

before yes­terday.

“Tag the signals with Sector General medical first-contact priority coding,” he

went on, “then head for home. I’ll be on the Casualty Deck.”

Rhabwar’s communications officer, Haslam, was already preparing for the

transmission when Conway stepped into the gravity-free central well and began

pulling himself toward the Casualty Deck amidships. He broke his journey briefly

to visit his cabin and get out of the heavy-duty spacesuit he had been wearing