White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

Dodds, contact astrogation on Vespasian and arrange a rendezvous. Power Room,

stand by.”

The rest of the crewmen’s conversation was ignored as the medical team crowded

around the Casualty Deck’s repeater screen. One look was enough to tell them

that their preparations to receive large numbers of casualties from the expected

emerg­ence accident had been wasted effort, but they did not care because it was

immediately obvious that the concerted Jump had been completely successful.

Centered on the repeater screen was a small, sharp image of the coilship with

its three Monitor Corps vessels spaced along its axis, looking like an exercise

in alien three-dimen­sional geometry. Vespasian, the stern component, was

already applying thrust, and the three linked ships were beginning to turn

around their longitudinal axes in order to reproduce the original rate of

rotation and centrifugal force conditions ofthe coilship before its accident.

Gradually a voice from Control made itself heard above the sound of the medics’

human and extraterrestrial jubilation.

“. . . Rendezvous in four hours thirteen minutes,” Haslam was saying. “No

preliminary orbital maneuvering, sir. They intend going straight in.”

Rhabwar, in its hypersonic glider configuration, circled the descending coilship

at a distance of three kilometers using its thrusters only when necessary to

maintain the same rate of descent. Rotating slowly and illuminated to near-

incandescent brightness by the system’s sun and noontime reflection from the

planet’s cloud blanket, it seemed to Conway as if it were boring its way into

the lower reaches of the atmosphere like some gigantic, alien drill. Inside the

enormous, dazzling coil the three Federation ships in their drab service

liveries were virtually invisible except for the flare of Vespasian’s thrusters,

which were supporting the weight not only of the coilship but the two vessels

stacked above it. The great alien and Monitor Corps composite continued its

descent until, three kilometers from the surface, tangential thrust was applied

to begin killing its spin.

Vespasian’s flare lengthened suddenly and brightened, slowing the descent until

the ship was hovering a meter above the ground. Then simultaneously the

coilship’s rotation ceased, Vespasian’s stabilizers came to rest on the fused

and blackened soil, and the sternmost segment of the coilship touched down.

For perhaps five seconds nothing happened, then, reacting to the cessation of

spin and the presence of a suitable atmo­sphere, the sensor-actuators on every

hibernation cylinder per­formed their function. The endplates which kept the

individual CRLTs apart were ejected to fall like a shower of giant coins to the

ground, and resuscitation of the group entity was initi­ated. Conway could

imagine the individual CRLTs awakening, stretching, and linking up, the

occupants of close on nine hundred hibernation compartments which had survived

the eighty-seven years past collision. Then he began to worry in case some of

them could not link up and there was an organic log-jam some­where inside the

coil trapping CRLTs above it…

But within a surprisingly short time the great group entity was leaving its

ship, the leading head segments walking care­fully around the fused earth under

Vespasian’s stern and toward the vegetation on the edge of the clearing. And,

like an endless, leathery caterpillar the younger segments emerged carrying

equipment and stores and following the tracks of their elders.

When at last the tail was clear of the coilship, the power to the supporting

tractor and pressor beams was gradually reduced so that the towering, open

spiral collapsed slowly onto itself to lie like a great, loose coil of metal

rope on the ground. A few minutes later Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes took

off and separated, the two capital ships to go into orbit and Des­cartes to land

again a few kilometers along the shoreline to await formal contact with the CRLT

group entity. Contact would occur, they knew, because the individual CRLTs who

had undergone surgery knew that the beings inside the Federation ships wished

them well and, since the CRLT life-form had shared mentation, the whole group

would be aware of these good intentions.

By this time Rhabwar’s lander had also touched down and its medics were on the

surface standing as close as they possibly could to the being who was marching

endlessly past them. Ostensibly they were there to furnish any medical