Ignoring the orderly confusion on board the module, where the supervisor was trying desperately to make his people realize that the practice emergency drill had suddenly become a real one, the carrier used its attitude control jets at maximum overload in an attempt to return the vessel to its original and safe heading. But the tremendous weight of a ship fully laden with a cargo of dense metal was too much for them, and slowly, almost gently, the stern of the carrier made contact with the forward section of the accommodation module.
The carrier, whose structure had been designed to withstand loadings only in the vertical plane, broke up when subjected to the sudden, lateral shock. Gigantic lengths of metal tore free from their lashing points, the metal retaining bands snapping like so much thread, and the long, open racks which held the sheet metal disintegrated with the collapse of the ship’s main structure, sending their contents spinning toward the accommodation module’s side like a slow-moving flight of throwing-knives. And mixed with the spinning metal plates and beams and pieces of the carrier’s structure was the radioactive material of its power pile.
Many of the plates struck the module edge-on, inflicting long, deep incisions several hundred meters long in the hull before bouncing away again. The metal beams smashed against the already weakened hull, opening dozens of compartments to space, or drove deep into the module’s interior like enormous javelins. The collision abruptly checked the structure’s forward motion and left it a slowly spinning half-wreck, which presented in turn a flank which was unmarked and another which showed a scene of utter devastation.
One of the tugs took off after the expanding cloud of metal which had been the carrier and its cargo, to chart its course for later retrieval and to search for possible survivors among its crew. The remaining tugs checked the spin on the accommodation module, then gave what help they could until the emergency teams from nearby mining installations, and ultimately Rhabwar, arrived.
Except for a few Hudlars who were not inconvenienced by vacuum conditions, and a number of Tralthans who could also survive airlessness for short periods by going into hibernation mode and sealing all their body orifices, nobody along the stricken side of the module had survived. Even the immensely strong and toughskinned Hudlars and Tralthans could not live in zero pressure when their bodies had been traumatically opened to space, and massive explosive decompression was not a condition which could be cured, even in Sector General.
The Hudlar and Tralthan quarters had suffered worst in the collision. Elsewhere the structure had retained its air even though the emergency drill condition meant that the occupants were in spacesuits anyway, so a pressure drop would not have been a problem. But in these areas it was the sudden deceleration and spin following the collision which had caused the casualties-hundreds of them which, because of the protection given by the suits, were serious rather than critical. When the module’s artificial gravity was restored, the majority of these were treated by the Menelden complex’s same-species medics and held in makeshift wards to await transfer to their home planets for further treatment or recuperation.
Only the really serious cases were sent to Sector General.
News of the Menelden accident had reached the hospital just in time to allow Conway to avoid having to face another serious problem, although regarding a major accident as a handy excuse for postponing a particularly worrying meeting was, he thought, neither admirable nor unselfish.
His Educator tapes were becoming so well established that it was difficult to tell when a set of feelings and reactions were his own or those of one or all of the Others. So much so that the next meeting with Murchison, when they would be together in their quarters in circumstances which would inevitably lead to physical intimacy, was something he had been dreading with increasing intensity as their next off-duty period drew closer. He just did not know how he would react to her, how much if any control he would have of the situation, and, most important of all, how she would react to his reactions.
Then suddenly Rhabwar was despatched to the Menelden system to coordinate the rescue operation and bring back the more serious casualties, and Murchison, a key member of its medical team, was on board.