White, James – Sector General 07 – Code Blue Emergency

Eighty-three diet kitchen,” it announced. “Functioning is automatic when

required, currently inoperative. The hinged inspection panel is opened by

inserting your general-purpose key into the slot marked with a red circle and

turning right through ninety degrees. For component repair or replacement

consult Maintenance Instructions Tape Three, Section One Twenty. Don’t forget to

close the panel again before you leave.

“I am a standby pump…” it was beginning again when she took her hand away,

silencing it.

At first she had been worried by the thought of traveling continuously along the

low, narrow service tunnels, even though O’Mara had assured Timmins that her

psych profile was free of any tendency toward claustrophobia. All of the tunnels

were brightly lit and, she had been told, they remained so even if they were

unoccupied for long periods. On Sommaradva this would have been considered a

criminal waste of power. But in Sector General the additional demand on the main

reactor for continuous lighting was negligible, and was more than outweighed by

the maintenance problem that would have been posed if fallible on-off switches

had been installed at every tunnel intersection.

Gradually her route took her away from the corridors and the alien cacophony of

the people using them, and she felt more completely and utterly alone than she

had believed it possible to feel.

The absence of outside sounds made the subduedhumming and clicking of the power

and pumping systems around her appear to grow louder and more threatening, and

she took to pressing the audible labels at random, just to hear another

voice—even though it was simply a machine identifying itself and its often

mystifying purpose.

Occasionally she found herself thanking the machine for the information.

The color codings had begun to change from the oxygen-nitrogen and water

markings to those for chlorine and the corrosive liquid that the Illensan PVSJ

metabolism used as a working fluid, and the corridors were shorter with many

more twists and turns. Before her confusion could grow into panic, she decided

to make herself as comfortable as possible in an alcove, substantially reduce

the quantity of food she was carrying, and think.

According to her map she was passing from the PVSJ section downward through one

of the synthesizer facilities that produced the food required by the

chlorine-breathers and into the section devoted to the supply of the AUGL

water-breathers. That explained the seemingly contradictory markings and the

square-sectioned conduits that made hissing, rumbling noises as the solid,

prepackaged PVSJ food was being moved pneumatically along them. However, a large

corner of the AUGL section had been converted to a PVSJ operating room and

post-op observation ward, and this was joined to the main chlorine section by an

ascending spiral corridor containing moving ramps for the rapid transfer of

staff and patients, since the PVSJs were not physiologically suited to the use

of stairs. The twists and turns of the service tunnel were necessary to get

around these topo-logically complex obstructions. But if she got safely past

this complicated interpenetration of the water- andchlorine-breathing sections,

the journey should be much simpler.

There was no shortage of vocal company. Warning labels, which spoke whether she

pressed them or not, advised her to check constantly for cross-species

contamination.

Provision had been made to take food without unsealing her protective suit, but

her sensors showed the area clear of toxic material in dangerous quantities, so

she opened her visor. The smell was an indescribable combination of every sharp,

acrid, heavy, unpleasant, and even pleasant smell that she had ever encountered

but, fortunately, only in trace quantities. She ate her food, quickly closed the

visor, and moved on with increased confidence.

Three long, straight sections of corridor later she realized that her confidence

had been misplaced.

According to her estimates of the distances and directions she had traveled, Cha

Thrat should be somewhere between the Hudlar and Tralthan levels. The tunnel

walls should have been carrying the thick, heavily insulated power cables for

the FROBs’ artificial gravity grids and at least one distinctively marked pipe

to supply their nutrient sprayers, as well as the air, water, and return waste

conduits required by the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing FGLIs. But the cable

runs bore color combinations that should not have been there, and the only