For a few minutes the Lieutenant went on talking about the sections of portable
airlock they were carrying that, when deployed and attached with fast-setting
sealant around the entry port of the other ship’, would enable Rhabwar’s
boarding tube to join the two vessels and allow the medics to do their work
unhampered by space-suits.
“But rest your mind, Cha Thrat,” Chen went on. “Your maintenance chief, Timmins,
spoke to the Captain about you. It said that you are pretty bright, learn
quickly, and we should give you as much work to do as possible. We should do
this because, once the FOKT’s accommodation was finished, you would havenothing
to do and might fret. It said that, with your past performance in the hospital,
the medical team wouldn’t allow you anywhere near one of their patients.”
It laughed suddenly and went on. “Now we know how wrong Timmins was. But we
still intend to keep you busy. You have four times as many hands as I have, and
I can’t think of a better tool-carrier. Do I offend you,Technician?”
The question had been asked of the trainee technician and not the proud
warrior-surgeon she had been, so the answer had to be “No.”
“That’s good,” Chen said. “Now, close and seal your helmet, and double-check
your safety-line attachments. The Captain’s on his way.”
And then she was outside, festooned with equipment and drifting with the two
Earth-humans across the short distance to the distressed vessel, which was now
held by the rigid, nonmaterial beams of Rhabwar’s tractors. While immobilizing
the other ship, their own had acquired a proportion of its spin. But the
countless stars that wheeled endlessly around the apparently motionless vessels
aroused a feeling not of nausea butwonder.
Prilicla was already there when they arrived, having exited by the casualty
deck’s airlock, and was patrolling along the hull in its careful search for the
emotional radiation that would indicate the presence of survivors.
Chapter 16
As soon as they were standing upright and held to the gray, unpainted hull
plating by their boot magnets, and with the bulk of Rhabwar hanging above them
like a shining and convoluted white ceiling, the Captain began to speak.
It said, ‘There are only so many ways for a door to open. It can hinge in or
outward, slide vertically or laterally, unscrew clockwise or anticlockwise or,
if the builders are sufficiently advanced in the field of molecular engineering,
an opening could be dilated in an area of solid metal. We have yet to encounter
a species capable of the latter and, if we ever do, we’ll have to be very
careful indeed, and remember to call them ‘sir.1″
Before it had joined the Monitor Corps, she had learned, Fletcher had been a
ruler-academic and one of Earth’s foremost, and certainly most youthful,
authorities on Extraterrestrial Comparative Technology, and the old habits died
hard. Even on the hull of an alien ship that might apply thrust at any moment,
it was lecturing —and remembering to include the occasional dry little joke. It
was also speaking for the benefit of the recorders, in case something sudden and
melodramatic happened.
“We are standing on a large door or hatch that is rectangular in shape with
rounded corners,” it went on, “sothe probability is that it will open in or out.
Below us, according to the sensors, is a large, empty compartment, which means
that it has to be a cargo or personnel lock rather than an equipment access or
inspection panel. The hatch is featureless, so the external actuator mechanism
should be behind one of the small panels in the door surround. Technician, the
scanner, please.”
Because this particular scanner was designed to see into the vital organs of
metal-encased machines rather than the softer structures of flesh and blood, it
was much larger and heavier than its medical counterpart. In her eagerness to
appear fast and efficient, Cha Thrat miscalculated the inertia and sent it
crashing into the hatch cover, where it left a long, shallow dent before the
Captain brought it to a halt.
“Thank you,” Fletcher said drily, and added, “We are, of course, making no
secret of our presence. A covert entry and our sudden appearance inside their
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