“Why don’t they use their main thrusters again?” said Dodds, radiating anger and impatience. “That would help us to slow them down.”
“I don’t know,” said the captain. A moment later it went on. “Doctor, do you have any answers?”
“Yes, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “In spite of their fear and certainty of imminent termination, they won’t help you because they don’t want us to come near them. I don’t know why they are doing this, either, but their reasons must be very strong.”
For a moment he felt the emotional gale raging on the control deck, with the captain’s mind its storm center, then it became still with the calmness characteristic of a decision taken and a mind made up.
“I don’t know why they seem intent on suicide, Doctor,” it said quietly, “but the fact that they’ve put on their spacesuits suggests that they still retain some of their will to survive. Whether they want to or not, I’m going to do my damnedest to save them. Or are you suggesting otherwise?”
“I was not suggesting otherwise, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “just warning you about the way they are feeling. No rational person fully understands why another intelligent being wants to commit suicide, but in every civilized culture we have ever found, it is considered a person’s bounden duty, regardless of personal risk, to stop it from doing so.”
The captain did not reply, but he felt its gratitude as it said, “Haslam, slow them down. Be less gentle.”
From the ambulance ship’s position slightly above and behind the distressed ship. Prilicla could see Terragar s stern section changing gradually from metallic grey through dull red to glowing orange. The lattice support structure carrying the mapping sensors were like bright yellow spiders’ webs that sagged, melted, and were blown away by the slipstream. With a dreadful certainty, Prilicla waited for Terragar to explode into a disintegrating fireball. But incredibly, someone in Control was radiating feelings of optimism.
“Sir,” said Haslam, “I think we may have done it. In a few more seconds their speed will be slowed to the point where there will be no more atmospheric heating beyond what they’ve already picked up. But they’re not out of trouble yet….”
The red-hot particles of metallic fog were no longer streaming back from the other ship’s superheated stern, but to Prilicla, nothing else seemed to have changed.
“… Because,” the lieutenant went on, “I estimate that in about twenty minutes the heat from their stern will be conducted along the structure until it is evenly distributed throughout the ship. By then the survivors will be in a bad way.”
“Then lift us out of atmosphere,” said the captain. “Let the heat dissipate into space. You’re able to do that now without causing their hull to break up?”
The voices in Control were calm but the feelings behind them, as were those of the medical team around him, were not. The emotional radiation coming from the people on the other ship was even worse.
“Yes, sir,” Haslam replied. “But it will take an hour or more for all that heat to radiate into space and until then it would be too hot, as well as too late, for the rescue team to go in for them. By then they would be cooked in their own juices if they aren’t that way already.”
“Please ignore the lieutenant, Doctor,” said the captain quickly. “Sometimes he has about as much tact as a drunken Kelgian. How are the survivors?”
For a moment Prilicla was silent as he watched the hot, red stain that was creeping inexorably forwards along Terragar’s hull, its progress clearly visible in spite of the bright carpet of clouds and sunlit ocean unrolling rapidly below it. Suddenly the despair he was feeling began to be diluted by excitement and hope.
“They are alive,” he said, “but the emotional radiation is characteristic of beings who are fearful and in intense discomfort. I am not a ship handler, friend Fletcher, but may I make a suggestion?”
“You want to try to recover them anyway,” said the captain incredulously, “from a ship that is nearly red-hot? You and your team would die in the attempt. The answer is no.”