The ship was almost on top of them when it swerved again as its injured pilot sought desperately to avoid this greater obstacle, the hospital. But too late, the ship struck.
A smashing double-shock struck up at them from the floor as the ship tore through their double skin, followed by successively milder shocks as it bludgeoned its way into the vitals of the great hospital. A cacophony of screams-both human and alien-arose briefly, also whisflings, rustlings and guttural jabbering as beings were maimed, drowned, gassed or decompressed. Water poured into sections containing pure chlorine. A blast of ordinary air rushed through a gaping hole in the compartment whose occupants had never known anything but trans Plutonian cold and vacuum-the beings shriveled, died and dissolved horribly at the first touch of it. Water, air and a score of different atmospheric mixtures intermingled forming a sludgy, brown and highly corrosive mixture that steamed and bubbled its way out into space. But long before that had happened the air-tight seals had slammed shut, effectively containing the terrible wound made by that bulleting ship.
VII
There was an instant of shocked paralysis, then the hospital reacted. Above their heads the annunciator went into a quiet, controlled frenzy. Engineers and Maintenance men of all species were to report for assignment immediately. The gravity neutralizer grids in the LSVO and MSVK wards were failing-all medical staff in the area were to encase the patients in protective envelopes and transfer them to DBLF theater Two, where one-twentieth G conditions were being set up, before they were crushed by their own weight. There was an untraced leak in AUGL corridor Nineteen, and all DBDG’s were warned of chlorine contamination in the area of their dining hail. Also, Dr. Lister was asked to report himself, please.
In an odd corner of his mind Conway noted how everybody else was ordered to their assignments while Dr. Lister was asked. Suddenly he heard his name being called and he swung around.
It was Dr. Mannon. He hurried up to Williamson and Conway and said, “I see you’re free at the moment. There’s a job I’d like you to do.” He paused to receive Conway’s nod, then plunged on breathlessly.
When the crashing ship had dug a hole half-way through the hospital, Mannon explained, the volume sealed off by the safety doors was not confined simply to the tunnel of wreckage it had created. The position of the doors was responsible for this-the result being analogous to a great tree of vacuum extending into the hospital structure, with the tunnel created by the ship as its trunk and the open sections of corridors leading off it the branches. Some of these airless corridors served compartments which themselves could be sealed off, and it was possible that these might contain survivors.
Normally there would be no necessity to hurry the rescue of these beings, they would be quite comfortable where they were for days, but in this instance there was an added complication. The ship had come to rest near the center-the nerve center, in fact-of the hospital, the section which contained the controls for the artificial settings of the entire structure. At the moment there seemed to be a survivor in that section somewhere-possibly a patient, a member of the Staff or even the occupant of the wrecked ship-who was moving around and unknowingly damaging the gravity control mechanisms. This state of affairs, if continued, could create havoc in the wards and might even cause deaths among the light-gravity life-forms.
Dr. Mannon wanted them to go in and bring the being concerned out before it unwittingly wrecked the place.
“A PVSJ has already gone in,” Mannon added, “but that species is awkward in a spacesuit, so I’m sending you two as well to hurry things along. All right? Hop to it, then.”
Wearing gravity neutralizer packs they exited near the damaged section and drifted along the Hospital’s outer skin to the twenty-foot wide hole gouged in its side by the crashing ship. The packs allowed a high degree of maneuverability in weightless conditions, and they did not expect anything else along the route they were to travel. They also carried ropes and magnetic anchors, and Williamson-solely because it was part of the equipment issued with the service Standard suit, he said-also carried a gun. Both had air for three hours.