At first the going was easy. The ship had sheared a clean-edged tunnel through ward bulkheads, deck plating and even through items of heavy machinery. Conway could see clearly into the corridors they passed in their descent, and nowhere was there a sign of life. There were grisly remnants of a high-pressure life-form which would have blown itself apart even under Earth-normal atmospheric conditions. When subjected suddenly to hard vacuum the process had been that much more violent. And in one corridor there was disclosed a tragedy; a near-human DBDG nurse-one of the red, bear-like entities-had been neatly decapitated by the closing of an air-tight door which it had just failed to make in time. For some reason the sight affected him more than anything else he had seen that day.
Increasing amounts of “foreign” wreckage hampered their progress as they continued to descend-plating and structural members torn from the crashing ship-so that there were times when they had to clear a way through it with their hands and feet.
Williamson was in the lead-about ten yards below Conway that was-when the Monitor flicked out of sight. In the suit radio a cry of surprise was abruptly cut off by the clang of metal against metal. Conway’s grip on the projecting beam he had been holding tightened instinctively in shocked surprise, and he felt it vibrate through his gauntlets. The wreckage was shifting! Panic took him for a moment until he realized that most of the movement was taking place back the way he had come, above his head. The vibration ceased a few minutes later without the debris around him significantly changing its position. Only then did Conway tie his line securely to the beam and look around for the Monitor.
Knees bent and arms in front of his head Williamson lay face downward partially embedded in a shelving mass of loose wreckage some twenty feet below. Faint, irregular sounds of breathing in his phones told Conway that the Monitor’s quick thinking in wrapping his arms around his head had, by protecting his suit’s fragile face-plate, saved his life. But whether or not Williamson lived for long or not depended on the nature of his other injuries, and they in turn depended on the amount of gravitic attraction in the floor section which had sucked him down.
It was now obvious that the accident was due to a square of deck in which the artificial gravity grid was, despite the wholesale destruction of circuits in the crash area, still operative. Conway was profoundly thankful that the attraction was exerted only at right angles to the grid’s surface and that the floor section had been warped slightly. Had it been facing straight up then both the Monitor and himself would have dropped, and from a distance considerably greater than twenty feet.
Carefully paying out his safety line Conway approached the huddled form of Williamson. His grip tightened convulsively on the rope when he came within the field of influence of the gravity grid, then eased as he realized that its power was at most only one and a half Gs. With a steady attraction now pulling him downward toward the Monitor, Conway began lowering himself hand over hand. He could have used his neutralizer pack to counteract that pull, of course, and just drifted down, but that would have been risky. If he accidentally passed out of the floor section’s area of influence, then the pack would have flung him upward again, with probably fatal results.
The Monitor was still unconscious when Conway reached him, and though he could not tell for sure, owing to the other wearing a spacesuit, he suspected multiple fractures in both arms. As he gently disengaged the limp figure from the surrounding wreckage it was suddenly borne on him that Williamson needed attention, immediate attention with all the resources the hospital could provide. He had just realized that the Monitor had been the recipient of a large number of pep-shots; his reserves of strength must be gone. When he regained consciousness, if he ever did, he might not be able to withstand the shock.
VIII
Conway was about to call through for assistance when a chunk of ragged edged metal spun past his helmet. He swung around just in time to duck another piece of wreckage which was sailing toward him. Only then did he see the outlines of a nonhuman, space suited figure which was partially hidden in a tangle of metal about ten yards away. The being was throwing things at him!