Conway hurried over to it, looked down, then called excitedly, “There it is!”
They were looking into a vast room which could only be the grid control center. Rank upon rank of squat, metal cabinets covered the floor, walls and ceiling-this compartment was always kept airless and at zero gravity-with barely room for even Earth-human Engineers to move between them. But Engineers were seldom needed here because the devices in this all-important compartment were self-repairing. At the moment this ability was being put to a severe test.
A being which Conway classified tentatively as AACL sprawled across three of the delicate control cabinets. Nine other cabinets, all winking with red distress signals, were within range of its six, python-like tentacles which poked through seals in the cloudy plastic of its suit. The tentacles were at least twenty feet long and tipped with a horny substance which must have been steel-hard considering the damage the being had caused.
Conway had been prepared to feel pity for this hapless survivor, he had expected to find an entity injured, panic-stricken and crazed with pain. Instead there was a being who appeared unhurt and who was viciously smashing up gravity-grid controls as fast as the built-in self repairing robots tried to fix them.
Conway swore and began hunting for the frequency of the other’s suit radio. Suddenly there was a harsh, high-pitched cheeping sound in his ear-phones. “Got you!” Conway said grimly.
The cheeping sounds ceased abruptly as the other heard his voice and so did all movement of those highly destructive tentacles. Conway noted the wavelength, then switched back to the band used by the PVSJ and himself.
“It seems to me,” said the chlorine-breather when he had told it what he had heard, “that the being is deeply afraid, and the noises it made were of fear-otherwise your Translator would have made you receive them as words in your own language. The fact that these noises and its destructive activity stopped when it heard your voice is promising, but I think that we should approach slowly and reassure it constantly that we are bringing help. Its activity down there gives me the impression that it has been hitting out at anything which moves, so a certain amount of caution is indicated, I think.”
“Yes, Padre,” said Conway with great feeling.
“We do not know in what direction the being’s visual organs are directed,” the PVSJ went on, “so I suggest we approach from opposite sides.”
Conway nodded. They set their radios to the new band and climbed carefully down onto the ceiling of the compartment below. With just enough power in their gravity neutralizers to keep them pressing gently against the metal surface they moved away from each other onto opposite walls, down them, then onto the floor. With the being between them now, they moved slowly toward it.
The robot repair devices were busy making good the damage wrecked by those six anacondas it used for limbs but the being continued to lie quiescent. Neither did it speak. Conway kept thinking of the havoc this entity had caused with its senseless threshing about. The things he felt like saying to it were anything but reassuring, so he let the PSVJ padre do the talking.
“Do not be afraid,” the other was saying for the twentieth time. “If you are injured, tell us. We are here to help you. .
But there was neither movement nor reply from the being.
On a sudden impulse Conway switched to Dr. Mannon’s band. He said quickly, “The survivor seems to be an AACL. Can you tell me what it’s here for, or any reason why it should refuse or be unable to talk to us?”
“I’ll check with Reception,” said Mannon after a short pause. “But are you sure of that classification? I can’t remember seeing an AACL here, sure it isn’t a Creppelian-”
“It isn’t a Creppelian octopoid,” Conway cut in. “There are six main appendages, and it is just lying here doing nothing…
Conway stopped suddenly, shocked into silence, because it was no longer true that the being under discussion was doing nothing. It had launched itself toward the ceiling, moving so fast that it seemed to land in the same instant that it had taken off. Above him now, Conway saw another control unit pulverized as the being struck and others torn from their mounts as its tentacles sought anchorage. In his phones Mannon was shouting about gravity fluctuations in a hitherto stable section of the hospital, and mounting casualty figures, but Conway was unable to reply.