Boiled down, the answer was between three and seven hours.
And after they made contact with it, thought Conway, he had to sample, analyze and reproduce its atmosphere, ascertain its pressure and gravity requirements, prepare it for transfer to the hospital and do whatever he could for its injuries until it could be treated properly.
“Far too long,” said Conway, aghast. The survivor could not be expected, in its steadily weakening state, to survive indefinitely. “We’ll have to prepare accommodation without actually seeing our patient-there’s nothing else for it. Now this is what we’ll do . .
Rapidly, Conway gave instruction for tearing up sections of floor plating so as to bare the artificial gravity grids beneath. This sort of thing was not in his line, he told Hendricks, but no doubt the Lieutenant could make a fair guess at their output. There was only one known way of neutralizing gravity used by all the space-going races of the Galaxy; if the survivor’s species had a different way of doing it then they might as well give up there and then.
The physical characteristics of any life-form,” he went on, “can be deduced from specimens of their food supply, the size and power demands of their artificial gravity grids, and air trapped in odd sections of piping. Enough data of this sort would enable us to reproduce its living conditions-”
“Some of the loose objects floating around must be food containers,” Kursedd put in suddenly.
“That’s the idea,” Conway agreed. “But obtaining and analyzing a sample of air must come first. That way we’ll have a rough idea of its metabolism, which should help you to tell which cans hold paint and which syrup. ..
Seconds later the search to detect and isolate the wreck’s air-supply system was under way. The quantity of plumbing in any compartment of a spaceship was necessarily large, Conway knew, but the amount of piping which ran through even the smallest rooms in this ship left him feeling astonished by its complexity. The sight caused a vague stirring at the back of his mind, but either his association centers were not working properly or the stimulus was too weak for him to make anything out of it.
Conway and the others were working on the assumption that if a compartment could be sealed by air-tight bulkheads, then the pipelines supplying air to that section would be interrupted by cut-off valves where they entered and left it. The finding of a section of piping containing atmosphere was therefore only a matter of time. But the maze of plumbing all around them included control and power lines, some of which must still be live. So each section of piping had to be traced back to a break or other damage which allowed them to identify it as not belonging to the air-supply system. It was a long, exhausting process of elimination, and Conway raged inwardly at this shearly mechanical puzzle on whose quick solution depended his patient’s life. Furiously he wished that the team cutting into the wreck would contact the survivor, just so he could go back to being a fairly capable doctor instead of acting like an engineer with ten thumbs.
Two hours slipped by and they had the possibilities narrowed down to a single heavy pipe which was obviously the outlet, and a thick bundle of metal tubing which just had to bring the air in.
Apparently there were seven air inlets!
“A being that needs seven different chemical. . .” began Hendricks, and lapsed into a baffled silence.
“Only one line carries the main constituent,” Conway said. “The others must contain necessary trace elements or inert components, such as the nitrogen in our own air. If those regulator valves you can see on each tube had not closed when the compartment lost pressure we could tell by the settings the proportions involved.”
He spoke confidently, but Conway was not feeling that way. He had premonitions.
Kursedd moved forward. From its kit the nurse produced a small cutting torch, focused the flame to a six-inch, incandescent needle, then gently brought it into contact with one of the seven inlet pipes. Conway moved closer, an open sample flask held at the ready.