quantities of highly toxic fumes, bad enough to make your chlorine problem seem
like a bad smell.
“So they’re going in through the hole made by the transporter. There is only a
few inches clearance around the vehicle’s hull now, but they’re going to pull
the transporter out backward and you will be brought out through the hole it
made and into the fresh air, where the medics will be standing by—”
MacEwan began banging with his fist and a foot against the plastic to attract
the Colonel’s attention, and breathing as deeply as he could through the mask.
He had some shouting to do himself.
‘No.'” MacEwan said loudly, putting his mouth as close to the wall as the mask
would allow: “All but one of the injured Illensans are inside the transporter.
The structure was damaged in the collision and is leaking chlorine from every
seam. If you drag it out like that it is likely to fall apart and the air will
get to the casualties. I’ve seen what exposure to oxygen did to one of them.”
“But if we don’t go in there fast the oxygen breathers will die,” the Colonel
replied. His face was no longer red now, but a sickly white.
MacEwan could almost see the way the officer’s mind was working. If the
transporter with the chlorine-breathing casualties on board was hauled out and
it broke up, the Illensan authorities would not be amused. But neither would the
governments of Traltha, Kelgia, Melf, Orligia, and Earth if they did not act
quickly to save those people.
This was how an interstellar war could start.
With the media covering every incident as it occurred, with their contact mikes
picking up every translated word as it was spoken, and with fellow beings of the
casualties’ species on Nidia watching, judging, feeling, and reacting, there was
no possibility of this incident being hushed up or diplomatically smoothed over.
The decision to be taken was a simple one: Certain death for seven or eight
chlorine-breathing Illensans to possibly save triple that number of Tralthans,
Hudlars, Kel-gians, Melfans, many of whom were dying anyway. Or death by
chlorine poisoning for the oxygen breathers.
MacEwan could not make the decision and neither, he saw, could the pale,
sweating, and silent Colonel trapped inside his
office. He banged for attention again and shouted, “Open the boarding tunnel!
Blast it open from the other side if you have to. Rig fans or pump in fresh air
from the ship to raise the tunnel pressure and keep back this chlorine. Then
send the emergency team to this end of the tunnel and open it from the inside.
Surely the wiring of the safety system can be short-circuited and—”
While he was talking, MacEwan was thinking about the distance between the tunnel
entrance and the take-off apron. It would take a long time to traverse the
tunnel if the fast walkway was not operating. And explosives might not be
quickly available in an air and space terminal. Maybe the Monitor Corps vessel
in dock could provide some, given time, but the time they had was to be measured
in minutes.
“The safety system is triggered from your end,” the Colonel broke in. “The other
end of the tunnel is too close to the ship for explosives to be used. The vessel
would have to take off first and that would waste more time. The system can only
be overriden at your end by a special key, carried by the Nidian on lounge duty,
which unlocks the cover of the tunnel controls. The cover is transparent and
unbreakable. You see, contamination can be a killer in a big complex like this
one, especially when you consider that chlorine is mild compared with the stuff
some of the offworlders breathe—”
MacEwan thumped the wall again and said, “The Nidian with the key is buried
under the transporter, which can’t be moved. And who says the cover is
unbreakable? There is bar metal, furniture supports, among the wreckage. If I
can’t unlock the cover then I’ll try levering or bashing it off. Find out what
I’m supposed to do when it is off.”
But the Colonel was ahead of him. He had already asked the Nidians that same