operation.”
Murchison laughed softly and returned to her work, and Conway joined her. As the
Captain turned to go, he said, “We can’t spend much time here, but I must make
as full a report as possible of the incident and all relevant circumstances.
This is a new species to the Federation, a different technology, and the purpose
of this ship might have a bearing on the case. Was our criminal a responsible
being, perhaps a captive, or an unintelligent animal? If it was intelligent was
it deranged, and if so why? And was the distressed condition of the ship and
crew a contributory factor? I know that it is difficult to conceive of
extenuating circumstances for grievous wounding and cannibalism, but until all
the facts are known—”
He broke off and placed his sensor against the deck beside him. A few seconds
later he went on, “There is nothing other than ourselves moving inside the
wreck. I’ve left the outside hatch open only a few inches. If anything tried to
get in you will have plenty of warning, either from the beastie itself forcing
it open against the sand or from the sensors on Rhabwar. I can get back to you
in plenty of time in any case, so you have nothing to worry about.”
While they resumed the dissection they could follow every step of the Captain’s
progress stern ward, because he insisted on verbally describing and amplifying
the pictures he was sending up to Dodds. The corridor was low and not very
roomy by Earth-human standards, he reported. He had to crawl on hands and knees
and it would be difficult to turn around to come back other than at an
intersection. Cable looms and air or hydraulic pipelines ran along the sidewalls
of the corridor, and coarse-mesh netting was. attached to the floor and ceiling
indicating that the ship did not possess an artificial gravity system.
Aft of the compartment occupied by the medics there was another cargo deck, and
beyond that the unmistakable shapes of the hyperdrive generators. Further aft
the reactor and thrust-ers were sealed from him and heavily shielded, but the
sensor indications were that there had been a complete power shutdown—probably
an automatic safety measure built into the design—when the ship had toppled. But
he could detect a residue of power in some of the corridor lines which he
thought might be associated with an emergency lighting circuit, and he thought
he had identified a light switch.
It was a light switch, he confirmed a few seconds later. A large stretch of the
corridor was illuminated. The lighting was uncomfortably bright but his eyes
were adjusting to it. He was moving amidships.
They heard him pause outside their cargo hold, and suddenly the lights came on
all over the ceiling beside them. Conway switched off his now-unnecessary helmet
light.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said, then continuing the discussion he had been
having with Murchison, went on, “There is capacity for a large brain in the
cranium, but we cannot assume
that all of the available’volume is used for cerebration. I don’t see how a
beastie with four feet and two manipulators which are little more than claws
could be a tool user, much less a crew member of a starship. And those teeth
bother me. They are certainly not those of a predator. In the distant past they
might have been fearsome natural weapons, but now their condition shows that
they have not much to do.”
Murchison nodded. “The stomach system is overlarge in relation to the mass of
the being,” she said, “yet there is no evidence of adipose or excess edible
tissue which would be present if it was an animal bred for food. And the stomach
resembles that of an Earth-type ruminant. The digestive system is odd, too, but
I’d have to work out the whole intake to elimination cycle to make any sense out
of it, and I can’t do that down here. I’d love to know what these things ate
before their food ran out.”
“I’m passing a storage deck of some kind,” Fletcher said at that point. “It is
divided into large racks with passages between mem. The racks are filled with