bar, therefore, to you joining the Maintenance Department. My sincere
commiserations. Good luck!”
The first three days were to be devoted exclusively to unsupervised lessons in
internal navigation. Timmins explained that whenever or wherever an emergency
occurred, or even if a minor fault was reported, the maintenance people were
expected to be at the site of the trouble with minimum delay. Because they
wouldnormally be carrying tools or replacement parts with them on a self-powered
trolley, they were forbidden the use of the main hospital corridors, except in
the direst of emergencies—staff and patient traffic there was congested enough
as it was without risking a vehicular thrombosis. She was therefore expected to
find her way from A to B, with diversions through H, P, and W, without leaving
the service bays and tunnels or asking directions of anyone she might meet.
Neither was she allowed to make an illegal check on her position by emerging
into the main corridor system to go to lunch.
“Wearing the lightweight protective envelope will probably be unnecessary,”
Timmins said as he lifted the grating in the floor just outside her room, “but
maintenance people always wear them in case they have to pass through an area
where there may be a nonurgent seepage of own-species toxic gas. You have
sensors to warn you of the presence of all toxic contaminants, including
radiation, a lamp in case one of the tunnels has a lighting failure, a map with
your route clearly shown, a distress beacon in case you become hopelessly lost
or some other personal emergency occurs, and, if I may say so, more than enough
food to keep you alive for a week much less a day!
“Don’t worry and don’t try to hurry, Cha ThraC’ it went on. “Look on this as a
long, leisurely walk through unexplored territory, with frequent breaks for a
picnic. I’ll see you outside Access Hatch Twelve in Corridor Seven on Level One
Twenty in fifteen hours, or less.”
It laughed suddenly and added, “Or possibly more.”
The service tunnels were very well lit, but low and narrow—at least so far as
the Sommaradvan life-form was concerned—with alcoves set at frequent
intervalsalong their length. The alcoves were puzzling in that they were empty
of cable runs, pipes, or any form of mechanisms, but she discovered their
purpose when a Kelgian driving a powered trolley came charging along the tunnel
toward her and yelled, “Move aside, stupid!”
Apart from that encounter she seemed to have the tunnel to herself, and she was
able to move much more easily than she had ever been able to do in the main
corridor whose floor was now above her head. Through the ventilator grilles she
could clearly hear the sounds of thumping and tapping and slithering of
other-species ambulatory appendages overhead, and the indescribable babbie of
growling, hissing, gobbling, and cheeping conversation that accompanied it.
She moved forward steadily, careful not to be surprised by another fast-moving
vehicle as she consulted her map, and occasionally stopped to dictate notes
describing the size, diameter, and color codings on the protective casings of
the mechanisms and connecting pipes and cable runs that covered the tunnel walls
and roof. The notes, Timmins had told her, would enable it to check her progress
during the test, as well as give her an important check on her general location.
The power and communication lines would look the same anywhere in the hospital,
but most of the plumbing here bore the color codings for water and the
atmospheric mixture favored by the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms
that made up more than half of the Federation’s member species. Under the levels
where they breathed chlorine, methane, or super-heated steam the colors would be
much different and so would be her protective clothing.
A mechanism that did not appear to be working caught her attention. Through its
transparent cover shecould see a group of unlit indicators and a serial number
that probably meant something to the entities who had built the thing, but to
nobody else who was not familiar with their written language. She located and
pressed the plate of the audible label and switched on her translator.
“I am a standby pump on the drinking water supply line to the DBLF ward