conversation with a being who was not only sympathetic and understanding as a
person, but whose physical aspect was arousing in her other feelings of the kind
usually associated with the urge to procreate. Most definitely, she thought,
this was a problem that could only be resolved by one of O’Mara’s spells.
Quickly she added, “I also feel very hungry.”
“Hungry!” Murchison said. As the Earth-human turned to resume climbing to the
dining area, it laughed suddenly and said, “You know, Cha Thrat, sometimes you
remind me of my life-mate.”
She was able to rest after the meal but not sleep and, after three hours of
trying, she made the excuse to herself that Rhone’s life-support and synthetic
food delivery systems needed checking. She found the Gogleskan awake, as well,
and they talked quietly while it fed the infant. Soon afterward they were both
asleep and she was left to stare silently at the complex shapes of the casualty
deck equipment, which looked like weird, mechanical phantasms in the night-level
lighting, until the arrival of Prilicla.
“Have you been able to speak with friend Khone?” the Cinrusskin asked, hovering
over the two Gogles-kans.
“Yes,” Cha Thrat replied. “It will do as you suggested, to avoid embarrassing
us.”
“Thank you, friend Cha,” Prilicla said. “I feel the others awake and about to
join us. We should be arrivingat any—”
It was interrupted by a double chime that announced their emergence into normal
space, followed a few min-utes later by the voice of Lieutenant Haslam speaking!
from Control.
“We have long-range sensor contact with a large] ship,” the communications
officer said. “There are noj indications of abnormal radiation levels, no
expanding cloud of debris, no sign of any catastrophic malfunction.! The vessel
is rotating around its longtitudinal axis as well I as spinning slowly end over
end. We are locking the tele-1 scope into the sensor bearing and putting the
image onf your repeater screen.”
A narrow, fuzzy triangle appeared in the center of the screen, becoming more
distinct as Haslam brought it into focus.
It went on. “Prepare for maximum thrust in ten minutes. Gravity compensators set
for three Gs. We should close with it in less than two hours.”
Cha Thrat and Khone watched the screen with the rest of the medical team, who
were making Prilicla tremble with the intensity of their impatience. They were
as ready as it was possible to be, and the more detailed preparations would have
to wait until they had some idea of the physiological classification of the
people they were about to rescue. But it was possible for the ship ruler to draw
conclusions, even at long range.
“According to our astrogation computer,” Fletcher said, “the nearest star is
eleven light-years distant and without planets, so the ship did not come from
there. Although large* it is still much too small to be a generation ship, so it
is highly probable that it uses a form of hyperdrive similar to our own. It does
not resemble any vessel, past, current, or under development, on the
Federation’s fleet list.
“In spite of its large size,” the Captain went on, “it has the aerodynamically
clean triangular configuration typical of a vessel required to maneuver in a
planetaryatmosphere. Most of the star-traveling species that we know prefer, for
technical and economic reasons, to keep their combined atmosphere-and-space
vessels small and build the larger nonlanders in orbit where streamlining is
unnecessary. The two exceptions that I know of build their space-atmosphere
ships large because the crews needed to operate them are themselves
physicallymassive.”
“Oh, great,” Naydrad said. “We’ll be rescuing abunch of giants.”
“This is only speculative at the moment,” the Captain said. “Your screen won’t
show it, but we’re beginning to resolve some of the structural details. That
ship was not put together by watchmakers. The overall design philosophy seems to
have been one of simplicity and strength rather than sophistication. We are
beginning to see small access and inspection panels, and two very large features
that must be entry locks. While it is possible that these are cargo locks that
double as entry ports for personnel who are physically small, the probability is
that these people are a very large and massive life-form—”