“It must be done quickly,” the Cinrusskin ended, “because the feeling is very
weak indeed.”
Awkwardly Fletcher said, “1 understand, Senior Physician, but there is a
problem. Pathologist Murchison needs all of the medical team and extending
Rhabwar’s hyperenvelope and realigning our tractors for the Jump and deploying
the boarding tube will require all of theship’s officers…”
“Which leaves me,” Cha Thrat said quietly, “withnothing to do.”
“… So which should be given priority?” the Captain went on, seeming not to
have heard her. “The search for your unconscious FGHJ, or getting it and the
rest of them to Sector General as quickly as possible?”
“I will search the ship,” she said, more loudly.
“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “1 felt you wanting to volunteer. But
think carefully before you decide. The survivor, should you find it, will be too
weak to harm you. But there are other dangers. This ship is e, and as strange to
us as it is to you.”
“Yes, Technician,” the Captain said. “These aren’t the maintenance tunnels at
Sector General. The color codings, if present, will mean something entirely
different.! You can’t make assumptions about anything you see, and if you
accidentally foul a control link… Very well, you may search, but stay out of
trouble.
Fletcher turned to look at Prilicla and added plaintively, “Or do you feel me
feeling that I’m wasting my breath?”
Chapter 17
With the printouts from Rhabwar’s sensors providing information on the ship’s
layout, and in particular on the size and location of its empty spaces, Cha
Thrat began a rapid and methodical search of the alien vessel. She ignored only
the control deck, the occupied dormitories, and areas close to the ship’s
reactor that the sensor maps showed to be uninhabitable by the FGHJ life-form
or, for that matter, any other species who were not radiation-eaters. She was
very careful to check all interiors with sound sensors and the heavy-duty
scanner before opening every door or panel. She was not afraid, but there were
times when shivers marched like tiny, icy feet along the length of her spine.
It usually happened when the realization came that she was searching an alien
starship for survivors of a species whose existence she could not have imagined
ashort time ago, at the direction of other unimaginable beings from a place of
healing whose size, complexity, and occupants were like the solid manifestations
of a disordered mind. But the unthinkable and unimaginable had become not only
thinkable but acceptable to her, and all because a discontented and unloved
warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva had risked a limb and her professional reputation
to treat an injured off-world ship ruler.
At the thought of what her future would have been had she not taken that risk
she shivered again, in dread.
Even though the first search was to be a fast, perfunctory one, it took much
longer than Cha Thrat had expected. By the time it was completed, Rhabwar’s
boarding tube was in position, and she could feel and hear the empty grumbling
of both her stomachs.
Prilicla told her to relieve these symptoms before making her report.
When she arrived on the casualty deck, Prilicla, Mur-chison, and Danalta were
working on the cadaver while Naydrad and Rhone, its hairy body pressed against
the transparent dividing wall, watched with an interest so intense that only the
Cinrusskin sensed her arrival.
“What’s wrong, friend Cha?” the empath asked. “Something disturbed you on the
ship. I felt it evenhere.”
“This,” she replied, holding up one of the leg restraints that Murchison had
removed from the cadaver and discarded before the dead FGHJ had been moved to
Rhabwar. “The chain is not locked to the leg cuff, it is attached with a simple
spring-loaded bolt that can be released easily when pressure is applied just
here.”
She demonstrated, then went on. “When I was searching the control deck area I
looked at the crew member chained to its couch, without being seen, and noticed
that similar fastenings hold the chains to all fourof its leg cuffs. It and the
cadaver here could have freed themselves simply by releasing the fastenings,
which are within easy reach of its hands. It did not have to break free, and