Double Contact

CHAPTER 5

Terragar belonged to a class of vessel that had been designed to operate in the weightless and airless conditions of space, and to dock only with other ships or orbiting supply and maintenance facilities. It was not an aerodynamically clean object and the structural projections supporting its complex of long-range sensors and mapping cameras made it resemble a cross between a falling brick and a stick insect. The congenitally tactless Nay-drad observed that physically it bore a close resemblance to their chief.

Even though he knew that his Cinrusskin body was unusually well-formed and beautiful, Prilicla had neither responded nor taken offense. Kelgians always said exactly what they felt; telling a lie was for them a complete waste of time. It was the strong, unspoken emotions of Naydrad and the others, the feelings of loyalty, admiration, concern, and deep personal regard, that were important. Besides, the crucial words and feelings were coming from the people on the control deck.

Catch up to them and kill that spin,” the captain was saying urgently. “There’s no need to be so gentle, dammit! Check all motion, refocus to full strength, and drag them back. We have the power.”

Yes, but no, sir,” Haslam replied, its voice hurried but respectful. “The tractor acts on the nearest surface. If we drag them back too suddenly we’ll peel off most of their outer skin and external hull structures. I have to be gentle to avoid pulling the whole ship apart.”

“Very well,” said the captain. “Be gentle, then, but faster.” “We’re picking up atmospheric heating,” Dodd’s voice reported; “so are they.”

In the direct-vision panel Prilicla could see the ponderously spinning shape of Terragar as the tractor beam enclosed it in a pale blue mist and drew it closer. The tumbling action was gradually slowing to a stop, but both ships were entering the upper atmosphere much too quickly for the safety of the vessel ahead. Through the confusion of emotional radiation coming from Rhabwar he could still feel the intense fear mixed with dogged determination emanating from the other crew. His empathic reading just did not make sense. Not for the first time, he wished he could know what others were thinking instead of feeling.

“You’re getting there,” said the captain. “Once you kill the rest of that spin, try to position them so they’ll go in tail-first. The stern structure is stronger than the forward section and will burn away slower than the control canopy. Can’t you slow them down faster than that?”

“In order,” said Haslam. “Yes, sir. No, sir. I’m trying, sir.” The other ship was stable and directly ahead of them, with its control canopy continuously in view. The crew had donned heavy-duty spacesuits with the helmets thrown back. Their mouths were opening and closing widely as if they were shouting, and they were still making pushing motions with their hands. From his present viewpoint Prilicla could not see the heating of the ship’s stern, but the peripheral sensor arrays and their spidery support structures were turning bright red and being bent backwards by the tenuous gale of near-vacuum that was blowing past them. Suddenly one of them tore free and there was a loud, metallic clang as it glanced harmlessly off Rhabwar’s superstructure.

“Why don’t they use their main thrusters again?” said Dodds, radiating anger and impatience. “That would help us to slow them down.”

“I don’t know,” said the captain. A moment later it went on. “Doctor, do you have any answers?”

“Yes, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla. “In spite of their fear and certainty of imminent termination, they won’t help you because they don’t want us to come near them. I don’t know why they are doing this, either, but their reasons must be very strong.”

For a moment he felt the emotional gale raging on the control deck, with the captain’s mind its storm center, then it became still with the calmness characteristic of a decision taken and a mind made up.

“I don’t know why they seem intent on suicide, Doctor,” it said quietly, “but the fact that they’ve put on their spacesuits suggests that they still retain some of their will to survive. Whether they want to or not, I’m going to do my damnedest to save them. Or are you suggesting otherwise?”

“I was not suggesting otherwise, friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “just warning you about the way they are feeling. No rational person fully understands why another intelligent being wants to commit suicide, but in every civilized culture we have ever found, it is considered a person’s bounden duty, regardless of personal risk, to stop it from doing so.”

The captain did not reply, but he felt its gratitude as it said, “Haslam, slow them down. Be less gentle.”

From the ambulance ship’s position slightly above and behind the distressed ship. Prilicla could see Terragar s stern section changing gradually from metallic grey through dull red to glowing orange. The lattice support structure carrying the mapping sensors were like bright yellow spiders’ webs that sagged, melted, and were blown away by the slipstream. With a dreadful certainty, Prilicla waited for Terragar to explode into a disintegrating fireball. But incredibly, someone in Control was radiating feelings of optimism.

“Sir,” said Haslam, “I think we may have done it. In a few more seconds their speed will be slowed to the point where there will be no more atmospheric heating beyond what they’ve already picked up. But they’re not out of trouble yet…”

The red-hot particles of metallic fog were no longer streaming back from the other ship’s superheated stern, but to Prilicla, nothing else seemed to have changed.

“… Because,” the lieutenant went on, “I estimate that in about twenty minutes the heat from their stern will be conducted along the structure until it is evenly distributed throughout the ship. By then the survivors will be in a bad way.”

“Then lift us out of atmosphere,” said the captain. “Let the heat dissipate into space. You’re able to do that now without causing their hull to break up?”

The voices in Control were calm but the feelings behind them, as were those of the medical team around him, were not. The emotional radiation coming from the people on the other ship was even worse.

“Yes, sir,” Haslam replied. “But it will take an hour or more for all that heat to radiate into space and until then it would be too hot, as well as too late, for the rescue team to go in for them. By then they would be cooked in their own juices if they aren’t that way already.”

“Please ignore the lieutenant, Doctor,” said the captain quickly. “Sometimes he has about as much tact as a drunken Kelgian. How are the survivors?”

For a moment Prilicla was silent as he watched the hot, red stain that was creeping inexorably forwards along Terragar’s hull, its progress clearly visible in spite of the bright carpet of clouds and sunlit ocean unrolling rapidly below it. Suddenly the despair he was feeling began to be diluted by excitement and hope.

“They are alive,” he said, “but the emotional radiation is characteristic of beings who are fearful and in intense discomfort. I am not a ship handler, friend Fletcher, but may I make a suggestion?”

“You want to try to recover them anyway,” said the captain incredulously, “from a ship that is nearly red-hot? You and your team would die in the attempt. The answer is no.”

“Friend Fletcher,” said Prilicla, “I am not emotionally capable of doing, or even of thinking of doing, such a brave and stupid thing. Instead, I was about to ask you to take both ships to the planetary surface as quickly as possible. Our altitude is less than fifty miles above an equatorial ocean and there are many islands, one with what looks like a sandy coastline coming over the horizon. If we had enough time we might cool Terragar by immersion.”

Lieutenant Haslam swore out loud, something Prilicla had rarely heard it do in the presence of its captain and never while the recorders were running, and said, “My God, it wants us to dunk them in the ocean!”

“Can we do that, Lieutenant?” said Fletcher. “Is there time?”

“There might be,” Haslam replied, “but it will be close.”

“Then do it,” said the captain. “We’ll need to reduce our rate of descent to zero by the time we reach the surface, but to save time, hold off the deceleration until we’re a few miles above sea level. The sudden braking will put a strain on the tractor beam, not to mention the other ship. Use your judgment, and try not to pull it apart at this late stage. Nice idea, Doctor. Thank you. How are the casualties?”

Friend Fletcher’s gratitude, hope, and excitement were clear for Prilicla to feel, so there had been no need for the other to express them verbally. But when their ship was involved in a situation where anything might happen and every incident, instrument reading, and word were being recorded in case of an unforeseen calamity, he knew that the captain’s tidy mind would want the credit for the idea and its gratitude to go on record.

“Still alive, friend Fletcher,” he replied formally: “Their emotional radiation indicates deep personal fear and despair but panic, and increasing physical discomfort. They are not visible to me, but the indications are that three of them are positioned closely together on the control deck, which is probably the coolest place in the ship, and a fourth one is farther aft. The rescue team is ready to go, on your signal.”

Around him he could feel a combination of anxiety, impatience, and excitement as his team checked equipment that had already been checked many times. He remained silent because there was nothing useful he could say, and kept his eyes on Ter-ragar and the dull red tide of color that was creeping slowly towards its bow. He was startled when it disappeared suddenly as both ships plunged through the dark interior of a tropical storm. A few moments later it reappeared with a brief, overall puff of steam as the rainwater boiled off its overheated hull. Ahead of and below them, the smooth expanse of sunlit water was expanding and showing the first wrinkling of the larger waves. There was no feeling of deceleration because Rhabwar’s artificial gravity system was maintaining the customary one-G, but Terragar was feeling it. Two small areas of the other ship’s hull plating bulged outwards suddenly under the double pull of deceleration and the tractor beam, but they didn’t peel away. By now their speed was being measured in tens rather than hundreds of miles per hour.

“This hasn’t been what I’d call a covert approach to a newly discovered planet,” said the captain, radiating sudden anxiety, “but we had no other choice. Did you scan for intelligent-life signs?”

“Briefly, sir, on the way down,” said Haslam, “but the sensors are on record for later study. They report zero atmospheric industrial pollutants, no traffic on the audio or visual radio frequencies, and no indications of intelligent life. Altitude, five hundred meters and descending. The coastline of the island ahead is coming up.”

“Right,” said the captain. “Check forward velocity to put us down no more than three hundred meters offshore, and it will save a few minutes if there’s a nice, even seabed under us.”

“There is,” said Haslam. “The sensors indicate hard-packed sand with no reefs or rock outcroppings.”

“Good,” said Fletcher. “Power room, in five minutes we’ll be supporting two ships. I’ll need maximum power for the stilts.”

“You’ll have it,” said Lieutenant Chen.

Their forward motion ceased as they dropped slowly to within five hundred meters of the waves, which were high and smooth and rounded so that each one seemed to throw back reflections of the sun. Against that continually moving dazzle, the red coloration of Terragar s hull had darkened almost to a normal, metallic grey, but the emotional radiation from its officers belied the appearance of normality.

The medical team, already suited-up and sealed, were watching him and the tremor that was shaking his limbs. He felt Pathologist Murchison’s sympathy. It was wanting to talk and to help him — probably by trying to take his mind off the casualties by giving it something more cerebral to think about — but when it spoke, the subject remained the same.

“Sir,” Murchison said, “earlier you said that their emotional radiation indicated that they were physically unharmed. Was there evidence of any psychological abnormality present? Why would they try deliberately to commit suicide rather than let us near them? By now they will have sustained overall burns or, if they kept their suits sealed and their cooling units at maximum, massive dehydration and heat prostration. But with respect, sir, there has to be something more wrong with them. What else can we expect?”

“I don’t know, friend Murchison,” Prilicla replied. “Remember, there was no suicidal intent, just extreme determination not to let us approach their ship. They tried very hard to get away from us, but it was the attitude of their ship which took them into atmosphere, and that was accidental.”

It was a guess rather than anything as definite as a feeling, out he was wondering if there might be something, or perhaps someone, on their ship who was no longer living, that they had not wanted Rhabwar’s crew to go near. He kept that thought to himself, and the pathologist rejoined the general silence until it was broken by the captain.

“Deploy the stilts,” it said. “Drop them in, but gently. Immerse them for five minutes.”

Rhabwar was now positioned directly above the other ship and holding it horizontally above the ocean with a single tractor beam. Suddenly four more speared out in pressor mode, widely angled so that the ship was supported by a pyramid of misty-blue stilts that penetrated and pushed aside the water to rest solidly on the seabed. Terragar dropped gently towards the waves.

There was a tremendous explosion of steam and outflowing streamers of boiling water as it touched and then slipped below the surface. Everything was obliterated by a dazzling white fog for the few minutes it took for the strong, onshore breeze to blow it clear. But there was nothing to see except a large circle of boiling and bubbling ocean.

“Pull them up,” said the captain.

The ship that rose into view was barely recognizable as Terragar. Steam and furiously boiling water were streaming out of the large gaps in the hull plating and where the entire control canopy had burst open. It looked as if the tractor beam was holding the ship not only up, but in one piece. Prilicla answered the question before the captain could ask it.

“They are still inside, friend Fletcher,” he said, “but deeply unconscious and close to termination. We need to get to them, now.”

“Sorry, Doctor,” said the captain, “but not right now. Our sensors say that their hull interior is still too hot for your people to survive it, much less recover casualties. Haslam, submerge them again, this time for ten minutes.”

Once again the other ship was immersed, but this time it seemed the sea above it was steaming rather than boiling. The emotional radiation of the casualties remained unchanged. When

Terragar reappeared this time, the water running down its sides and pouring from the gaps in its hull was, according to the sensors, very warm rather than hot, and no longer a threat to the rescue team.

“Instructions, Doctor?” said the captain.

Plainly the other was feeling that their situation no longer contained a military threat and was immediately passing the operational responsibility back to the senior medical officer on site.

“Friend Fletcher,” he said briskly, “please move the wreck towards the beach and place it in the shallows at a depth that will not inconvenience us but where the wave action will continue to cool it. We’ll board with four antigravity litters while friend Murchison remains with you to supervise the transfer and erection of our field dressing station and the special equipment we may need. The casualty deck will be reserved for the recovery of the possible other-species survivors in orbit. As quickly as possible, use your tractor beam to position the unit’s structures, friend Murchison, and its equipment onshore within one hundred meters of the wreck. Land Rhabwar farther inland at a minimum distance of three hundred meters. Should you need to take off or change position for operational reasons, you must not approach the medical station or the wreck any closer than that from any direction until instructed otherwise.”

The captain was radiating puzzlement, feelings shared by everyone else on the ship, as it said, “This is ridiculous, Doctor. Surely you are being unnecessarily cautious about an unpowered and helpless wreck.”

Prilicla paused for a moment. When he spoke, he tried to sound resolute and inflexible, which was very difficult for a Cin-nisskin empath even when he was carrying mind-partners of a more heavyweight and psychologically positive species.

When we approached it in orbit,” he said, “Terragar used its last reserves of power to move away from us. Its crew were willing to die rather than allow our ship, or perhaps our crew members, to make physical contact with them. The rescue team will shortly be making physical contact with them, with extreme caution, naturally. But until we discover the medical, psychological, or other reasons behind their apparently suicidal or self-sacrificing action, I am expressly forbidding Rhabwar to do so.”