James White: Double Contact

“Then the fourth officer terminated?” it broke in softly. “Perhaps not,” he replied. “I have a feeling, very tenuous and more likely only a wish, that it is still alive somewhere aft. Friend Danalta will remain here to help me find it.”

Even at one hundred meters distance he could feel Mur-chison’s sudden burst of negativity and deep concern.

Sir,” it said, “the captain has just informed me that the continuous strain on the fabric of that ship caused by the braking action of the tractor beam, together with the atmospheric buffeting during reentry, will have converted the interior into a heap of wreckage that could collapse at any time. As well, the hull temperature at the stern is still unacceptably high for would-be rescuers. You will be at serious risk and may wish to reconsider your recent decision. I suggest you send Naydrad with Danalta to recover the missing casualty…”

Well,” said the Kelgian, its fur rippling under the protective garment, “isn’t it nice to be considered expendable?”

“… while you bring in the other litters,” it went on. “From the condition of the first three, it looks as though your surgical experience will be urgently required here.”

“I agree, friend Murchison,” said Prilicla. “But if Danalta or Naydrad found the fourth crew member, neither of them would be able to know whether they were recovering an unconscious or dead casualty without removing its suit, which would be contraindicated in the high temperature levels aft. You know very well that only I can feel and specify at a distance whether it is a casualty requiring urgent attention, or a cadaver that can await recovery at more convenient time.”

He moved to the fourth litter and climbed inside, sealing the pressure canopy behind him for maximum protection before signaling with a forward manipulator for Danalta to proceed aft.

“Please refrain from going into maternal mode, friend Murchison,” he added. “I promise to be very careful.”

The situation aft was much worse than he had expected with an almost solid plug of wreckage barring their way. Atmospheric heating and the tractor-beam stresses had caused the interior hull plating to buckle and open up so that ragged, metal edges projected into their path and opened wide cracks that allowed long, uneven triangles of daylight to show through. He could feel the buildup of heat even through the litter canopy and his own suit’s laboring cooling system. But Danalta, as it had done on many previous rescue operations, was proving once again that its polymorphic species was the closest thing to a general-purpose organic tool in the known universe.

His limbs were showing a faint tremor which his polymorphic friend had noticed, but was forbearing to mention, because the emotional radiation causing it was due to Prilicla’s own cowardice.

It was a terrible psychological burden to be afraid all the time, of everything and everybody, and of the harm that might be done him by accident or intention. But there were compensations. A life-form with hostile intent could not hide its feelings towards him, so he could either take evasive action or, if it was intelligent, try to change the other’s hostility to feelings of disinterest or even friendship towards him. As a matter of pure survival as well as to secure a pleasant emotional environment for himself, he had made many good and protective friends. But there was nothing he could do about stupid pieces of sharp-edged, inanimate matter except try to avoid them.

There was another ship’s officer to find, if it was still alive and emoting. Prilicla tried to allay his own fear and widen his empathic range while he followed and coordinated his litter’s movements with those of the shape-changer.

Danalta was always a minimal source of emotional interference because it rarely encountered situations that caused it to have unpleasant feelings, and it was never afraid because nothing — short of a major explosion, or being crushed between two closing faces of massive colliding objects — could harm it. Now it was opening a path through the hot, steaming devastation by extruding appendages of the length, shape, and strength necessary to move obstacles aside or, with the whole of its body, taking shapes that it was better not to think about as it used itself as an organic pit prop that lifted masses of tumbled wreckage in order to enable the litter to go through.

Fotawn, the planet where Danalta’s species had evolved, had been one of the least hospitable worlds to be discovered by the Galactic Federation. It had a highly eccentric orbit and consequent climatic variations so severe that an incredible degree of physical adaptability had been necessary for its flora and fauna to survive on a world of animal and vegetable shape-changers. Danalta’s people, its dominant life-form, were of physiologyical classification TOBS. They had developed intelligence and an advanced civilization based on the philosophical rather than the Physical sciences, not by competing in the matter of natural weapons but by refining and perfecting their adaptive capabilities. In prehistoric times, when members of the species were faced with stronger natural enemies, their defensive options in order of preference had been protective mimicry, flight, or the adoption of a shape frightening to the attacker. The speed and accuracy of the mimicry suggested the possession of a high degree of receptive empathy of which the species was not consciously aware.

With such effective means of physical adaptability and self-protection available, the species was impervious to disease and normal levels of physical injury, so that the concepts of curative medicine and surgery had been completely incomprehensible to its people. In spite of this, Danalta had applied for and been accepted at Sector General for medical training.

Danalta’s purpose in coming to the hospital, it had insisted, had been selfish rather than idealistic. The sixty-odd different life-forms who worked there were a unique and continuing challenge to its powers of mimicry. Admittedly, it was being forced into using all of its polymorphic abilities — to reassure beings who might be suffering from serious physical or psychological malfunctions, by mimicking their shape and vocal output if there were no members of their own species present to give reassurance; or, in an accident situation with associated toxic pollution, it could adapt its shape and tegument quickly so that urgently required treatment would not be delayed because of time wasted in donning protective garments; or during surgery it could extrude limbs and digits of the indicated shape and function which were capable of quickly repairing damage to otherwise inaccessible areas where organic damage or dysfunction had occurred. But it was simply reacting to a challenge that no shape-changer of its race had ever faced before and, while it was deriving much pleasure from the experience, it was not and should not be called a doctor.

In turn, the hospital authorities had insisted, gently but very firmly, that if it planned to continue doing that kind of work at Sector General, there was nothing else they could call it.

“Sir,” said Danalta suddenly, bringing his mind back to present time and space, “we’ve reached the power room. The ambient temperature is unacceptably high for an unprotected Earth-human DBDG, but the structure here is robust and less likely to collapse on us. You may safely leave the litter. I’m trying reduce my emotional radiation. Can you feel the casualty?”

“No,” said Prilicla; then immediately contradicted himself.

“Yes.”

It was a feeling almost without feeling, a mere expression of individuality and existence that was characteristic of an entity very close to termination. It was tenuous with extreme weakness or distance or both. Before signaling to move farther aft, he looked quickly around the room. It, too, had been cracked open, but compared with the wreckage-strewn compartments they had already passed through, this one was almost neat except for an untidy heap of tools that looked as if they had been thrown haphazardly onto the deck in front of a low, closed metal cabinet. Perhaps someone had been urgently in need of shelter.