James White: Double Contact

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.