James White: Ambulance Ship

The voice went on for several minutes, but the words were lost in a prolonged burst of static. Shortly afterwards the tape ended. There were a few minutes of beautiful silence, during which Naydrad’s fur settled down and Prilicla flew up to the ceiling.

“It seems to me that the gist of this message,” Conway said thoughtfully, “is that the sender was unsure that the signal was being transmitted, possibly because he was not the communications officer and knew nothing about the equipment he was using, or maybe because he thought the subspace radio antenna had been damaged in the collision, which had, apparently, knocked out the rest of the crew. He did not seem to be able to help them, pressure was dropping, and again due to structural damage, he was unable to release the distress beacon from inside the ship. He would have to have set its timer and pushed it away from the ship with his hands.

“His doubts about the signal going out and his remarks regarding the stupidity of specialization,” he went on, “indicate that he was probably not the communications officer or even the Captain, who would have a working knowledge of the equipment in all departments of his ship. The ‘lets too stiff’ bit could be ‘gauntlets too stiff’ to operate certain controls or suit fastenings, and with the ship’s internal pressure dropping he might have been afraid to change from his heavy-duty spacesuit to a lightweight type with its thinner gauntlets. What an ‘al warning’ or a ‘sin chest’ is, I just don’t know, and in any case the distortion was so bad that those may only be approximations of the words he used.”

Conway looked around the table. “Maybe you can find something I missed. Shall I play the tape again?”

They listened again, and again, before Naydrad, in its forthright fashion, told him he was wasting their time.

“We would know how much credence to place on the material in this signal,” Conway said, “if we knew which officer sent it and why he, of all the crew, escaped serious injury during the collision. And another point: Once he says the crew are incapable, and later he describes them as being incapacitated. Not hurt or injured, but incapacitated. That choice of word makes me wonder if he is perhaps the ship’s medical officer, except that he hasn’t described the extent of their injuries or, as far as his signal is concerned, done much to help them.”

Naydrad, who was the hospital’s expert in ship rescue procedures, made noises like a modulated foghorn, which translated as, “Regardless of his function in the ship, there is not much that any officer could do with fracture and decompression casualties, especially if everyone was sealed in suits or if the officer himself was a minor casualty. Regarding the, to me, subtle difference in meaning between the words incapacitated and injured, I think we are wasting time discussing it. Unless there is a deficiency in this ship’s translation computer that affects only the Kelgian programing …

The Captain bridled visibly at the suggestion that there might be anything at all wrong with his ship or its equipment. “This is not Sector General, Charge Nurse, where the translation computer fills three whole levels and handles simultaneous translations for six thousand individuals. The Rhabwar’s computer is programmed only to cover the languages of the ship’s personnel, plus the three most widely used languages in the Federation other than our own-Tralthan, Illensan and Melfan. It has been thoroughly tested, and it performs its function without ambiguity, so that any confusion—”

“Undoubtedly lies in the signal itself,” Conway contributed hastily, “and not in the translation. But I would still like to know who sent the message. The crew-member who used the words incapacitated and incapable instead of hurt or injured, who could not do something because he was confused and short of time and was hampered by gauntlets … Dammit, he might at least have told us something about the physical condition of the casualties so we’d know what to expect!”

Fletcher relaxed again. “I wonder why he was wearing a suit in the first place. Even if the ship was maneuvering close to the derelict and a collision occurred for whatever reason, it would not have been expected. By that I mean the crew would not normally be wearing spacesuits during such a maneuver. But if they were wearing them, then they were expecting trouble.”

“From the derelict?” Murchison asked quietly.

A long silence followed, broken finally by the Captain. “Very unlikely, if it was, in fact, a derelict, and there is no reason to doubt the Tenelphi’s original report on the situation. If they were not expecting trouble, then we are back with this officer, not necessarily the ship’s medic, who was able to get into a spacesuit and perhaps help some of the others into theirs—”

“Without compounding their injuries?” asked Naydrad.

“I can assure you that Monitor Corpsmen are trained to react to situations like this one,” said Fletcher sharply.

Reacting to the Captain’s growing irritation at the implied criticism of one of his fellow officers, Prilicla joined in: “The brokenup message we received did not mention injuries, so it is possible that the most serious damage is to the scoutship’s structure and systems rather than to its crew. Incapacitated is not a very strong word. We may find that we have nothing to do.”

While approving the little empath’s attempt to halt the bickering between Naydrad and the overly touchy ship commander, Conway thought that Prilicla was being far too optimistic. But before anyone could speak there was an interruption.

“Control to Captain. Jump in seven minutes, sir.”

Fletcher regarded his half-finished meal for a moment, then stood up. “There is no real need for me to go up there, you know,” he said awkwardly. “We took our time coming out to Jump-distance to ensure that the ship was fully operational. It is, in every respect.” He gave a short, forced laugh. “But the trouble with good subordinates is that sometimes they make a superior officer feel redundant …

The Captain, Conway thought as Fletcher’s legs disappeared up the well, was trying very hard to be human.

Shortly afterwards the ship made the transition into hyperspace, and just under six hours later it re-emerged. Because the Rhabwar had left the hospital at the end of the medical team’s duty period, they had all used the intervening time to catch up on their rest. Nonetheless, there were a few interruptions whenever the Captain relayed what he thought were significant pieces of conversation from Control over the ship’s PA system. Obviously, he was simply trying to keep the medics fully informed at every stage of the proceedings. If he had realized the reaction of Conway and the others at being repeatedly awakened to be given information that was either too technically specialized or too elementary, he would have dropped the idea.

Then, suddenly, a relay from Control that signaled the end of any further hope of sleeping for a long time to come.

“We have contact, sir! Two traces, one large and one small. Distance one point six million miles. The small trace matches the mass and dimensions of the Tenelphi.”

“Astrogation?”

“Sir. At maximum thrust we can match course, velocity and position in two hours, seventeen minutes.”

“Very well, we’ll do that. Power Room?”

“Standing by, sir.”

“Four-gravities thrust in thirty seconds, Mr. Chen. Dodds, give Haslam your course figures. Would Senior Physician Conway report to Control as soon as convenient.”

Because the physiological classification of the casualties and the general nature of their injuries were already known, it had been decided that Captain Fletcher would remain in the Rhabwar while Conway and the other Corps officers boarded the Tenelphi to assess the situation. Murchison, Prilicla and Naydrad were standing by on the Casualty Deck, ready to treat the cases as they came through. Since both the casualties and medical team had the same atmosphere and life-support requirements, it was expected that the examination and preliminary treatment time would be short, and that the Rhabwar would be returning to Sector General within the hour.