infections. That is why we are being very cautious and are allowing only the Tenelphi crew off the ship while the rest of you must stay aboard the Rhabwar for another five days. They caught the disease first, then the ambulance ship crew did; if you don’t come down with symptoms during the next five days, then your ship and everyone on it is clear. However, to keep you and everyone else from feeling bored with inaction we have a job for you. Captain Fletcher, you and your officers are returned to active duty. How soon can you be ready to leave?”
Fletcher tried hard not to show his eagerness as he replied: “We have been unofficially on active duty for the past week and the ship is ready, Major. Provided we can have immediate action in the matter of topping up stores and medical consumables and there are no oversized e-ts getting underfoot—”
“That I can promise,” said O’Mara.
“we can take off within two hours,” Fletcher ended.
“Very well,” replied the Chief Psychologist briskly. “You will be answering a distress beacon detected in Sector Five, well out on the rim. The radiation signature of the beacon indicates that it is not one of ours. There is no Federation traffic out there anyway, and the star destiny is so low that we didn’t waste time trying to chart the area ourselves. But if there is a star-traveling race out there, they might let us copy their charts when we show them ours. Especially if you bail some of their friends out of trouble. Or perhaps I should not remind highly altruistic medical types like yourselves of the mutual profit aspect of this situation. Communications Center will let you have the coordinates of the beacon presently. The probability of this distress signal originating from a ship of a hitherto undiscovered species is close to being a certainty.
“And Conway,” O’Mara ended dryly, “this time try to bring back a few ordinary, or even extraordinary, casualties, and not a potential epidemic …
They wasted no time moving out to Jump distance because Fletcher was now fully confident of the capabilities of his ship. He did complain a little, although it seemed to Conway to be more in the nature of an apology, about the tuition during the first mission and this one. Theoretically, his officers and the medical team were supposed to become less specialized in their functions.
According to the ambulance-ship project directive, Conway was supposed to teach his officers the rudiments of e-t physiology, their physical structures, musculatures, circulatory systems and so on- enough of the subject, at least, for them not to kill some hapless casualty through good intentions. Meanwhile, Fletcher was supposed to reciprocate by lecturing the medical team on his particular specialty, e-t ship design and comparative technology, so that they would not make elementary errors regarding the vessel surrounding their patient.
Fletcher agreed with Conway that there would be no time to set up the lecture program on this mission, but that they would keep it in mind for the future. The result was that Conway spent most of the time in hyperspace with Naydrad, Prilicla and Murchison on the Casualty Deck, wondering whether they were properly prepared to receive an unknown number of casualties of an unknown physiological type. But he was in Control, at Fletcher’s invitation, just before they were due to emerge.
A few seconds after the Rhabwar emerged into normal space, Lieutenant Dodds announced, “Wreckage ahead, sir.”
“I don’t believe …!” Fletcher began incredulously. “The accuracy of your astrogation is much too good, Dodds, to be due to anything but sheer luck.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Dodds replied, grinning. “Distance is twelve miles. I’m locking on the scope now. You know, sir, this could be the fastest rescue ever recorded.”
The Captain did not reply. He was looking pleased and excited and a little bit wary of so much good luck. On the screen the wreckage showed as a flickering gray blur spinning rapidly in the blackness. Out here on the Rim the stellar density was low, and most of the available light came from the long, faintly shining fog bank, which was the parent galaxy. Suddenly the image became brighter but even more blurred as Dodds switched to the infrared receptors and they saw the wreckage by its own heat radiation.
“Sensors?” the Captain asked.
“Non-organic material only, sir,” Haslam reported. “No atmosphere present. Relative to the ambient temperature, it is very warm, suggesting that whatever happened occurred recently and probably as a result of an explosion.—
Before the Captain could reply, Dodds said, “More wreckage, sir. A larger piece. Distance fifty-two miles. Spinning rapidly.”
“Give me the numbers for closing with the larger piece,” Fletcher ordered. “Power Room. I want maximum thrust available in five minutes.”
“Three more pieces,” said Dodds. “Large, distance one hundred plus miles, widely divergent bearings, sir,”
“Show me a distribution diagram,” said the Captain, responding quickly. “Compute courses and velocities of all the pieces of wreckage, with a view to tracing the original point of the explosion. Haslam, can you tell me anything?”
“Same temperatures and material as the other pieces, sir,” Haslam reported. “But they are at the limit of sensor range, and I could not say with certainty that it is composed entirely of metal. None of the pieces encloses an atmosphere, even residual.”
“So if organic material is present,” said Fletcher grimly, “it is no longer alive.”
“More wreckage, sir,” said Dodds.
This is not going to be a fast rescue, thought Conway. It might not even be a rescue at all.
Fletcher must have been reading Conway’s mind, because he pointed at the big repeater screen. “Don’t give up hope, Doctor. The first indications are that a ship has suffered a catastrophic explosion, and the distress beacon was released automatically as a result of the malfunction and not by one of the survivors, if any. But look at that display …
The picture on the screen did not mean very much to Conway. He knew that the winking blue spot was the Rhabwar and that the white traces that were appearing every few seconds were wreckage detected by the ship’s expanding radar and sensory spheres. The fine yellow lines that converged at the center of the screen were the computed paths taken by the wreckage from the point of the explosion, and what should have been a simple picture was confused by groups of symbols and numbers that flickered, changed or burned steadily beside every trace.
The distribution of the wreckage seems a bit lopsided for an explosion,” Fletcher went on, “and although the scale is too small for it to be apparent on the screen, it appears to have originated from a short, flat arc rather than a point. Then, there is the virtually uniform rate of spin on the pieces of wreckage, and their relatively small number and large size. When a ship is torn apart by an explosion, usually caused by a power-reactor malfunction, debris size is small and the rate of spin negligible. Also, the temperature of this wreckage is too low for it to have originated in a reactor explosion, which we now know would have to have occurred less than seven hours ago.
“The probability is,” the Captain ended, “that it was a hyperdrive generator malfunction, Doctor, and not an explosion.”
Conway tried to control his irritation at the other’s lecturing and faintly condescending tone, realizing that the Captain could not help his academic background. Conway knew that if one of a matched set of hyperdrive generators was to fail, the other was supposed to cut out automatically; the vessel concerned would emerge suddenly into normal space somewhere between the stars, and sit there, unable to make it home on impulse drive, until either it repaired the sick generator or help arrived. But there had been instances when the safety cutoff on the good generator had failed or had been a split second late in functioning, which meant that a part of the ship had been proceeding at hyperspeed while the rest had been slowed instantaneously to sublight velocity. The effect on the vessel concerned was, at best, only slightly less catastrophic than a reactor explosion-but at least there would be no heat fusion, radiation and the other complications of a reactor blowup to worry about. The chance of finding survivors was very slightly increased.
“I understand,” said Conway. He flipped the intercom switch on his console and said, “Casualty Deck, Conway here. You may stand down. Nothing will be happening for at least two hours.”
“That is a pretty accurate estimate,” Fletcher said dryly. “Since when have you become an astrogator, Doctor? Never mind. Dodds, compute a course linking the three largest pieces of wreckage, and put the figures on the Power Room repeater. Chen, we will apply maximum thrust in ten minutes. To save time I plan to make a
