radiating feelings of impatience in spite of themselves. “There is life on board, one source only, and the emotional radiation is so very faint that I cannot locate it with accuracy. And contrary to what I would expect in these circumstances, there are no indications that the survivor is in a distressed condition.”
“Could the survivor be an infant?” Krach-Yul asked, “Left in a safe place by adults who perished, and too young to realize that there is danger?”
Prilicla, who never disagreed with anyone because to do so might give rise to unpleasant emotional radiation from the other party, said, “The possibility cannot be dismissed, friend Krach-Yul.”
“An embryo, then,” Murchison said, “who still lives within its dead parent?”
“That is not impossible, either, friend Murchison,” Prilicla replied.
“Which means,” the Pathologist said, laughing, “that you don’t think much of that idea, either.”
“But there is a survivor,” the Captain said impatiently, “so let’s go in and get it out.”
Fletcher wriggled through the double seal of the portable airlock and under the folds of tough, transparent plastic which, when inflated, would form a chamber large enough for them to work at extricating the survivor and, if necessary, provide emergency treatment. Murchison and Conway, meanwhile, spenf several minutes at each of the tiny viewports, which were so deeply recessed that their helmet lights showed only areas of featureless leathery tegument.
When they joined the Captain in the lock, Fletcher said, “There are only so many ways of opening a door. It can hinge inward or outward, unscrew in either direction, slide open, or dilate. The actuator for this one appears to be a simple recessed lever which — Oh!”
The large metal hatch was swinging open. Conway tensed, waiting to feel the outward rush of the ship’s air tugging at his suit and inflating the portable lock, but nothing else happened. The Captain grasped the edge with both hands, detached his foot magnets so that his legs swung away from the hull, and drew his head deep inside the opening. “This isn’t an airlock but a simple access hatch to mechanisms and systems situated between the inner and outer hulls. I can see cable runs, plumbing, and what looks like a—”
“I need an air sample,” Murchison said, “quickly.” “Sorry, ma’am,” Fletcher said. He let go with one hand and pointed carefully, then went on, “It seems obvious that only the inner hull is airtight. It should be safe enough for you if you site your drill in the angle between that support bracket and cable loom just there. I don’t know how efficient their insulation is, but that cable is too thin to carry much power. The color coding suggests that their visual range is similar to ours, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would,” Murchison agreed.
Conway said quickly, “If you use a Five drill it will be wide enough to take an Eye.”
“I intend doing that,” she said dryly.
The drill whirred briefly, the sound conducted through the metal of the hull and the fabric of Conway’s suit, and a sample of the ship’s atmosphere hissed through the hollow drill-head and into the analyzer.
“The pressure is a little low by our standards,” she reported quietly, “but that could be dangerously low or normal so far as the survivor is concerned. Composition, the proportion of oxygen to inert gases, makes it a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-form. I shall now insert the Eye.”
Conway saw her detach the analyzer from the hollow drill and, so expertly that she could not have lost more than a few cubic centimeters of ship’s atmosphere in the process, replace it with the Eye. Very carefully she threaded in the transparent tube containing the lens, light source, and vision recorder through the hollow center of the drill, then attached the eyepiece and magnifier which_ would enable her to use the instrument while wearing a space helmet.
For what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten minutes she swiveled the lens and varied the light intensity, without speaking. Then she wriggled backward out of the opening to give Conway and the others a look.
“It’s big,” she said.
The interior of the wreck was a hollow cylinder completely free of compartment dividers or structural crossmembers and the floor — Conway was assuming it was the floor because it was flat and ran the length of the ship — had a double line of closely spaced holes three or four inches in diameter running down the middle. Seven or eight pairs of the survivor’s feet disappeared into the holes so they were probably part of the vessel’s system of safety restraints, as were the broad bands of torn webbing which floated loosely about its body.
The Eye was positioned close to floor level so that Conway could see the being’s flank along the section whose feet were held in the deck holes. Farther along, where the feet had been pulled free by the force of the accident to its ship, he could see in detail the double line of stubby, centipedal legs and the pale-gray underside. In the opposite direction — he could not tell whether it was toward the being’s head or tail — he could make out part of the upper surface of the creature and a single line of dorsal tentacular appendages. The long, cylindrical compartment did not give the being much room to maneuver arid the twists and curves of the weightless, flaccid body seriously hampered viewing, but at the limit of his vision Conway could just make out three lengths of tubing, pencil thin, transparent, and apparently flexible, which sprouted from a container attached to the wall to disappear into the body of the survivor.
Despite the multiplicity of the being’s arms and legs there seemed to be very little if anything for it to do. Apart from a large number of wall-mounted storage cabinets, the interior of the ship was bare of anything resembling control and indication systems or any obvious means by which the vessel could be guided by its occupant — unless, of course, there was a small control center forward in the area concealed by the survivor’s body.
Conway must have been thinking aloud because the Captain, who had just returnedfrom an external examination of the ship, said seriously, “There is nothing for it to do, Doctor. Except for a very unsophisticated power cell which, at present, is not being used to power anything, there is nothing. No propulsion unit, no attitude control jets, no recognizable external sensors or communications, no personnel lock. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a ship or some kind of survival pod. This would explain the odd configuration of the vessel, which is a cylinder of constant diameter with a perfectly flat face at each end. However, when I sighted along the hull in an effort to detect minor protrusions which could have housed sensor equipment, I observed that the cylinder was very slightly curved along its longitudinal axis. This opens up another possibility which—”
“What about power sources and comm equipment mounted outboard?” Conway broke in before the Captain’s observations could develop into a lecture on ship design philosophy. “We have matched hyperdrive generators on our wingtips and perhaps these people had a similar idea.”
“No, Doctor,” Fletcher said in the cool, formal tone he used when he thought someone was trying to tell him his business. “I examined those external spars, which have been broken off too short to give any indication of the type of structure they supported, but the wiring still attached to them is much too thin to carry power to a hyperspace generator. In fact, I seriously doubt if these people had either hyperdrive or artificial gravity, and the general level of technology displayed is pretty elementary for a star-traveling race. Then there is the apparent absence of an entry port. An airlock for this beastie would have to be almost as long as the vessel itself.”
“There are a few star-traveling species who do not use them,” Conway said. “For purely physiological reasons they do not indulge in extravehicular activity, entering and leaving their ships only at time of departure and arrival.”
“Suppose,” Murchison said, “this vehicle is the being’s spacesuit.”
“A nice idea, ma’am, but no,” Fletcher said apologetically. “Apart from the four viewports, whose angles of vision are severely limited because of their small size and the space between the outer and inner hulls, there is no sensory input of any kind known to me and, more important, no external manipulators. But there must be some easy way of getting that beastie into and out of that thing, whether it is a ship, a survival pod, or something else.”
There was a long silence, then Conway said, “I’m sorry, Captain. A few minutes ago you were about to mention a third possibility when I interrupted you.”
“I was,” Fletcher said in the tone of one graciously receiving an apology. “But you will understand, Doctor, that the theory is based on my initial visual observation only and not, as yet, supported by accurate measurements. Nevertheless, as I have already stated, this vessel is not a true cylinder but appears to be curved slightly along its longitudinal axis.
“Now, an explosion or collision sufficiently violent to warp the cylinder out of true,” he went on, slipping into his lecturing manner, “would buckle and open up seams in the hull plating, and leave evidence of heat
