“The chlorine level is still rising around that transporter. Would one of you remove heavy debris from casualties in the area affected and move them to the entrance to the boarding tunnel, where they can be moved into the tunnel itself if the level continues to rise. The other should concentrate on rescuing Illensans by lifting them into their transporter. There is a lock antechamber just inside the entry port, and hopefully some of the less seriously injured chlorine breathers will be able to get them through the lock and give them first aid inside. The Orligian and myself will try to move the casualties not immediately in danger from the chlorine, and open the boarding tunnel entrance. Ki, what have you got there?”
The Orligian had returned with more than, a dozen small cylinders, with breathing masks and straps attached, cradled in both arms. It said, “Fire-fighting equipment. The Colonel directed me to the emergency locker. But it’s Nidian equipment. The masks won’t fit very well, and with some of these beings they won’t fit at all. Maybe we can hold them in position and—”
“This aspect of the problem does not concern us,” the first Hudlar broke in. “Earthperson, what do we do with casualties whose injuries might be compounded by the assistance of well-meaning rescuers ignorant of the physiology of the being concerned?”
MacEwan was already tying a cylinder to his chest, passing the attachment over one shoulder and under the opposite armpit because the Nidian straps were too short to do otherwise. He said grimly, “We will have that problem, too.”
“Then we will use our best judgment,” the second Hudlar said, moving ponderously toward the transporter, followed closely by its lifemate.
“That isn’t the only problem,” Grawlya-Ki said as it, too, attached a cylinder to its harness. “The collision cut our communications and the Colonel can’t tell the terminal authorities about the situation in here, nor does he know what the emergency services are doing about it. He also says that the boarding tunnel entrance won’t open while there is atmospheric contamination in the lounge — it is part of the safety system designed to contain such contamination so that it won’t spread along the boarding tunnel to the waiting ship or into the main concourse. The system can be overridden at this end, but only by a special key carried by the Nidian senior ground staff member on duty in the lounge. Have you seen this being?”
“Yes,” MacEwan said grimly. “It was standing at the exit port just before the crash. I think it is somewhere underneath the transporter.”
Grawlya-Ki whined quietly, then went on, “The Colonel is using his personal radio to contact a docked Monitor Corps vessel to try to patch into the port network that way, but so far without effect. The Nidian rescue teams are doing all the talking and are not listening to outsiders. But if he gets through he wants to know what to tell them. The number and condition of the casualties, the degree of contamination, and optimum entry points for the rescue teams. He wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” MacEwan said. He did not know enough to be able to make a useful situation report, and until he did their time could be used to much better effect than worrying out loud to the Colonel. He pointed to an object which looked like a gray, bloodstained sack which twitched and made untranslatable sounds, and said, “That one first.”
The injured Kelgian was difficult to move, MacEwan found, especially when there was just one Orligian arm and two human ones to take the weight. Grawlya-Ki’s mask was such a bad fit that it had to hold it in position. The casualty was a caterpillar-like being with more than twenty legs and an overall covering of silvery fur now badly bloodstained. But the body, although no more massive than that of a human, was completely flaccid. There seerned to be no skeleton, no bony parts at all except possibly in the head section, but it felt as though there were wide, concentric bands of muscle running the length of the body just underneath the fur.
It rolled and flopped about so much that by the time he had raised it from the floor, supporting its head and midsection between his outstretched arms and chest — Grawlya-Ki had the toil gripped between its side and free arm — one of the wounds began bleeding. Because MacEwan was concentrating on holding the Kelgian’s body immobile as they moved it toward the boarding tunnel entrance, his mind was not on his feet; they became tangled in a piece of decorative curtain, and he fell to his knees. Immediately the Kelgian’s blood began to well out at an alarming rate.
“We should do something about that,” the Orligian said, its voice muffled by the too-small mask. “Any ideas?”
The Service had taught MacEwan only the rudiments of first aid because casualties in a space war tended to be explosive decompressions and rarely if ever treatable, and what little he had learned applied to beings of his own species. Serious bleeding was controlled by cutting off the supply of blood to the wound with a tourniquet or local pressure. The Kelgian’s circulatory system seemed to be very close to its skin, possibly because those great, circular bands of muscle required lots of blood. But the position of the veins were hidden by the being’s thick fur. He thought that a pad and tight bandages were the only treatment possible. He did not have a pad and there was no time to go looking for one, but there was a bandage of sorts still wrapped loosely around his ankle.
He kicked the length of plastic curtain off his foot, then pulled about two meters free of the pile of debris which had fallen with it. The stuff was tough and he needed all his strength to make a transverse tear in it, but it was wide enough to cover the wound with several inches to spare. With the Orligian’s help he held the plastic in position over the wound and passed the two ends around the cylindrical body, knotting them very tightly together.
Probably the makeshift bandage was too tight, and where it passed around the Kelgian’s underside it was pressing two sets of the being’s legs against the underbelly in a direction they were not, perhaps, designed to bend, and he hated to think of what the dust and dirt adhering to the plastic might be doing to that open wound.
The same thought must have been going through the Orligian’s head, because it said, “Maybe we’ll find another Kelgian who isn’t too badly hurt and knows what to do.”
But it was a long time before they found another Kelgian — at least, it felt like an hour even though the big and, strangely, still-functioning lounge clock, whose face was divided into concentric rings marked off in the time units of the major Federation worlds, insisted that it-was only ten minutes.
One of the Hudlars had lifted wreckage from two of the crablike Melfans, one of whom was coherent, seemingly uninjured but unable to see because of the chlorine or dust. Graw-lya-Ki spoke reassuringly to it and led it away by grasping a thick, fleshy projection, purpose unknown, growing from its head. The other Melfan made loud, untranslatable noises. Its carapace was cracked in several places and of the three legs which should have supported it on one side, two were limp and useless and one was missing altogether.
MacEwan bent down quickly and slipped his hands and lower arms under the edge of the carapace between the two useless legs and lifted until the body was at its normal walking height. Immediately the legs on the other side began moving slowly. MacEwan sidled along at the same pace, supporting the injured side andguiding the Melfan around intervening wreckage until he was able to leave it beside its blinded colleague.
He could think of nothing more to do for it, so he rejoined the Hudlar excavating among the heavier falls of debris.
They uncovered three more Melfans, injured but ambulatory, who were directed to the boarding tunnel entrance, and a pair of the elephantine, six-legged Tralthans who appeared to be uninjured but were badly affected by the gas which was still leaking steadily from the transporter. MacEwan and Graw-lya-Ki each held a Nidian breathing mask to one breathing orifice and yelled at them to close the other. Then they tried desperately not to be trampled underfoot as they guided the Tralthans to the casualty assembly point. Then they uncovered two more of the Kelgian caterpillars, one of whom had obviously bled to death from a deep tear in its flank. The other had five of its rearmost sets of legs damaged, rendering it immobile, but it was conscious and able to cooperate by holding its body rigid while they carried it back to the others.
When MacEwan asked the being if it could help the earlier Kelgian casualty he had tried to bandage, it said that it had no medical training and could think of nothing further to do.
There were more walking, wriggling, and crawling wounded released from the wreckage to join the growing crowd of casualties at the tunnel entrance. Some of them were talking but most were making loud, untranslatable noises which had to be of pain. The sounds made by the casualties still trapped by fallen wreckage were slight by comparison.
The Hudlars were working tirelessly and often invisibly in a cloud of self-created dust, but now they seemed to be uncovering only organic wreckage of which there was no hope of salvage. There was another Kelgian who
