The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 678
"We know it's harmless," the Chief Psychologist broke in. "You've already told me that, and what you were trying to do with it. But Maintenance doesn't know, yet, and are investigating very carefully what they think might be a unique and possibly life-threatening situation. I estimate a minimum of two hours before they discover the truth and report it to Colonel Skempton who will want to see me. About you."
O'Mara paused for a moment, and when it went on it seemed that the anger in its voice was being diluted with sympathy as it said, "By that time I will be able to tell him with certainty that you have left the hospital."
"But, but Sir," he protested, "this is unjust. The component failure was an accident, my involvement was peripheral and the offense venial. And two hours! The time limit is unreasonable. There are instructions that I must give my food synthesizer staff and ..."
"Neither of us has time to waste debating the concepts of justice and reasonable behavior," said O'Mara quietly, "nor will you have time for personal farewells. Lioren is waiting to help you clear your accommodation of personal effects and to conduct you to the ship without delay ..."
"Where is it going?"
"... which will, if or when its primary mission is accomplished," O'Mara went on, ignoring the question but answering it anyway, "either return you here to face your fate or leave you on a world of your choice, always provided you don't do something stupid to irritate its captain. Whatever you find to do, please try to stay out of trouble. Good luck, Gurronsevas. And go. Now."
Chapter Fifteen
UNLIKE O'Mara, it was possible to reason with Lioren, at least to the extent of convincing it that the time saved in clearing his quarters should be added to that needed to leave proper instructions to his food technicians. Much time was wasted even so, because his people spent more of it regretting his departure and wishing him well than listening to his orders, so much so that he was feeling quite embarrassed when his time ran out and he had to leave the hospital.
He did not, however, have to travel very far,
"I—I don't understand," Gurronsevas protested. "This is a ship. A small, powered-down, empty ship, judging by the silence, the poor lighting, and this isn't passenger accommodation. Where am I? What am I supposed to do here?"
"As you can now see," Lioren said, switching on lights as it spoke, "you are on the casualty deck of the special ambulance ship Rhabwar, and you are to wait, patiently and very quietly, for its departure. While you are doing that the small number of people who know your whereabouts will be able to say, with the minimum of moral discomfort, that you are no longer in the hospital because, technically, this will be the truth.
"Being a Tralthan," it went on, "you are accustomed to sleeping on your feet and will be physically comfortable here. Do not try to explore. Apart from this level, the ship was designed for operation by Earth-humans or other beings of similar or lesser body mass. Its officers and medical team will behave much more pleasantly towards you if you do not damage the structure and equipment.
"The casualty deck's food dispenser is there," it went on, pointing, "and the nursing station console, which is over there, will enable you to call up all the information you could possibly need about Rhabwar. Study it well before departure. You can call up the training and education channels if you are bored, but do not use the communicator because officially you are not here. Do nothing to attract attention. Don't leave the ship, however briefly, or show yourself in the boarding tube or access corridor. I will visit you as often as possible."
"Please," said Gurronsevas. "Am I some kind of stowaway? Does the crew know I'm here? And how long must I wait?"
Lioren paused inside the lock chamber. It said, "I have no information regarding your shipboard status. Rhabwar's medical team knows you are here, but the ship's officers do not, so you must not reveal your presence to them until after the first hyperspace jump. I don't know how long you will have to wait. Five days, according to one rumor I've heard, perhaps longer. The people concerned are having trouble making up their minds. If I find out for certain, I'll tell you at once."
Lioren disappeared into the boarding tube before Gurronsevas could think of another question.
He waited for a moment until the confusion in his mind had settled into curiosity and, moving carefully and placing his feet on nothing less solid than the deck, began investigating his surroundings.
Each one of the compartment's walls was pierced by a large direct-vision panel. One showed a featureless expanse of metal which was probably the hospital's outer hull, another a section of the docking cradle, and the other two looked out across the dazzling, white plains of Rhabwar's delta wings. From the wall areas around and between the viewports projected equipment whose purpose would have been a total mystery to him even if it had been properly illuminated. In the center of the floor and ceiling were the circular openings to the communications well that gave access to the decks forward and aft. It was fitted with a multi-species ladder but was too narrow for a Tralthan.
The console that Lioren had indicated was surrounded by a mass of what appeared to be inactive medical monitoring equipment. He was still feeling too confused and ignorant to think constructively, so he called up the hospital's main library, keying for a Tralthan printed translation with spoken backup, and asked for the available information on the ambulance ship Rhabwar.
The console screen lit with a message that was repeated from the speaker unit in a condescending voice. "Information is available on this subject without restriction," it said. "Please specify precise requirements or choose from the following options: Ship design philosophy. Structural layout. Engineering and medical systems, sub-systems and equipment. Operating power reserves and mission duration. Crew and medical personnel specialties. Medical log of previous missions. Non-technical summary."
Gurronsevas felt like an uneducated child as he chose the last item on the menu. But as the screen and the speaker began to present their information, his feelings changed rapidly to those of surprise and wonder because the summary began with a history lesson, an illustrated discussion on the formation and evolution of what had become the present Galactic Federation, from a philosophical viewpoint that was completely new to him.
On the screen there appeared, small but diamond-sharp, a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral, with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As he listened, a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another—the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extra-terrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared showing the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.
Several decades were to pass before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. In those days, the precise, emotionless voice explained, intelligent life-forms still tended to be suspicious and distrustful of each other—in one case, the early contacts between Orligia and Earth, to the point of declaring the first and so far only interstellar war. But time as well as distance was being compressed in the summary.
The tracery of gold lines grew more rapidly as contact, then commerce, was established with the highly advanced and stable cultures of Kelgia, Illensa, Hudlar, Melf and their associated colonies. Visually it was not an orderly progression. The lines darted inwards to the galactic center, doubled back to the rim, seesawed between zenith and nadir, and even made a jump across inter-galactic space to link up with the Ian worlds—although in that instance it had been the Ians who had done the initial traveling. When finally the lines connected the member worlds of the Galactic Federation, the result was an untidy yellow scribble resembling a cross between a DNA molecule and a child's drawing of a bramble bush.
Provided the exact coordinates of the destination world were known, it was as easy to travel through subspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other side of the Galaxy. But one first had to find an inhabited planet before its coordinates could be logged, and that was proving to be no easy task.
Very, very slowly a few of the blank areas in the star charts were being mapped and surveyed, but with disappointing results. When the Monitor Corps scoutships discovered a star with planets, it was a rare find—even rarer when the planets included one that harbored life. And if one of the native life-forms was intelligent, jubilation—tempered with a natural concern over what might become a threat to the Pax Galactica—swept the worlds of the Federation. It was then that the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were sent to perform the tricky, time-consuming and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.
On the screen appeared a succession of tabulations giving details of the survey operations mounted, the number of ships and personnel involved and a cost figure that had too many digits to be credible. The voice went on, "During the past twenty years they have initiated First Contact procedures on three occasions, all of which resulted in the species concerned being accepted into the Federation. Within the same time period, Sector Twelve General Hospital became fully operational and also initiated First Contacts which resulted in seven new species joining the Federation.
It might have been Gurronsevas's imagination, but there seemed to be a hint of pride creeping into the library computer's condescending voice as it continued, "In every case this was accomplished, not by a slow, patient buildup and widening of communications until the exchange of complex philosophical and sociological concepts became possible, but by rescuing and giving medical assistance to a sick or space-wrecked alien.
"In giving this assistance the hospital demonstrated the Federation's goodwill towards newly-discovered intelligent species more simply and directly than by any time-consuming exchange of concepts.
"As a result there has recently been a change of emphasis in First Contact policy ..."
Just as there was only one known way of traveling in hyper-space, there was only one method of sending a distress signal if an accident or malfunction stranded a vessel in normal space between the stars. Tight-beam subspace radio was not a dependable means of interstellar communication, subject as it was to interference and distortion by the radiation from intervening stellar bodies, as well as requiring inordinate amounts of a vessel's power that a distressed ship was unlikely to have available. But a distress beacon did not have to carry intelligence. It was simply a nuclear-powered device which broadcast a location signal, a subspace scream for help which ran up and down the communications frequencies until, in a matter of days or hours, it died.
Because all Federation vessels were required to file course and passenger details before departure, the position of a distress beacon was usually a good indication of the physiological type of the species that had run into trouble, and an ambulance ship with a matching crew and life-support equipment was sent from the ship's home planet. But there had been instances, far more than were realized, when the disasters had involved beings unknown to the Federation in urgent need of help which the would-be rescuers were powerless to give.
It was only when the rescue ship concerned was large and powerful enough to extend its hyperspace envelope to include the distressed vessel, or when the casualties could be extricated safely and a suitable life-support provided them within the Federation ship, were they transported to Sector General. The result was that many hitherto unknown life-forms, beings of high intelligence and advanced technology, were lost except as interesting specimens for dissection and study.
Another factor that had to be considered was that, whenever possible, the Federation preferred to make contact with a star-travelling race. Species who were intelligent but planet-bound might give rise to additional problems because there was no certainty whether full contact would help or hinder their future development, give them a technological leg-up or a crushing inferiority complex, when the great, alien starships began dropping out of their skies.
For a long time an answer to these problems had been sought and, in recent years, one had been found.
It had been decided to design and equip one vessel that would respond only to those distress beacons whose positions did not agree with the flight plans filed by Federation starships, a very special ambulance ship that would answer the cries for help of life-forms hitherto unknown to the Federation.
Gradually, as Gurronsevas concentrated more and more deeply on the displays, it seemed that his mind and the darkened casualty deck around him were becoming filled with pictures of devastated ships and drifting masses of space wreckage, and populated with the dead or barely living debris they contained. Sometimes the organic wreckage had to be extricated with great care because it belonged to a species new to the Federation, and beings who were in great pain and mental confusion from their injuries could react violently against the strange and terrifying monsters who were trying to rescue them. But there had been other times when the distressed ship had been undamaged and it was the crew who were urgently in need of assistance. Then it was Rhabwar's commanding officer, a specialist in other-species technology, who had to find a way into the vessel and solve its alien and life-threatening engineering puzzles before the injured or diseased crew-members, who again might react violently at their rescuers' approach, could be treated.
The log was filled with such instances.
There was a full description of Rhabwar's response to the distress signal from a ship of the Blind Ones and their sighted and incredibly violent mind-partners, the Protectors of the Unborn. And there was the vast gestalt creature of unknown name and origin whose miles-long colonizing vessel had been wrecked in interstellar space and a large-scale military as well as major surgical operation had been required to put the scattered pieces together and transport them to their target world. And there had been the Dwerlans and the Ians and the Duwetz, and many others.
Gurronsevas did not know enough about medicine to understand all of the clinical details, but that no longer mattered. So deeply engrossed did he become in the information and incredible events that were unfolding on the screen that, had the food dispenser been less conveniently placed to the console, he would not have bothered to eat. He was beginning to worry about the dangers he might have to face during Rhabwar's next mission, but in a way he felt almost sorry that he lacked the qualifications to take an active part in it, especially when the ship personnel list revealed that he was already well-acquainted with two members of the medical team, Prilicla and Murchison.
On the screen the wreckage of alien starships and their other-species casualties disappeared to be replaced by a schematic drawing of the ship, and the voice began describing the ship's deck layout, crew and casualty accommodations, and principal systems, while the relevant areas were graphically highlighted. Gurronsevas tapped hold because the information being presented was becoming just so much meaningless light and noise. He had lost track of time. He was tired and hungry and his mind was too full of strange and wonderful information for sleep. Perhaps it was sheer fatigue that was causing his mind to throw up such fanciful ideas, but as he recalled some of the things that had been said and done to him by the Chief Psychologist and others, and in particular the things that should have been done and had not, his thoughts were making him feel afraid, uncertain, even more confused—and almost hopeful.
Rhabwar was indeed a very special ambulance ship. Soon it would depart on one of its very unusual and probably dangerous missions for which it had been designed. But what was a disgraced Chief Dietitian doing on board, unless O'Mara was trying to give him another chance?
Chapter Sixteen
THE NEXT four days passed very quickly and without the slightest feeling of boredom, and it was only when complete body and brain fatigue forced him to leave the console that he moved to his concealed resting place behind a set of casualty bed-screens to try, not always successfully, to switch off his mind. Then on the fifth day he was awakened by the lighting being switched on and a voice saying loudly, "Chief Dietitian, this is Lioren. Waken quickly, please. Where are you?"
Gurronsevas' mind was too confused by suddenly interrupted sleep for him to reply, but by lowering the concealing bed-screen he answered the question and signaled his returning consciousness.
There was a sharpness in Lioren's tone that Gurronsevas had not heard before as it said, "Have you returned to the hospital or talked to anyone, however briefly, since we last spoke?"
"No," said Gurronsevas.
"Then you don't know what has been happening during the past two days?" it asked, making the question sound like an accusation. "Nothing at all?"
"No," said Gurronsevas again.
Lioren was silent for a moment, then in a friendlier voice it said, "I believe you. If you remained on Rhabwar and know nothing, hopefully you may not be at fault."
Gurronsevas disliked the implication that he might have lied. He tried to keep his anger in check as he said, "I have spent all of the time studying, doing exactly as I've been told, for a change, and thinking about my possible future position here. It is about that, if it could spare a few minutes, that I would like to speak to O'Mara. Now please tell me what you are talking about?"
The other hesitated again, in the way of a person who is trying to impart bad news as gently as possible, then said, "I have two pieces of information for you. The first is inexact and may turn out to be unpleasant for you. The second is very unpleasant for you unless you can assure me that you had nothing to do with the situation. I prefer to tell you the less unpleasant news first.
"It is about Rhabwar's next mission," said Lioren. "This is little more than a rumor, you understand, because the mission is being discussed at a very high level by people who rarely gossip. A large number of expensive hyperspace signals have been exchanged about it. Contact with a newly-discovered intelligent species is involved, but there is doubt regarding the ambulance ship's ability to handle the situation. Rhabwar's medical team thinks they can help and the cultural contact people insist it is their job. I think the final decision has been taken but implimentation was delayed because of the epidemic."
