“I am a standby pump on the drinking water supply line to the DBLF ward Eighty-three diet kitchen,” it announced. “Functioning is automatic when required, currently inoperative. The hinged inspection panel is opened by inserting your general-purpose key into the slot marked with a red circle and turning right through ninety degrees. For component repair or replacement consult Maintenance Instructions Tape Three, Section One Twenty. Don’t forget to close the panel again before you leave.
“I am a standby pump …” it was beginning again when she took her hand away, silencing it.
At first she had been worried by the thought of traveling continuously along the low, narrow service tunnels, even though O’Mara had assured Timmins that her psych profile was free of any tendency toward claustrophobia. All of the tunnels were brightly lit and, she had been told, they remained so even if they were unoccupied for long periods. On Sommaradva this would have been considered a criminal waste of power. But in Sector General the additional demand on the main reactor for continuous lighting was negligible, and was more than outweighed by the maintenance problem that would have been posed if fallible on-off switches had been installed at every tunnel intersection.
Gradually her route took her away from the corridors and the alien cacophony of the people using them, and she felt more completely and utterly alone than she had believed it possible to feel.
The absence of outside sounds made the subduedhumming and clicking of the power and pumping systems around her appear to grow louder and more threatening, and she took to pressing the audible labels at random, just to hear another voice — even though it was simply a machine identifying itself and its often mystifying purpose.
Occasionally she found herself thanking the machine for the information.
The color codings had begun to change from the oxygen-nitrogen and water markings to those for chlorine and the corrosive liquid that the Illensan PVSJ metabolism used as a working fluid, and the corridors were shorter with many more twists and turns. Before her confusion could grow into panic, she decided to make herself as comfortable as possible in an alcove, substantially reduce the quantity of food she was carrying, and think.
According to her map she was passing from the PVSJ section downward through one of the synthesizer facilities that produced the food required by the chlorine-breathers and into the section devoted to the supply of the AUGL water-breathers. That explained the seemingly contradictory markings and the square-sectioned conduits that made hissing, rumbling noises as the solid, prepackaged PVSJ food was being moved pneumatically along them. However, a large corner of the AUGL section had been converted to a PVSJ operating room and post-op observation ward, and this was joined to the main chlorine section by an ascending spiral corridor containing moving ramps for the rapid transfer of staff and patients, since the PVSJs were not physiologically suited to the use of stairs. The twists and turns of the service tunnel were necessary to get around these topo-logically complex obstructions. But if she got safely past this complicated interpenetration of the water- andchlorine-breathing sections, the journey should be much simpler.
There was no shortage of vocal company. Warning labels, which spoke whether she pressed them or not, advised her to check constantly for cross-species contamination.
Provision had been made to take food without unsealing her protective suit, but her sensors showed the area clear of toxic material in dangerous quantities, so she opened her visor. The smell was an indescribable combination of every sharp, acrid, heavy, unpleasant, and even pleasant smell that she had ever encountered but, fortunately, only in trace quantities. She ate her food, quickly closed the visor, and moved on with increased confidence.
Three long, straight sections of corridor later she realized that her confidence had been misplaced.
According to her estimates of the distances and directions she had traveled, Cha Thrat should be somewhere between the Hudlar and Tralthan levels. The tunnel walls should have been carrying the thick, heavily insulated power cables for the FROBs’ artificial gravity grids and at least one distinctively marked pipe to supply their nutrient sprayers, as well as the air, water, and return waste conduits required by the warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing FGLIs. But the cable runs bore color combinations that should not have been there, and the only atmosphere line visible was the small-diameterpipe supplying air to the tunnel itself. Irritated with herself, she pressed the nearest audible label.
“I am an automatic self-monitoring control unit for synthesizer process One Twelve B,” it said importantly. “Press blue stud and access panel will move aside. Warning. Only the container and audible label are reus-able. If faulty, components must be replaced and not repaired. Not to be opened by MSVK, LSVO, or other species with low radiation tolerance unless special protective measures are taken.”
She had no desire to open the cabinet, even though her radiation monitor was indicating that the area was safe for her particular life-form. At the next alcove she had another look at her map and list of color codings.
Somehow she had wandered into one of the sections that were inhabited only by automatic machinery. The map indicated fifteen such areas within the main hospital complex, and none of them was anywhere near her, planned route. Plainly she had taken a wrong turning, perhaps a series of wrong turnings, soon after leaving the spiral tunnel connecting the PVSJ ward with its new operating room.
She moved on again, watching the tunnel walls and roof in the hope that the next change in the color codings would give her a clue to where she might be. She also cursed her own stupidity aloud and touched every label she passed, but soon decided that both activities were nonproductive. It was a wise decision because, at the next tunnel intersection, she heard distant voices.
Timmins had told her not to speak to anyone or to enter any of the public corridors. But, she reasoned, if she was already hopelessly off-course then there was nothing to stop her taking the side tunnel and moving toward the sound. Perhaps by listening at one of the corridor ventilating grilles she might overhear a conversation that would give her a clue to her present whereabouts.
The thought made Cha Thrat feel ashamed but, compared with some of the things she had been forced tothink about recently, it was a small, personal dishonor that she thought she could live with.
There were lengthy breaks in the conversation. At first the voices were too quiet and distant for her translator to catch what was being said, and when she came closer the people concerned were indulging in one of their lengthy silences. The result was that when she came to the next intersection, she saw them before there was another chance to overhear them.
They were a Kelgian DBLF and an Earth-human DBDG, dressed in Maintenance coveralls with the additional insignia of Monitor Corps rank. There were tools and dismantled sections of piping on the floor between them and, after glancing up at her briefly, they went on talking to each other.
“I wondered what was coming at us along the corridor,” the Kelgian said, “and making more noise than a drunken Tralthan. It must be the new DCNF we were told about, on its first day underground. We mustn’t talk to it, not that I’d want to, anyway. Strange-looking creature, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t dream of talking to it, or vice versa,” the DBDG replied. “Pass me the Number Eleven gripper and hold your end steady. Do you think it knows where it’s going?”
The Kelgian’s conical head turned briefly in the direction Cha Thrat was headed, and it said, “Not unless it was feeling that the tunnel walls were closing in on itv and it wanted to treat threatened claustrophobia with a* jolt of agoraphobia by walking on the outer hull. This, is no job for a Corps senior non-com shortly, if what the Major says is true, to be promoted Lieutenant.”