Then the Pmal crackled into life: “—not move. Prerequisite explanations to you. I am repeating this on all comm frequencies, will. Imperative you not move. Prerequisite—”
The Pmal faded again, as the robot evidently shifted to another possible frequency. “All right,” said Pertin, “We’ll wait”
But whether the robot understood him or not he could not say; it rested there on its tentacles, swaying under the thrust for a few moments more, and then slithered undulatingly away. The probe was decelerating furiously now: a roller coaster ride, multiplied by a hundred. There was a lot more noise than Pertin had expected, both the distant rumble of the nuclear explosions and the screeching of the torsion-bar shock absorbers that did their best to level out the thrust. But the cocoon was designed for it.
“Doc!” he called. “Can you hear me?”
The chimp’s cocoon was only yards away, but the thuuud-screech! drowned out all other sounds. Pertin stared around.
The room was half machine. Bright metal valves, grey plastic tubes coiling like dead entrails, coloured screens where enigmatic symbols flickered and vanished. The walls were a sick, off-colour green. No human would have designed a room like this, but of course it had not been designed for humans in the first place. It was a standard T’Worlie cocoon container; modified to take terrestrials; and the T’Worlies merely allowed them to use it.
The thuuud-screech went on and on. Experimenting with the cocoon, Pertin discovered that it would meter an anaesthetic dose into his veins, or even a selective analgesic to deaden the auditory nerve for a time to block out the remorseless nuclear thunder. But he didn’t want to sleep, and he wasn’t tired; he wanted to get about his business. When your time is running out, he thought, you don’t like to lose any of it.
Then he discovered that the cocoon had a built-in stereo stage.
The apparatus was not wholly familiar, but with any luck he should be able to reach Doc Chimp, at least. His first attempt was not a success. He gently turned a knurled pointer under the hollow silver hemisphere of the stage and was delighted to see it fill with the shining silver mist that indicated it was operating.
But when the mist abruptly condensed it was to show the image of a nude blonde girl. “Mr Pertin, sir,” she carolled sweetly, “welcome aboard! Tonight for your entertainment, sir, you may watch me star in The Belle of Bellatrix. A thriller-drama of the love of a human beauty for a mutated alien and its fatal consequences. Feel the fear of the terrified girl! Share the wrath of her human lover! Feel the coils of the monster around her! Taste its dying blood! All these available by using the sen-cat coils in the small cabinet by your right hand. We have many other stereo-stage fiches, Mr Pertin, and—”
He finally got that fiche turned off, and the nude blonde vanished, still smiling. She dissipated as the camera zoomed in at her until at the end all that was left was a Cheshire-cat smile and the memory of her pale, slim figure.
Then the stereo stage blinked, swirled with colour, solidified and Doc Chimp’s homely face was staring out at him.
“Got you first time," cried Pertin, pleased. “I didn’t think I would be so lucky.”
“You weren’t,” said the chimp. “I called you. I want to volunteer for something.” The chimpanzee face looked subdued.
Pertin said, “What?”
“I think I ought to take a look around,” said Doc Chimp sadly, “God knows I don’t want to. But most of the beings will be tied down to pressure cocoons and I’m not. Quite.”
“Good idea,” said Pertin, a little surprised. He hadn’t known the chimp well on Sun One - it wasn’t that he was prejudiced against mutated animals, but of course they didn’t have much in common. But he had an impression of Doc Chimp’s personality that was at variance with the act of volunteering for a solitary excursion into what might be trouble. Humorous, pleasure seeking, a little lazy - that’s how he would have described the chimp. “And thanks,” he added. “Meanwhile I’ll just send back a report to Sun One, if I can figure out how to use this stereo stage.”
“Ah,” said Doc Chimp, the mocking light in his eyes again, “allow me to instruct you, mighty human. You know, I figured you’d be too involved with high-level considerations to take much interest in hardware. So I checked out all the instrumentation with the T’Worlies on Sun One before we left.”
Pertin needed only a few minutes to learn to operate the component in his cocoon; it was not, after all, anything but a stereo stage, and they were common all over the Galaxy. Then he lifted himself on one elbow against the surging thrusts of the drive, the cocoon’s self-adjusting circuits buzzing busily to try to compensate for his unusual position; and he watched the chimp cautiously lever himself over the side of his own cocoon - timing his movements to the surging of the drive – drop clumsily to the floor, mutter to himself angrily for a moment and then slowly, painfully lumber off on all fours. He did not look back.
Pertin felt curiously better, as if he had discovered a friend where he had expected only an inadequate tool. He worked the controls of the stereo stage, got himself a circuit through to the recording fiches of the tachyon communicator and spoke:
“This is Ben James Pertin,” he said, “reporting in to Sun One. Doc Chimp and I have arrived safely. There was no apparent problem from the transmission; at least, we look all right, we’re breathing, our hearts are working. Whether our brains are scrambled or not, I could not say. No more than when we volunteered for this, anyway, I’d guess. We have seen very little of the probe, have contacted only a few of the personnel; but in general the situation appears much as we understood it. At present I am in an acceleration couch, waiting for the next period of free fall for further investigation. Doc Chimp, who is per forming very well and deserves credit, has voluntarily left on a scouting mission.
“I’ll report again when I have something to say,” he finished, “and - personal to Ben Charles Pertin: have a good time on my honeymoon.”
He snapped off the stage before he could decide to erase the last part of the message.
In spite of the best efforts of the cocoon, his kidneys were beginning to feel bruised. The noise was even more of a problem. Efficient soundproofing kept it out of the cocoon as noise - at least, as airborne vibrations - but there was too much of it, the amplitude too great, to be shut out entirely; and it seeped through as a continual thunder and squeal.
Pertin shut it out of his mind, thought of sleep, decided to brush up on his knowledge of the “hardware”.
His first attempt at the fiche library of the stereo stage was only half successful. He just managed to avert the appearance of the bare-skinned blonde and found he had secured a record transmitted by another member of the crew - race unspecified - apparently for a sort of public stereo-stage broadcast on its home planet. He shut out of his mind the public broadcaster he should have been getting ready to marry about this time - some thousands of light-years away, was getting ready to marry - and discovered that the name of the vessel was the Aurora, or Dawn - the sound was of course different in the T’Worlie tongue, and they had named it; but it had the same shared meanings of new day and bright glowing promise. He discovered that it had only limited facilities for recreation - well, he had known that. There were tape-fiche libraries for almost every known race and some special high-pressure atmosphere chambers for a few of the exotics. That was it.
This was not exactly what he wanted, so he tried again. But instead of getting a fiche on the ship itself, he got one on its mission, evidently a briefing record dubbed for humans. The narration was by a man Pertin recognized, about sixty, plump, freckled; he had been a minor functionary on Sun One. He spoke in a high-pitched voice, smiling emptily at the stereo pickup.