Tyrett was represented by its Captain, Major Nelson, and Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul, while Major Fletcher and the astrogation officer, Lieutenant Dodds, furnished the required military balance for Rhabwar. Murchison, Prilicla, Naydrad, and Conway — who were, after all, mere civilians — filled the remainder of the deck space with the exception of the empath, who was clinging to the safety of the ceiling.
It was Prilicla, knowing that nobody else felt ready to contribute any useful ideas, who spoke first.
“I feel that we are all agreed,” it said in the musical trills and clicks of the Cinrusskin tongue, which emanated from their translator packs as faultless if somewhat toneless speech in the languages of Kelgia, Orligia, and Earth, “that the being is in a state of suspended animation, that there is a high probability that it is not a patient but a survivor who should be returned to its home world as soon as convenient if this planet can be found, and that the need to move it is not an urgent one.”
Lieutenant Dodds looked at Fletcher for permission to speak, then said, “It depends on what you mean by urgent, Doctor. I ran a vectors and velocities check on this and the other pieces of wreckage within detector range. These bits of alien vessel or space station occupied roughly the same volume of space approximately eighty-seven years ago, which is when the disaster must have occurred. If it was a ship I don’t think it was heading for the nearby sun since there are no planets, but a lot of the dispersed wreckage will either fall into the sun or pass closely enough to make no difference to any other survivors in hibernation. This will begin to occur in just over eleven weeks.”
They digested that for a moment, then Tyrell’s Captain said, “I still say a space station way out here is impossible, especially one traveling at such a clip that its wreckage will reach the sun, there, in eleven weeks. It is far more likely that the survivor is in a lifeboat with suspended animation extending the duration of its consumables.”
Fletcher glared at his fellow captain, then he noticed Prilicla beginning to tremble. He visibly calmed himself as he said.
“It is not impossible, Major Nelson, although it is unlikely. Let us suppose that the survivor’s race, which is at the interplanetary flight level of technology, was beginning to experiment with hyperspace generation on its space station and inadvertently performed a random Jump and found themselves very far indeed from home, and subsequently went into hibernation for the reason you have stated. Many such accidents have occurred during early experiments with hypertravel. In any case, I think we are drawing too many conclusions from what is, after all, only one small piece of a very large jigsaw.”
Conway decided to join in before this spirited exchange of technical views could devolve into a quarrel. He said placatingly, “But what conclusions, however few and tentative, can we draw from the piece you have examined, Captain? And what,however vaguely, can you see of the complete picture?”
“Very well,” said Fletcher. He quickly inserted his vision spool from the wreck into the Recreation Deck’s display unit and began to describe everything he had observed and deduced during his examination of the distressed vessel, which he preferred to think of as a simple, pressurized container rather than a ship. It was a cylinder just over twenty meters in length and approximately three meters in diameter, with ends which were flat except for a, set of eight couplings which would enable it to be connected at either end to other similar containers. The couplings had been designed to break open before any external shock or force applied to adjacent structures could damage or deform the container. If the dimensions of the other containers or space station sections were the same as the one examined, and if the longitudinal curvature was uniform in all of them, then approximately eighty of these sections would form a Wheel just under five hundred meters in diameter.
He paused, but Major Nelson still had his lips pressed tightly together, and the others, knowing that a reaction was expected of them, kept perversely silent.
The section had a double hull with only the inner one pressurized, Fletcher resumed, but it possessed no control, sensor, or power systems other than those associated with the suspended animation equipment. The level of technology displayed was advanced interplanetary rather than interstellar, so the station had no business being where it was in the first place.
But the most puzzling feature of the container was the method used to enter and leave it.
They had already seen that there were no openings on the hull large enough to allow entry or exit by the survivor, which meant that it had to enter and leave via the flat, circular plate at each end of the cylinder. In Fletcher’s opinion the creature went in one end and came out the other because physically it was too massive to turn itself around inside its container. But there was nothing resembling a door at either end of the cylinder, just the two large circular plates whose edges were set inside the thick rims which supported the couplings.
“So far as I can see there is no operating mechanism for these endplates,” Fletcher went on with the hint of an apology creeping into his tone. “There are only so many ways for a door to open, and there has to be a door into and out of that thing, but I can’t find one. I even considered explosive bolts, with the extraterrestrial sealed in until it arrived or was taken by its rescuers to an environmentally suitable position — either a planet or the hold of a rescue ship — whereupon it would blow the hatch fastenings and crawl out. But there are no hatch fastenings that I can see and the rim structure surrounding the hatches, if that is what they are, would not allow them to be blown open. Neither can they be opened inward because the diameter of the inner, pressurized hull is much smaller than that of the endplates.”
Fletcher shook his head in bafflement and ended, “I’m sorry, Doctor. Right now I can see no way for you to get to your survivor without cutting its ship apart. What I need is another piece of this jigsaw puzzle to examine, a broken piece which will let me see how the other undamaged pieces were put together.”
There was silence for a few seconds, during which Prilicla trembled in sympathy with the Captain’s embarrassment, then Murchison spoke.
“I would like to examine a broken piece as well,” she said quietly. “Specifically, a piece containing a nonsurvivor which would let me see how our survivor is put together.”
Con way turned to Dodds. “Are there many pieces which look as if they had been broken up?”
“A few,” replied the astrogator. “Most of the traces give sensor readings similar to the first piece. That is, a vehicle of similar mass retaining internal pressure and containing a small power source. All of the pieces, including the few damaged ones, are at extreme sensor range. It is a long way to go on impulse drive, but if we jumped through hyperspace we would probably overshoot.”
“How many pieces altogether?” asked Nelson.
“Twenty-three solid traces so far,” said Dodds, “plus a few masses of what appears to be loose, structural debris. There is also one largish mass, unpressurized and radioactive, which I’d guess was part of a power center.”
From its position on the ceiling, Prilicla said, “If I might make a suggestion, and if Major Nelson is willing to interrupt his survey mission …?”
Nelson laughed suddenly and the other Corps officers present smiled. With great feeling he went on, “There isn’t a scout-ship crew on survey duty anywhere in the Galaxy who would not rather be doing something, anything, else! You only have to ask and give me half an excuse for accepting, Doctor.”