Elongating the four triangular members was contraindicated since this would have entailed surgical interference and consequent serious weakening of the muscle systems concerned, and they could not foresee the effect on the network of blood vessels which became engorged and extended the members to quadruple their size when the being returned to consciousness.
Instead they made molds of the four hooks and made artificial ones using a hard, biologically neutral plastic at the tips and a wide band of thinner, more flexible material around the bases. The result was a set of hollow, hook-tipped gloves which, when a little of the original hooks were filed away to make them fit, were slipped over the original members and secured in position with rivets and sutures.
Suddenly there was nothing left to do, but hope.
Above the two unconscious CRLTs the vision screen was displaying an overall picture of their coilship, complete now except for the segments whose occupants were awaiting surgical attention, and the dense but orderly mass of shipping moving in and around it. The thought came to Conway, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, that the tremendous fleet of Monitor Corps and other units, from the great capital ships and auxiliaries down to the swarms of scoutships and the army of specialists in engineering and communications they represented, were all wasting their time here if this particular operation was not a success.
For this responsibility he had argued long and eloquently with Thornnastor, O’Mara, and Skempton at Sector General. He must have been mad.
Harshly, he said, “Wake them up.”
They watched anxiously as once again the two CRLTs came out of hibernation and began moving toward each other. They touched once, a brief, exploratory contact, then they fused. Where there had been two massive, twenty-meter caterpillarlike creatures there was now one of twice that length.
The join was visible, of course, but one had to look very carefully to see it. Conway forced himself to wait for ten interminable seconds, and still they had not pulled away from each other.
“Prilicla?”
“They are feeling pain, friend Conway,” the empath replied, trembling slightly. “It is within bearable limits. There are also feelings of acceptance and gratitude.”
Conway gave a relieved sigh which ended in an enormous, eye-watering yawn. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Thank you, everyone. Put them back to sleep, check the sutures, and reseal them in their hibernation cylinders. They will not have to link up again until after the landing, by which time the wounds should have healed to a large extent so that the fusion will be more comfortable for them. As for ourselves, I prescribe eight hours solid sleep before—”
He broke off abruptly as the features of Fleet Commander Dermod appeared on the screen.
“You appear to have successfully repaired a major break in our alien chain, Doctor,” he said seriously, “but the time taken to do so was not short. There are many other breaks and we have three days during which a concerted Jump is possible, Doctor, after which the gravitational distortion effects caused by that rapidly approaching sun will make an accurate Jump out of the question even for single ships.
“Should we overrun the three-day deadline,” he went on grimly, “single-ship Jumping within operational safety limits will be possible for an additional twenty hours. During this twenty-hour period, if the coilship is not to be abandoned to fall into the sun, it will have to be dismantled into sections small enough to be accommodated by the hyperspheres of the units available in the area. This, you will understand, would of necessity be a very hurried operation and our own accident casualties as well as those of CRLTs would be heavy?
“What I am saying, Doctor,” he ended gravely, “is that if you cannot complete your organic link-ups within three days, tell me now so that we can begin dismantling the coilship in a safer and more orderly fashion.”
Con way rubbed his eyes and said, “There were seventeen missing segments between the join which we have just effected, and this makes it the most difficult job of the lot. The remaining breaks are of two, three, or at most five segments, so that those linking operations will be correspondingly easier. We know the drill now and three days should be ample time, barring an unforeseen catastrophe.”
“I cannot hold you responsible for one of those, Doctor,” the Fleet Commander said dryly. “Very well. What are your immediate intentions?”
“Right now,” Conway said firmly, “we intend to sleep.”
Dermod looked vaguely surprised, as if the very concept of sleep was one that had become alien to him over the past few days, then he nodded grudgingly and broke contact.
Feeling rested, alert, and much more human — and, of course, more Kelgian and Cinrusskin — they returned to Descartes’s cargo hold to find another two CRLTs already waiting for them and the remaining segments to be joined clamped to the outer hull. The Fleet Commander, it was clear, was a man who believed in maintaining the pressure.
But achieving fusion with these two was remarkably easy. Only two intervening segments were missing so that the surgery required was minor indeed. The next pair were more difficult, nevertheless a satisfactory link-up was achieved within two hours and, with their growing confidence and expertise, this was to become the average time required for the job. So well did they progress that they became almost angry with themselves when they were forced to break for meals or sleep.
Then suddenly they were finished and there was nothing to do but watch the screen while the last gap in the coil was being closed and hundreds of spacesuited figures swarmed all over it to give a final check to the sensor actuators on each hibernation cylinder which would expel their endplates and initiate resuscitation on landing.
With the exception of Rhabwar and one of Descartes’s planetary landers, the great fleet of scoutships and auxiliaries withdrew to a distance of one and a half thousand kilometers, which was far enough to relieve the traffic congestion in the area but close enough for them to return quickly should anything go wrong.
“I do not foresee anything going seriously wrong at this end,” the Fleet Commander said when the coilship was in one tremendous, spiral piece. “You have given us enough time, Doctor, to carry out all the necessary pre-Jump calculations and calibrations. This will be a time-consuming process since our three vessels, whose hyperspace envelopes will have to be extended to enclose the coilship, are Jumping in concert. Should a problem arise and we are unable to make this Jump, the units standing by will move in, dismantle the coilship as quickly as possible, and Jump away with the pieces and salvage what we can from this operation.
“There will be enough Monitor Corps medics on these ships to deal with the expected casualties,” he went on, “and for this reason I would like Rhabwar to leave at once and position itself close to the CRLTs new target planet. If trouble develops it is much more likely to be at that end.”
“I understand,” Conway said quietly.
The Fleet Commander nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. From now on this is purely a transport problem and my responsibility.”
Sooner yours than mine, Conway thought grimly as Dermod broke contact.
He was thinking about the Fleet Commander’s problem while they were wishing Colonel Okaussie and the Descartes’s tractor beam crew good-by and good luck, and it remained in his mind after the medical team boarded Rhabwar and the ambulance ship was heading out to Jump distance from the combined CRLT and Federation vessels.
Conway understood Dermod’s problem all too well and the strong but unspoken reason why the Fleet Commander wanted the ambulance ship positioned in the target system. They both knew that the majority of single-ship accidents occurred because of a premature emergence into normal space when one of the unfortunate vessel’s matched set of hyperdrive generators was out of synchronization. A single generator pod emerging into normal space while the rest of the vessel was in the hy-perdimension could tear the ship apart and leave wreckage strewn across millions of kilometers. Timing, therefore, was: ritical even on a single ship where only two or perhaps four generators had to be matched. The Fleet Commander’s problem was that Vespasian, Claudius, and Descartes together with the jnormous coilship of the CRLTs were linked together by tractor and pressor beams into a single rigid structure.