The voices in his headset were agreeing with him, but otherwise they were not being helpful.“… And we checked the suit register, sir,” one of them was saying. “It shows the recent withdrawal of one Tralthan-style protective suit with a three-hour air supply and a standard thruster pack, just under two and three-quarter hours ago. If Gurronsevas used the thrusters during its visit to the Hudlar ship and remained sealed while doing so, it might not be able to move far or breathe for very much longer. A search and rescue team is suiting up, but where do we tell them to look for it?”
“Suppose it uses its remaining thrust to spin rapidly,” said another, “that would enable us to get a visual fix on a rapidly rotating body of roughly Tralthan mass and—”
“I don’t know, sir,” the first voice replied. “Some of those cargo items are large and have mass and momentum in proportion. If Gurronsevas was unlucky enough to be caught between two colliding masses, it might no longer bear much resemblance to a Tralthan.”
“Mount a tractor-beam on the outer hull,” said the first voice quickly. “Use it in conjunction with the rescue team who will spread themselves out to search the cargo cloud in one sweep. If they spot anything that looks like our wanderer, you pull it in.”
“Tractor mounts aren’t exactly portable, sir,” said the other voice. “We’ll need time to clamp it in position and realign the—”
“I know, I know. Just do it as fast as you can.”
Through the few clear patches in his helmet, Gurronsevas saw that he had stabilized himself with respect to the hospital because the cargo lock of the unloading bay, reduced by distance to a small, brightly-lit square, was no longer moving past him. Already tiny, Earth-human figures were moving equipment, presumably the tractor beam installation, through the lock and onto the hull. A few seconds later the first members of the rescue team came shooting out in powered suits to scatter towards their assigned search areas.
None of them were heading directly towards him, and Gurronsevas himself was headed for trouble.
The cargo debris was still expanding and dispersing all around him and the nebular fog of nutrient and chlorine was fading to a thick mist, except for one area nearby where a Hudlar food container had collided with something that had broken off its sprayer nozzle and sent it spinning. The container was discharging its contents in a thin, high-pressure jet as it spun so that it was encircled by a continuous expanding spiral of nutrient. Gurronsevas was too close and moving too fast to evade the bright, insubstantial rings of vapor with his thrusters, and could only wrap his arms around his head to protect the remaining clear areas of the helmet.
Just before he reached the bright, insubstantial barrier, Gurronsevas could almost believe that he was approaching and penetrating the orbiting equatorial dust of some vast, ringed planet, and he thought that the ending of his life was accompanied by some unusual and interesting experiences. He was pleased when he passed through without any further deterioration in helmet visibility.
Beyond the rings he saw another object about fifty yards ahead, a large, seemingly undamaged bale of Hudlar nutrient drifting without spin and motionless with respect to himself. It was not, therefore, a threat.
The rescue team was being widely deployed, but none of the voices reported sighting him, and he could see only one of them through the fog. He was wondering if he should wave his arms in an attempt to attract that single Earth-human’s attention when he caught sight again of the spinning food sprayer that was producing the rings.
Perhaps, Gurronsevas thought with a faint stirring of hope, he would have time for many more interesting experiences before his life came to an end.
The undamaged bale of Hudlar food tanks was drifting nearby. He used the suit thrusters to close with it. In spite of his shortage of air and the need for urgency, he used minimum power so that the contact would be gentle enough not to set the bale spinning or damage the food tanks that lay like a large, tightly-packed carpet of eggs that was moving up to meet him.
He landed gently and, moving with great care, positioned himself as close to the center of the layer of tanks as his ungainly physiology would permit. Because the cargo had been orbitally loaded in weightless conditions and the hyperspace jump to Sector General had also been gravity-free, the two-layer bale was held in one piece by a tightly-stretched open net rather than a solid container. Gurronsevas was able to look between the long, tightly-packed cylinders to the opposite face of the bale, and beyond it to the hospital’s outer hull.
Looking through the opening between the group of tanks closest to his helmet, Gurronsevas attached himself to the bale and used his suit thrusters to send it into a slow, controlled roll. When the brightly-lit cargo lock of Bay Twelve came into view, he checked the roll and with gentle applications of side thrust then centered the target in this crude sight and waited for a moment to be sure that it would stay there. Then he forced himself to think.
Gurronsevas estimated that there were one hundred food tanks in the layer around him, all of their nozzles pointing vertically upwards. A central group of about twenty of them were covered by his body and were therefore useless for his purpose, but the outlying tanks could be emptied without him being covered with nutrient. Very carefully he extended all his arms, selected two pairs of tanks that were equidistant from his central position, opened the nozzles for a maximum delivery jet rather than a spray, and switched all four on simultaneously.
He felt a very gentle pressure as the tanks emptied their contents rapidly into space. But the inertia of the cargo bale and his own large body had to be overcome, and it was too great for there to be any noticeable reduction in his velocity away from the hospital. He opened the valves on all of the tanks he could reach and was soon surrounded by spurting, inverted cones of nutrient paint. It was very important that his strange vehicle’s center of thrust did not deviate from its intended direction of flight, so every few seconds he sighted through the tiny spaces between the tanks to ensure that the brightly-lit and now slowly expanding opening into Bay Twelve had not moved aside. Whenever it showed a tendency to drift, he corrected with his suit thrusters.
According to the helmet indicators, his thrust power had been exhausted minutes earlier. He assumed that the inaccuracy had been designed into them so that they read empty when there was, in fact, a small safety reserve remaining. Fervently he hoped that the same design philosophy had been used on his air tank indicators.
His difficulty in breathing, the pounding in his head and the increasing pain in his chest were probably psychosomatic, he told himself, and caused principally by foreknowledge. But he did not believe himself.
He was moving away from the expanding cloud of cargo debris and Lock Twelve was growing larger ahead. The rescue team members were continuing to send in negative reports. Surely, thought Gurronsevas, someone should have spotted him by now. Then suddenly they all did.
“Rescue Four, it looks as if one of the Hudlar bales sustained freak collision damage that ruptured the tanks on one side. It is moving in a direction opposite to the rest of the cargo and could be a personnel hazard …”
“Five here. Freak collision hell! Our missing Tralthan is riding on that thing. Oh man, that is one nice trick. But it’s going in too fast …”
“Rescue team, can any of you intercept?”
“Rescue One. No, not before it hits. We’re all moving in the wrong direction. Hull tractor beam, can you soft land it?”
“Negative, One. We won’t be operational for another ten minutes.”
“Then forget it and clear the area in case it lands on top of you.”
“I don’t think so, One. We’ve computed its trajectory and think it will make it through the airlock. That Tralthan knows how to …”
“Rescue One. All internal tractor beamers switch to pressor mode. Catch it as it comes in. Decontamination and medical teams stand by …”
His heartbeat was becoming so rapid and thunderous that it was difficult to hear the rest of the conversation and, in spite of the blurring of his vision, he could see the bright opening into Bay Twelve rushing closer. The nutrient tanks propelling him were emptying themselves, but unevenly so that his bale was beginning a slow, lateral roll that was moving him towards the edge of the lock opening.
For an instant Gurronsevas thought that he would pass through safely, but a corner of his vehicle struck the coaming and the whole bale disintegrated into its component tanks. Miraculously, he had escaped injury, but suddenly he was in the middle of about two hundred full and empty food tanks, all of them tumbling at high speed towards the inner wall of the unloading bay. Then he felt as if he had been punched all over his body as the immaterial rod of a pressor beam brought him to an abrupt halt, leaving the tanks to crash and burst against the inner wall. Those that were not already empty emptied themselves rapidly in all directions.
One of them struck his chest as it spun past, not violently enough to cause pain, but suddenly his communicator transmit light came on. All it had needed was a solid thump.
“Don’t leave it hanging up there, dammit,” said an authoritative voice. “Pull it into the personnel lock. Duty medic, stand by …”
“Gurronsevas,” he said with great difficulty. “I need air, not medical attention, urgently.”
“You’re talking to us …good!” came the reply. “Hang on, we’ll have you hooked up to a new tank in a few minutes.”
Gurronsevas spent what seemed like a long time in the lock chamber having his protective garment cleaned of any possible chlorine contamination and removed, but his irritation was tempered by the fact that while the process was going on he was able to breathe again without difficulty, and think. The duty medic, a very officious Nidian, could not believe that he had escaped serious injury and wanted to transfer him to an observation ward, but that Gurronsevas would not allow. He compromised by allowing it to use its portable scanner on every square inch of his body.
He had plenty of time to listen to the voices in his headset describing many interesting events that he was unable to see. They spoke of small, unpressurized vehicles being dispatched to examine and retrieve the dispersing cargo for the purpose of salvage or later safe disposal, of Trivennleth redocking and of the temporary, fast-setting sealant that was being applied to the warped freight lock and the preparations for unloading its remaining cargo.
They did not mention Gurronsevas’s daring self-rescue again, he noted with some disappointment. Perhaps they were too busy.
When the Nidian doctor finally released him, Gurronsevas asked directions to Bay Twelve’s operations center because there were words that he must say to the people there. The staff, who were mostly Earth-human, looked up at him as he entered. None of them spoke, nor did anyone smile. Placing his feet quietly against the floor to demonstrate politeness and the fact that he was at a psychological disadvantage, he walked across to the being who was occupying the supervisor’s position.
“I wish to express my sincere gratitude for the part you and your subordinates played in my rescue,” said Gurronsevas formally. “And for any small way in which I may have contributed to your cargo accident, I tender my apologies.”
“Any small way …!” began the supervisor. Then it shook its head and went on, “You saved your own life, Gurronsevas. And that idea of using the nutrient as a propulsion unit was, well, unique.”
When it became plain that the Earth-human was not going to say anything else, Gurronsevas said, “Shortly after I joined the hospital I was told by an entity I shall not name, and whom I considered to be a culinary barbarian, that food is just fuel. I had not realized that it might be speaking the literal truth.”
The supervisor smiled, but only for an instant, and the expressions of the others did not change. Gurronsevas did not need to be a Cinrusskin empath to know that he was not highly regarded by these people just then. But if they would not respond to a pleasantry, they could not refuse a polite request.
He went on, “I have in mind to make some important changes to the food supply of the Hudlars, among others. To make them it is possible that I shall require the permission and cooperation of the hospital’s Chief Administrator. May I use your communicator? I want to talk to Colonel Skempton.”
The supervisor swung its chair around to look through the observation window, a wall-sized sheet of transparent material as clear as air in the small areas where it was not covered with nutrient paint, at the team working on the damaged airlock, and at the littered and paint-splattered loading bay before turning back to face Gurronsevas.
“I feel sure,” it said, “that Colonel Skempton will want to talk to you.”