A ward was being evacuated somewhere and through his stretch of corridor there crawled, wriggled and hopped a procession of beings resembling the contents of some cosmic Ark. All the oxygen-breathing life forms were represented together with many who were not, and human nursing orderlies and Monitors shepherded them along. Experience must have taught the orderlies that to stand or walk upright was asking for broken bones and cracked skulls, because they were crawling along on their hands and knees. When a sudden surge of three or four Cs caught them they had a shorter distance to fall that way. Most of them were wearing gravity packs, Conway saw, but had given them up as useless in conditions where the gravity constant was a wild variable.
He saw PVSJs in balloon-like chlorine envelopes being pinned against the floor, flattened like specimens pressed under glass, then bounced into the air again. And Tralthan patients in their massive, unwieldy harness — Tralthans were prone to injury internally despite their great strength being dragged along. There were DBDGs, DBLFs and CLSRs, also unidentifiable something’s in spherical, wheeled containers that radiated cold almost visibly. Strung out in a line, being pushed, dragged or manfully inching along on their own, the beings crept past, bowing and straightening up again like wheat in a strong wind as the gravity grids pulled at them.
Conway could almost imagine he felt those fluctuations where he stood, but knew that the crashing ship must have destroyed the grid circuits in its path. He dragged his eyes away from that grim procession and headed downward again.
“Conway!” Mannon’s voice barked at him a few minutes later. “That survivor down there is responsible for as many casualties now as the crashed ship! A ward of convalescent LSVOs are dead due to a threesecond surge from one-eighth to four gravities. What’s happening now?”
The tunnel of wreckage was steadily narrowing, Conway reported, the hull and lighter machinery of the ship having been peeled away by the time it had reached their present level. All that could remain ahead was the massive stuff like hyperdrive generators and so on. He thought he must be very near the end of the line now, and the being who was the unknowing cause of the devastation around them.
“Good,” said Mannon, “but hurry it up!”
“But can’t the Engineers get through? Surely—”
“They can’t,” broke in Dr. Lister’s voice. “In the area surrounding the gravity grid controls there are fluctuations of up to ten Cs. It’s impossible. And joining up with your route from inside the hospital is out, too. It would mean evacuating corridors in the neighboring area, and the corridors are all filled with patients …” The voice dropped in volume as Dr. Lister apparently turned away from the mike, and Conway overhead him saying, “Surely an intelligent being could not be so panic-stricken that it … it … Oh, when I get my hands on it—”
“It may not be intelligent,” put in another voice. “Maybe it’s a cub, from the FGLI maternity unit …
“If it is I’ll tan its little—”
A sharp click ended the conversation at that point as the transmitter was switched off. Conway, suddenly realizing what a very important man he had become, tried to hurry it up as best he could.
IX
They dropped another level into a ward in which four MSVKs-fragile, tn-pedal stork like beings-drifted lifeless among loose items of ward equipment. Movements of the bodies and objects in the room seemed a little unnatural, as if they had been recently disturbed. It was the first sign of the enigmatic survivor they were seeking. Then they were in a great, metal-walled compartment surrounded by a maze of plumbing and unshielded machinery. On the floor in a bulge it had created for itself, the ship’s massive hyper-drive generator lay with some shreds of control room equipment strewn around it. Underneath was the remains of a life form that was now unclassifiable. Beside the generator another hole had been torn in the severely weakened floor by some other piece of the ship’s heavy equipment.
Conway hurried over to it, looked down, then called excitedly, “There it is!”
They were looking into a vast room which could only be the grid control center. Rank upon rank of squat, metal cabinets covered the floor, walls and ceiling — this compartment was always kept airless and at zero gravity — with barely room for even Earth-human Engineers to move between them. But Engineers were seldom needed here because the devices in this all — important compartment were self-repairing. At the moment this ability was being put to a severe test.
A being which Conway classified tentatively as AACL sprawled across three of the delicate control cabinets. Nine other cabinets, all winking with red distress signals, were within range of its six, python-like tentacles which poked through seals in the cloudy plastic of its suit. The tentacles were at least twenty feet long and tipped with a horny substance which must have been steel-hard considering the damage the being had caused.
Conway had been prepared to feel pity for this hapless survivor, he had expected to find an entity injured, panic-stricken and crazed with pain. Instead there was a being who appeared unhurt and who was viciously smashing up gravity-grid controls as fast as the built-in self repairing robots tried to fix them.
Conway swore and began hunting for the frequency of the other’s suit radio. Suddenly there was a harsh, high-pitched cheeping sound in his ear-phones. “Got you!” Conway said grimly.
The cheeping sounds ceased abruptly as the other heard his voice and so did all movement of those highly destructive tentacles. Conway noted the wavelength, then switched back to the band used by the PVSJ and himself.
“It seems to me,” said the chlorine-breather when he had told it what he had heard, “that the being is deeply afraid, and the noises it made were of fear — otherwise your Translator would have made you receive them as words in your own language. The fact that these noises and its destructive activity stopped when it heard your voice is promising, but I think that we should approach slowly and reassure it constantly that we are bringing help. Its activity down there gives me the impression that it has been hitting out at anything which moves, so a certain amount of caution is indicated, I think.”
“Yes, Padre,” said Conway with great feeling.
“We do not know in what direction the being’s visual organs are directed,” the PVSJ went on, “so I suggest we approach from opposite sides.”
Conway nodded. They set their radios to the new band and climbed carefully down onto the ceiling of the compartment below. With just enough power in their gravity neutralizers to keep them pressing gently against the metal surface they moved away from each other onto opposite walls, down them, then onto the floor. With the being between them now, they moved slowly toward it.
The robot repair devices were busy making good the damage wrecked by those six anacondas it used for limbs but the being continued to lie quiescent. Neither did it speak. Conway kept thinking of the havoc this entity had caused with its senseless threshing about. The things he felt like saying to it were anything but reassuring, so he let the PSVJ padre do the talking.
“Do not be afraid,” the other was saying for the twentieth time. “If you are injured, tell us. We are here to help you …
But there was neither movement nor reply from the being.
On a sudden impulse Conway switched to Dr. Mannon’s band. He said quickly, “The survivor seems to be an AACL. Can you tell me what it’s here for, or any reason why it should refuse or be unable to talk to us?”