“Surely more rescue teams would be the answer,” Conway said. “If there aren’t enough on your ship we can bring them from the hospital. That would cut down the time required—”
“No, Doctor!” Hendricks said emphatically. “Why do you think we parked five hundred miles out? There is evidence of considerable power storage in this wreck and until we know exactly how and where, we have to go easy. We want to save the alien, you understand, but we don’t want to blow it and ourselves up. Didn’t they tell you about this at the hospital?”
Conway shook his head “Maybe they didn’t want me to worry.
Hendricks laughed. “Neither do I. Seriously, the chance of a blowup is vanishingly small provided we take proper precautions. But with men swarming all over the wreck, burning and pulling it apart, it would be a near-certainty.”
While the Lieutenant had been talking they passed through two other compartments and along a short corridor. Conway noticed that the interior of each room had a different color scheme. The survivor’s race, he thought, must have highly individual notions regarding interior decoration.
He said, “When do you expect to get through to it?”
This was a simple question which required a long, complicated answer, Hendricks explained ruefully. The alien had made its presence known by noise — or more accurately, by the vibrations set up in the fabric of the ship by its movements. But the condition of the wreck plus the fact that its movements were of irregular duration and weakening made it impossible to judge its position with certainty. They were cutting a way toward the center of the wreck on the assumption that that was where an undamaged, air-tight compartment was most likely to be. Also, they were missing any later movements it made, which might have given them a fix on its position, because of the noise and vibration set up by the rescue team.
Boiled down, the answer was between three and seven hours.
And after they made contact with it, thought Conway, he had to sample, analyze and reproduce its atmosphere, ascertain its pressure and gravity requirements, prepare it for transfer to the hospital and do whatever he could for its injuries until it could be treated properly.
“Far too long,” said Conway, aghast. The survivor could not be expected, in its steadily weakening state, to survive indefinitely. “We’ll have to prepare accommodation without actually seeing our patient — there’s nothing else for it. Now this is what we’ll do …
Rapidly, Conway gave instruction for tearing up sections of floor plating so as to bare the artificial gravity grids beneath. This sort of thing was not in his line, he told Hendricks, but no doubt the Lieutenant could make a fair guess at their output. There was only one known way of neutralizing gravity used by all the space-going races of the Galaxy; if the survivor’s species had a different way of doing it then they might as well give up there and then.
The physical characteristics of any life-form,” he went on, “can be deduced from specimens of their food supply, the size and power demands of their artificial gravity grids, and air trapped in odd sections of piping. Enough data of this sort would enable us to reproduce its living conditions—”
“Some of the loose objects floating around must be food containers,” Kursedd put in suddenly.
“That’s the idea,” Conway agreed. “But obtaining and analyzing a sample of air must come first. That way we’ll have a rough idea of its metabolism, which should help you to tell which cans hold paint and which syrup …
Seconds later the search to detect and isolate the wreck’s air-supply system was under way. The quantity of plumbing in any compartment of a spaceship was necessarily large, Conway knew, but the amount of piping which ran through even the smallest rooms in this ship left him feeling astonished by its complexity. The sight caused a vague stirring at the back of his mind, but either his association centers were not working properly or the stimulus was too weak for him to make anything out of it.
Conway and the others were working on the assumption that if a compartment could be sealed by air-tight bulkheads, then the pipelines supplying air to that section would be interrupted by cut-off valves where they entered and left it. The finding of a section of piping containing atmosphere was therefore only a matter of time. But the maze of plumbing all around them included control and power lines, some of which must still be live. So each section of piping had to be traced back to a break or other damage which allowed them to identify it as not belonging to the air-supply system. It was a long, exhausting process of elimination, and Conway raged inwardly at this shearly mechanical puzzle on whose quick solution depended his patient’s life. Furiously he wished that the team cutting into the wreck would contact the survivor, just so he could go back to being a fairly capable doctor instead of acting like an engineer with ten thumbs.
Two hours slipped by and they had the possibilities narrowed down to a single heavy pipe which was obviously the outlet, and a thick bundle of metal tubing which just had to bring the air in.
Apparently there were seven air inlets!
“A being that needs seven different chemical …” began Hendricks, and lapsed into a baffled silence.
“Only one line carries the main constituent,” Conway said. “The others must contain necessary trace elements or inert components, such as the nitrogen in our own air. If those regulator valves you can see on each tube had not closed when the compartment lost pressure we could tell by the settings the proportions involved.”
He spoke confidently, but Conway was not feeling that way. He had premonitions.
Kursedd moved forward. From its kit the nurse produced a small cutting torch, focused the flame to a six-inch, incandescent needle, then gently brought it into contact with one of the seven inlet pipes. Conway moved closer, an open sample flask held at the ready.
Yellowish vapor spurted suddenly and Conway pounced. His flask now held little more than a slightly soft vacuum, but there was enough of the gas caught inside for analysis purposes. Kursedd attacked another section of tubing.
“Judging by sight alone I would say that is chlorine,” the DBLF said as it worked. “And if chlorine is the main constituent of its atmosphere then a modified PVSJ ward could take the survivor.”
“Somehow,” said Conway, “I don’t think it will be as simple as that.”
He had barely finished speaking when a high-pressure jet-white vapor filled the room with fog. Kursedd jerked back instinctively, pulling the flame away from the holed pipe, and the vapor changed to a clear liquid which bubbled out to hang as shrinking, furiously steaming globes all around them. They looked and acted like water, Conway thought, as he collected another sample.
With the third puncture the cutting flame, held momentarily in the jet of escaping gas, swelled and brightened visibly. That reaction was unmistakable.
“Oxygen,” said Kursedd, putting Conway’s thoughts into words, “or a high oxygen content.—
“The water doesn’t bother me,” Hendricks put in, “but chlorine and oxy is a pretty unbreathable mixture.”
“I agree,” said Conway. “Any being who breathes chlorine finds oxygen lethal in a matter of seconds, and vice versa. But one of the gases might form a very small percentage of the whole, a mere trace. It is also possible that both gases are trace constituents and the main component hasn’t turned up yet.”
The four remaining lines were pierced and samples taken within a few minutes, during which Kursedd had obviously been pondering over Conway’s statement. Just before it left for the tender and the analysis equipment therein the nurse paused.