Hippocrates and Asclepius, he thought, would not have approved of his
behavior in this matter.
His only real excuse for producing the weapon was an unsatisfactory one
even to himself, the fact that the Two's horn was also a cruel and deadly
instrument of destruction. There was also the fact that the damage the
new weapon would inflict on vital organs, the massive hemorrhaging it
would cause, would paralyze the alien with shock and cause death within
a few seconds, so that in a way it was almost humane.
The colonel's voice broke in on his thoughts, giving him a welcome change
of mental subject. Morrison said, "What I really want to know is how much
freedom of action I am allowed. Can we use our own initiative regarding
the local situation and the problems rising out of it, or must all our
thinking be done from the Cape?"
"Our thinking is being done," said McCullough with a deliberate lack
of inflection in his voice, "by the Russians, the Buddhists, the United
Nations, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals."
They were all watching him.
Morrison's shoulder and arm were still giving him pain, McCullough knew,
and the other two were by no means comfortable. They had all lost a good
deal of blood and been under constant strain with inadequate sleep since
being marooned on the Ship. The bright-blue lighting made it impossible to
conceal subtle changes of expression or variations of facial pallor. They
were all staring at him so intently that the thought uppermost in his
mind must have been plain for all of them to see.
I want to go home!
"Go on, Doctor," said Morrison harshly.
"Very well, sir," said McCullough. "Our problem, or rather
your
problem, is this. We are being told what to do by people who do not
know all the facts, and who don't want to be told them because of the
effect the telling might have on public opinion. Their instructions to
us, if you could call them instructions, are so general in nature and
so hedged around with qualifiers and warnings that they don't really
seem to mean anything. We need help. Not only are we not getting it,
we are being ordered not to ask for it!
"I, personally, would like corroboration of my findings in the Two autopsy,"
McCullough went on, anger gradually replacing the fear in his voice.
"Moral support, if you like, for a theory and a decision I am too much
a coward to take alone. Instead of giving me the necessary support,
Brady nearly had a fit and would not let me finish explaining the
situation! I don't know what has happened to them back there. They act
as if
they
are having an emergency instead of us!"
"In a sense, they are -- " began Morrison.
"I think you're being too unselfish, sir," said McCullough bitingly.
"It is my considered profes- sional opinion, for which I do
not
need moral support, that the mental and physical stresses involved in
coping with the local situation are severe enough without also making
us responsible for possible changes in the political situation at home.
"The whole idea is ridiculous! We are in the limelight as no other group
of men has ever been, we know this. In a sense we may be standing trial
for our whole race. But our work here will be more valuable, or reactions
more honest if you like, if we don't allow ourselves to be paralyzed
with stage fright!
"I would like permission, sir," McCullough ended less vehemently,
"to request information and assistance from Control without having to
consider mass audience reactions."
"You have a point, Doctor," said Morrison, after a short pause. "At the
same time, we can't afford to ignore public opinion completely."
"But that's the way Brady talks!"
"I'll think about it, Doctor," said Morrison sharply. "Right now we must
discuss the food and water situation, weapons, tactics and -- and a change
of base. While we are here we may as well find out as much as possible
about the Ship. And while we're talking, Doctor, I'd like you to look at
my dressings."
McCullough wondered if the colonel was looking for sympathy, then
immediately felt ashamed for thinking such a thing. Morrison's injury
was painful and inflamed, although not infected, and it was only one of
his many problems. For his physical impairment had seriously undermined
his authority. With one arm virtually useless, he was dependent on his
inferior officers not only for protection but for the kind of assistance
which was more common in a nurse-patient relationship. And cut off as
he was from direct contact with Control, he could no longer speak with
all the authority of Earth behind his words. As well, the project which
he headed had come thoroughly unstuck.
At the present moment the colonel must be feeling frightened and impotent
and pretty much a total loss to himself and everyone else, and as a doctor,
McCullough should not be aggravating these feelings.
It was a time for applying oil to the situation, or perhaps butter.
Not broken glass.
McCullough stayed on the Ship three days. In that time their 'bridgehead'
was moved twice, on both occasions to compartments close to the generator
blister so as to facilitate the work of Hollis. Despite the Twos which
attacked them at frequent but irregular intervals, and at times kept
them pinned down in their base for hours on end, the work of gathering
information about the Ship went on.
When friction developed, which was frequently, he applied oil. McCullough
was sure that his bedside manner had never had such a strenuous workout
in all its long life. But his charm did not work very well on the
colonel. Despite his arguments on the necessity of gathering further
data either to support or disprove his theory, Morrison would not allow
him to attempt communication with the Twos.
Twos, the colonel had said . . .
chapter fourteen
During his next report to the general, McCullough 's voice was as neutral
and unemotional as any human voice could be -- to begin with, anyway.
"In the light of additional data gathered within the past few days,"
he said carefully, "we may have to modify our thinking considerably
regarding the purpose of the alien Ship and its crew.
"First, the Ship . . ."
The alien vessel had made a controlled approach and had been inserted
into an orbit which showed every indication of being precalculated,
McCullough went on, after which it had taken no action of any kind.
This, however, did not preclude the possibility that it was gathering data,
since the forward section contained a number of transparent protective
blisters which might very well house sensory equipment of some kind.
In fact, the primary -- perhaps the only -- purpose of the Ship was the
gathering of such data.
Where the Ship's construction was concerned -- and here McCullough had
to admit that they had investigated only a very small fraction of the
vessel's enormous volume -- they had come to certain fairly definite
conclusions.
The way they now saw it, the Ship's construction was based on a design
philosophy in which weight was of little or no importance. Apparently
its source of power was so efficient that there was no necessity to
save an ounce or a pound here and there by putting lightening holes
in structural members or designing down an angle bracket so that it
would take only the amount of stress necessary to its function plus a
fractional safety overlap.
All the indications pointed to the fact that the Ship had been built
in space, probably in an extrasolar asteriod belt or close to a small
moon where metal and the means of working it were to hand. The more
sophisticated power, control and life-support systems had almost certainly
been built on the home planet and transported piecemeal to the hull. What
little they had seen of the layout of corridors, wall nets and numerous
access points to the Ship's interior made them certain that all this had
been designed to facilitate the vessel's builders rather than its crew.
They may have been guilty of grossly overestimating the intelligence
and capabilities of the crews as well.
"We have complete data on only one of these three life-forms," McCullough
went on, "and that is the tentacled, starfish-shaped Type Two. During all
our meetings with them these beings have been completely and uniformly
aggressive, so much so that after the second alien attack, Drew remarked
that if they behaved like wild animals, they should be treated as such.
My subsequent physiological investigation of the Two revealed a brain
structure and nervous system which appeared unusually small and
uncomplicated, and a lack of fine control in the appendages, facts which
supported Drew's theory.
"We are all now of the opinion that we have been trying to establish
intelligent communication with the alien equivalent of guinea pigs!"
Their current theory was that the Ship was an interstellar probe of some
kind carrying experimental animals which had escaped and overrun the Ship
and killed its crew. There was also a strong possibility that it did not,
and had never had, a crew, and that the life-support system and internal
lighting was initially for use during the vessel's construction and was
subsequently being used by the animal passengers. This being the case,
they felt free to fight a defensive war against the alien life-forms
infesting the Ship while they mapped, photographed and learned everything
they could about the vessel's equipment and function.
Priority, however, would be given to finding a method of patching-in to
the alien life-support system. The reason for this, as had been already
explained, was that the water used by the marooned men was almost completely
lost since only a fraction was recoverable to be put through the P-ship's
recycling system.
"Our water is being carefully rationed," McCullough continued, "and at
the present rate of consumption the supply will last for thirty-two days.
This will take us three days past the arrival time of the supply vehicle,
but it will carry only a forty-day supply of water! A few minutes
simple computation will show that unless we can return the marooned
men to the P-ships where the water supply can be recycled properly,
our supply problem is logistically insoluble.
"We have already drawn heavily on the food meant for the return trip,"
McCullough ended grimly, "and if we don't find a local source of water
we can never come home."
About the only thing McCullough did not have to worry about was General
Brady's reaction to this latest report. Earth and Prometheus Control
were only a few weeks off the time when they would pass behind the sun,
the relay vehicle designed to circumvent this difficulty was not yet
in operation, and incoming messages were rendered almost unintelligible
by interference.
Not completely unintelligible, of course. By asking Control to repeat
every sentence anything up to ten times, Walters was usually able to
piece together a complete message. Unlike McCullough, however, Walters
had nothing better to do, and somehow a signal lost a good deal of its
urgency and emotional content when it had to be repeated so many times.
Precisely on time, the high-acceleration supply rocket homed-in on P-One's
beacon and was taken aboard the alien Ship. It contained, in addition
to the promised water, a twenty-day supply of food, film, paper, and a
collapsed, carefully packed spacesuit. Some well-wisher had tucked a .45
automatic inside the spacesuit, probably on impulse and without taking
time to think about packing it properly, and the forty-G acceleration
of the supply vehicle had caused the heavy gun to tear a large hole in
the hip and leg sections, rendering the suit completely useless.
They had lost a spacesuit and gained an automatic pistol for which there
was no ammunition.
Their search pattern took the form of a flat spiral which wound slowly
around the lateral axis of the Ship while moving even more slowly forward.
At regular intervals a temporary base was set up with a search radius
of twenty-five yards or more, depending on the available accommodation
and the hostility and numbers of the local population. When completed,
the search pattern would still leave a long, empty core of unexplored
territory in the three-dimensional map they were constructing.
They found only storerooms and compartments, packed with equipment
whose shapes and purpose were slowly becoming familiar to them, and the
ever-present netted corridors linking them together. It seemed obvious
that the crew's quarters, if any, the life-support system and other
essential services were deep in the as yet unexplored center of the Ship.
"It is very bad tactics to cut ourselves ofT from the outer hull and
contact with our ships," said the colonel as they paused, between sorties,
to fill in another small section of their map, "but it seems to me that
there are certain periods when the risk is lessened. You must all have
noticed the regular decrease in alien activity and numbers which seems
to occur every five or six hours. If we assume this to be due to periodic
feeding, we can, at these times, push the search deeper into the Ship. Or
we might try following some of the e-t's -- at a safe distance, of course
-- in the hope of their leading us to the source of the food and water."