Beginning Operations by James White

Author:James White [White, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-17T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

The communications room on Vespasian was a whirlwind of activity with the Captain forming its calm and purposeful center. When Stillman and Conway arrived orders had gone out to the courier ship and all available helicopters to load decontamination and rescue gear and proceed to the blast area to render all possible aid. There was, of course, no hope for the Etlan force which had been surrounding Lonvellin’s ship, but there were isolated farms and at least one small village on the fringe area. The rescuers would have to deal with panic as well as radiation casualties, because the Etlans had no experience of nuclear explosions and would almost certainly resist evacuation.

Out on the field, when Conway had seen Lonvellin’s ship go up and had realized what it meant, he had felt physically ill. And now, listening to Williamson’s urgent but unhurried orders going out, he felt cold sweat trickle down his forehead and spine. He licked his lips and said, “Captain, I have an urgent suggestion to make …”

He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his tone which made Williamson swing around immediately.

“This accident to Lonvellin means that you are in charge of the project, Doctor,” Williamson said impatiently. “There is no need for such diffidence.”

“In that case,” said Conway in the same low, tense voice, “I have orders for you. Call off the rescue attempts and order everyone back to the ship. Take off before we are bombed, too …”

Conway saw them all looking at him, at his white, sweating face and frightened eyes, and he could see them all jumping to wrong conclusions. Williamson looked angry, embarrassed and completely at a loss for a few seconds, then his expression hardened. He turned to an officer beside him, snapped an order, then swung to face Conway again.

“Doctor,” he began stiffly, “I have just put out our secondary meteor shield. Any solid object greater than one inch in diameter approaching from any direction whatever will be detected at a distance of one hundred miles and automatically deflected by pressors. So I can assure you, Doctor, that we are in no danger from any hypothetical attack with atomic missiles. The idea of a nuclear bombardment here is ridiculous, anyway. There is no atomic power on Etla, none whatever. We have instruments … You must have read the report.

“My suggestion,” the Captain went on, in exactly the tone he used to suggest that the junior astrogator make an alteration in course, “is that we rush all possible help to the survivors of the blow-up, which must have been caused by a fault in Lonvellin’s power pile …”

“Lonvellin wouldn’t have a faulty pile!” Conway said harshly. “Like many long-lived beings it suffered from a constant and increasing fear of death the longer its life went on. It had the ultimate in personal physicians so that illness would not shorten its already tremendous life span, and it follows that it would not have endangered itself by using a ship which was anything but mechanically perfect.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.