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alive for several hours or even days. Furthermore, unless faced with a
surgical emergency, it is better and safer to institute palliative treatment
on a completely strange lifeform and if it can be found, send for the being s
own doctor, as we would have done with the Dwerlan casualty had its injuries
been less serious. There may even be times when it is better to do nothing at
all for the patient and allow its own healing processes to proceed without
interruption.
Fletcher started to laugh, thought better of it when be realized that
Conway was serious, then began tapping buttons on his console. In the big
astrogation cube at the center of the control room there appeared a three-
dimensional star chart with a fuzzy red spot at its center. There were about
twenty stars in the volume of space represented by the projection, three of
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which were joined and enclosed by motionless swirls and tendrils of luminous
material.
 That fuzzy spot, said the Captain apologetically,  should be a point of
light signifying the position of the distressed ship. As it is, we know its
whereabouts only to the nearest hundred million miles. The area has not been
surveyed or even visited by Federation ships, because we would not expect to
find inhabited systems in a star cluster that is at such an early stage in its
formation. In any case, the present position of the distressed ship does not
indicate that it is native to the area, unless it malfunctioned soon after
Jumping. But a closer study of the probabilities-
 What bothers me, said Murchison quickly as she sensed another highly
specialized lecture coming on,  is why more of our distressed aliens are not
rescued by their own people. That rarely happens.
 True, ma am, Fletcher replied.  A few cases have been recorded where we
found technologically interesting wrecks and a few odds and ends-the
equivalent of e-t pin-ups, magazines, that sort of thing-but there were no
dead e-ts. Their bodies and those of the survivors, if any, had been taken
away. It is odd, but thus far we have found no civilized species that does not
show respect for its dead. Also, do not forget that a space disaster is a
fairly rare occurrence for a single star-traveling species, and any rescue
mission they could mount would probably be too little and too late. But to the
Galaxy-wide, multispecies
Federation, space accidents are not rare. They are expected. Our reaction time
to any disaster is very fast because ships like this one are constantly on
standby; and so we tend to get there first.
 But we were discussing the difficulties of establishing the original course
constants of a wrecked ship, the Captain went on, refusing to be sidetracked
from his lecture.  First, there is the fact that a detour is frequently
necessary to reach the destination system. This is because of pockets of
unusual stellar density, black holes and similar normal-space obstructions
that cause dangerous areas of distortion in the hyperspace medium, so very few
ships are able to reach their destinations in fewer than five Jumps. Second,
there are the factors associated with the size of the distressed ship and the
number of its hypergenerators. A small vessel with one generator poses fewest
problems. But if the ship is similar in mass to ourselves, and we carry a
matched pair, or if it is a very large ship requiring four or six
hypergenerators... Well, it would then depend on whether the generators went
out simultaneously or consecutively.
 Our ships and, presumably, theirs, Fletcher continued, warming to his
subject,  are fitted with safety cutoffs to all generators, should one fail.
But those safety devices are not always foolproof, because it takes only a
split-
second delay in shutting down a generator and the section of the ship
structurally associated with it pops into normal space, tearing free of the
rest of the vessel and in the process imparting an unbalanced braking motion,
which sends the ship spinning off at a tangent to its original course. The
shock to the vessel s structure would probably cause the other generator or
generators to fail, and the process would be repeated, so that a series of
such events occurring within a few seconds in hyperspace could very well leave
the wreckage of the distressed ship strung out across a distance of several
light-years. That is the reason why-
He broke off as an attention signal flashed on his panel.  Astrogation, sir,
Lieutenant Dodds announced briskly.  Five minutes to Jump.
 Sorry, ma am, said the Captain.  We will have to continue this discussion at
another time. Power Room, status report, please. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]