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| Cover art by John Harris (per ISFDB) 1 |
Film This!
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| Cover art by John Harris (per ISFDB) 1 |
| DOUBLE CONTACT James White New York: Tor Books, November 1999 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-312-87041-6 | |||||
| ISBN 0-312-87041-8 | 300pp. | HC | $24.95 | ||
The action takes place far from the gigantic hospital facility on which the series of novels is centered. It has detected three disaster beacons, nuclear-powered last-resort devices used to punch a location signal across interstellar distances. One is from a Federation scoutship; the other two are alien, and may not even have been beacons.
The Hospital administrator dispatches Rhabwar, an unarmed ambulance vessel under Captain Fletcher, with Senior Physician Prilicla in command of the medical emergency. They find the Federation ship Terragar drifting in orbit about an uncatalogued planet. Their signals go unanswered, so they lock on a tractor beam to stop its spin. But the crew, visible through the control room canopy, appear to be frantically trying to warn them away. When they continue the rescue effort, Terragar fires up its main drive and tries to run. But, with steering disabled, it winds up headed into atmosphere, forcing Rhabwar to try and restrain it with its tractor beams: a risky operation that leaves Terragar badly overheated and its crew badly burned. Rhabwar manages to lower it largely intact into a shallow area of the planet's ocean to cool it down.
When personnel from Rhabwar go aboard the wreck to see if they can rescue the crew, they find three in spacesuit lockers, wearing their suits. Both the suits and the lockers gave them some protection from the heat, but they are badly burned and unconscious. The fourth crewman is aft, where he had gone to manually fire the main drive; he too is in bad shape. It is a puzzle why he could not fire the drive from the control cabin. Captain Fletcher gets a clue when he tries to retrieve data from the ship's computer, and his download device gets fried.
An alien ship is in orbit too, apparently a derelict. Closer observation shows blast damage to its hull, and Prilicla, an empath, can detect no life signs. Top priority is the casualties from Terragar. They are taken to the surface by Rhabwar, and moved into a hastily assembled field hospital on the beach. Captain Fletcher moves his ship back a safe distance, in a precaution based on his theory of what happened to Terragar. He sends some people to the alien vessel in a pinnace, but orders them to cross to it in powered suits. They find a robot similar to the inert one found on Terragar — but this one is functional. It makes no hostile move, but bars their way when they try to reach the nose of the ship where presumed crew might survive.
When the survivors from Terragar have been treated as well as possible and are stable, Prilicla visits the alien ship. There are hints of alien emotion somewhere, but he cannot be sure, even when he orders everyone else out to give him a clear field — and the robot is still on guard. Plainly, caution will be required to unravel this mystery safely.
"Wait, wait," said the captain, holding up one hand. "Are you telling me that the whole ship is alive? That it's an intelligent, self-willed star-traveling machine like its robot crew members, only bigger? And that all that stopped you from getting into its computer superbrain—or, from what we overheard you tell Pathologist Murchison, its two superbrains—was a simple, structural impediment and your lack of physical endurance?" "Not exactly," Prilicla replied. "There has to be a non-organic interface, but I'm beginning to suspect that the two controlling brains belong to organic life-forms, with feelings. I won't be able to prove that until you find a way of getting me into the brain housing." "I need to go back inside that ship," he ended, "for an extended stay." – Page 95 |
Back on the surface, the Terragar survivors make good progress, and work settles into a routine. The planet seems a pristine paradise, with a good climate, a warm ocean, and no harmful native life. But it will soon add another mystery to the one the team from Sector General is facing.
This is the second Sector General novel I've read, and, coincidentally, the last in the series of 12 — in fact James White's last work, for he died in August 1999 in his native Ireland. Final editing was done by Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
It has the very interesting aliens characteristic of Sector General novels: interesting not only for their physical diversity but for their differences in personality and ethos — enhanced, in some cases, but carrying the contents of educator tapes implanted in their brains, giving them not only the knowledge of other specialists they need to deal medically with a wide panoply of aliens but those specialists' personalities as well. Prilicla, especially, displays here not only great politeness and self-control required by his relatively fragile form, but great ability in assessing situations and remarkable dedication to Federation principles of medical ethics. Also, his implanted specialists occasionally inspire him to let loose with a pithy one-liner.
Indeed, This dedication to the ethical practice of medication, and to the peaceful relations between species it fosters, is shared by all the characters from Sector General, and is the thing that distinguishes James White's fiction from the general run of SF stories: in his, the drama flows from the need to resolve conflicts peacefully, not by military victory or clever deception.
The tale is well constructed, with plenty of plausible jeopardy and resolutions. I found no continuity errors and few typos. This one is better than Hospital Station; I give it top marks and rate it a keeper.
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