Specialist (short story)

Sheckley, Robert. "Specialist." Galaxy Science Fiction May 1953. Frequently translated, collected, and anthologized, for which see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of December 2023, here.[1] Included also in an audiobook, A Sheckley Trilogy: Three Classic Tales of Science Fiction (Wonder Audiobooks, 2008).[2]

From the Wikipedia entry on the story:

A galactic deep-space cargo bioship is blown off course by a photon storm. When the crew recover, they find themselves in an unexplored region of space and their only members of the Pusher race, which allows the ship to travel faster than light, is dead.

The Crew comprises varied members of vastly different intelligent races, all in close mental rapport known as the Cooperation, and serving specialized functions; they are known as Engine, Thinker, Eye etc. But without a Pusher, they cannot sustain FTL speeds and are unlikely to reach home before most of the crew die of old age. They manage to locate a planet rich in primitive Pushers, [apparently — RDE] Earth. The crew try to communicate with a man they find, but he is so violent and resistant that they are forced to bring him on board the ship to try to reason with him. [...][3]

Earth, or the Earth-twin planet, has cultures that use metal and are called "mechanical."

It's a comic story, with the happy ending of the human joining the crew and pushing off at increasing FTL (Faster Than Light) speeds, in joyous "Cooperation."

Note for the bioship[4] as a variation on the theme of a sentient, sapient Ship (sic on capital) as character, in this case enclosing and being characters with different sensing and other specialties, and all intelligent and more or less communicative. The characters are within the ship and comprise the ship, including the hull, and, eventually, including a human being within and part of that crew that is also the ship.

RDE, finishing, 24Dec23