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again-not that Conway minded that, provided he was given a sporting chance to guess the right answers.
He looked again at the great mass of the converted transport, and meditated.
Putting hyper-drive engines into that great sow of a ship had cost money, and the extensive structural
alterations to the hull a great deal more. It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go to for a...
"I've got it!" said Conway grinning. "It's a new specimen for us to take apart and investigate. .
"Good Lord, no!" cried O'Mara, horrified. He shot a quick, almost frightened look at a small sphere
of plastic which was half hidden by some books on his desk, then went on seriously, "This whole
business has been arranged at the highest level-a sub-assembly of the Galactic Council, no less. As to
what exactly it is all about neither I nor anyone else in Sector General knows. Possibly the doctor who
accompanied the patient and who has charge of it may tell you sometime& "
O'Mara's tone at that point implied that he very much doubted it.
"However, all that the hospital and yourself are required to do is cooperate."
Apparently the being who was the doctor in the case came from a race which had been only recently
discovered, O'Mara went on to explain, which had tentatively been given the classification VUXG: that
was, they were a life-form possessing certain psi faculties, had the ability to convert practically any
substance into energy for their physical needs and could adapt to virtually any environment. They were
small and well-nigh indestructible.
The VUXG doctor was telepathic, but ethics and the privacy taboo forbade it using this faculty to
communicate with a non-telepathic life form, even if its range included the Earth-human frequency. For
that reason the Translator would be used exclusively. This doctor belonged to a species long-lived both
as individuals and in recorded history, and in all that vast sweep of time there had been no war.
They were an old, wise and humble race, O'Mara concluded; intensely humble. So much so that they
tended to look down on other races who were not so humble as they. Conway would have to be very
tactful because this extreme, this almost overbearing humility might easily be mistaken for something else.
Conway looked closely at O'Mara. Was there not a faintly sardonic glean in those keen, iron-grey
eyes and a too carefully neutral expression on that square-chiselled competent face? Then with a feeling
of complete bafflement he saw O'Mara wink.
Ignoring it, Conway said, "This race, they sound stuck up to me."
He saw O'Mara's lips twitch, then a new voice broke in on the proceedings with dramatic
suddenness. It was a flat, toneless, Translated voice which boomed, "The sense of the preceding remark
is not clear to me. We are stuck adhering up where?" There was a short pause, then, "While I admit
that my own mental capabilities are very low, at the same time I would suggest in all humility that the fault
may not altogether lie with me, but be due in part to the lamentable tendency for you younger and more
impractical races to make sense-free noises when there is no necessity for a noise to be made at all."
It was then that Conway's wildly searching eyes lit on the transparent plastic globe on O'Mara's desk.
Now that he was really looking at it he could see several lengths of strapping attached to it, together with
the unmistakable shape of a Translator pack. Inside the container there floated a something...
"Dr. Conway," said O'Mara dryly, "meet Dr. Arretapec, your new boss." Mouthing silently, he added,
"You and your big mouth!"
The thing in the plastic globe, which resembled nothing so much as a withered prune floating in a
spherical gob of syrup, was the VUXG doctor! Conway felt his face burning. It was a good thing that the
Translator dealt only with words and did not also transfer their emotional in this instance
sarcastic connotations, otherwise he would have been in a most embarrassing position.
"As the closest cooperation is required," O'Mara went on quickly, and the mass of the being
Arretapec is slight, you will wear it while on duty." O'Mara deftly suited actions to his words and
strapped the container onto Conway's shoulder. When he had finished he added, "You can go, Dr.
Conway. Detailed orders, when and where necessary, will be given to you direct by Dr. Arretapec."
It could only happen here, Conway thought wryly as they left. Here he was with an e-t doctor riding
on his shoulder like a quivering, transparent dumpling, their patient a healthy and husky dinosaur, and the
purpose of the whole business was something which his colleague was reluctant to clarify. Conway had
heard of blind obedience but blind cooperation was a new and he thought, rather stupid concept.
On the way to Lock Seventeen, the point where the hospital was joined to the ship containing their
patient, Conway tried to explain the organization of Sector Twelve General Hospital to the
extra-terrestrial doctor. Dr. Arretapec asked some pertinent questions from time to time, so presumably
he was interested.
Even though he had been expecting it, the sheer size of the converted transport's interior shocked
Conway. With the exception of the two levels nearest the ship's outer skin, which at the moment housed
the artificial gravity generators, the Monitor Corps engineer had cut away everything to leave a great
sphere of emptiness some two thousand feet in diameter. The inner surface of this sphere was a wet and
muddy shambles. Great untidy heaps of uprooted vegetation were piled indiscriminately about, most of it
partially trampled into the mud. Conway also noticed that quite a lot of it was withered and dying.
After the gleaming, aseptic cleanliness which he was used to Conway found that the sight was doing
peculiar things to his nervous system. He began looking around for the patient.
His gaze moved out and upward across the acres of mud and tumbled vegetation until, high above his
head on the opposite side of the sphere the swamp merged into a small, deep lake. There were shadowy
movements and swirling below its surface. Suddenly a tiny head mounted on a great sinuous neck broke [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]