Conway looked quickly at Prilicla, then said, “At any time during the trip back did your Cinrusskin empath monitor your emotional radiation?”
Harrison shook his head. “There was no need-I was having pain despite the suit’s medication and it would have been unpleasant for an empath. Nobody could get within yards of me..
The Lieutenant paused, then in the tone of one who wished to change an unpleasant subject he said brightly, “We’ll send down an unmanned ship next, packed with communications equipment. If that thing is just a big mouth connected with a bigger belly and with no brains at all, at worst we’ll lose a drone and it will get indigestion. But if it is intelligent or if there are smaller intelligent beings on the planet who maybe use, or have trained, the bigger beasties to serve them-that is a strong possibility, our cultural contact people say-then they are bound to be curious and try to communicate.. .”
“The imagination boggles,” said Conway, smiling. “At the present moment I’m trying hard not to think about the medical problems a beastie the size of a subcontinent would have. But to return to the here and now, Lieutenant Harrison, we are both very much obliged for the information you’ve given us, and we hope you won’t mind if we come again to-”
“Any time,” said Harrison. “Glad to help. You see, most of the nurses here have mandibles or tentacles or too many feet. .. No offense, Doctor Prilicla
“None taken,” said Prilicla.
… And my ideas regarding ministering angels are rather old fashioned,” he ended as they turned to go. His expression looked decidedly woebegone.
In the corridor Conway called Murchison’s quarters. By the time he had finished explaining what he wanted her to do she was fully awake.
“I’m on duty in two hours and don’t have any free time for another six,” she said, yawning. “And normally I do not spend my precious time off doing a Mata Han on lonely patients. But if this one has information which might help Doctor Mannon I don’t mind at all. I’d do anything for that man.
“How about me?”
“For you, dear, almost anything. ‘Bye.”
Conway racked the handset and said to Prilicla, “Something gained entrance to that ship. Harrison suffered the same type of mild hallucination or mental confusion that the OR staff experienced. But I keep thinking about that hole in the outer skin-a disembodied intelligence shouldn’t have to make a hole to get in. And those rocks hitting the stern. Suppose this was only a side-effect of the major, nonmaterial influence-a disturbance analogous to the poltergeist phenomena. Where does that leave us?”
Prilicla didn’t know.
“I’ll probably regret it,” said Conway, “but I think I’ll call O’Mara. .
But it was the Chief Psychologist who did all the talking at first. Mannon had just left his office after having told O’Mara that the Hudlar patient’s condition had deteriorated suddenly, necessitating a second operation not later than noon tomorrow. The Senior Physician, it had been obvious, held no hopes for the patient’s survival, but had said that what little chance it did have would be fractionally increased if they operated quickly.
O’Mara ended, “This doesn’t give you much time to prove your theory, Conway. Now, what did you want to say to me?”
The news about Mannon had put Conway badly off his stride, so that he was woefully aware that his report on the Meatball incident and his ideas regarding it sounded weak and, what was worse where O’Mara was concerned, incoherent. The psychologist had little patience with people who did not think clearly and say exactly what they meant.
And the whole affair is so peculiar,” he concluded awkwardly, “that I’m almost convinced now that the Meatball business has nothing to do with Mannon’s trouble, except that…
“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “You’re talking in circles, dithering! You must realize that if two peculiar events occur with only a small separation in time then the probability is high that they have a common cause. I don’t mind too much if your theory is downright ridiculous- at least you arrived at it by a tortuous form of logic-but I do mind you ceasing to think at all. Being wrong, Doctor, is infinitely preferable to being stupid!”