White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

producing some unpleasant emotional radiation. With his eyes still closed he

listened to the faint tapping and plopping sounds which moved along the ceiling

toward him and came to a halt over­head. There was a burst of low, musical

clicks and trills which came through his translator as “Excuse me, friend

Conway, were you sleeping?”

“You know I wasn’t,” Conway said, opening his eyes to see Prilicla clinging to

the ceiling above him, trembling un­controllably as it was washed by his own and

the patient’s emotional radiation.

Doctor Prilicla was of physiological classification GLNO— an insectile,

exoskeletal, six-legged life-form with two pairs of iridescent and not quite

atrophied wings and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty. Only on

Cinruss, with its dense atmosphere and one-eighth gravity, could a race of

in­sects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and an

advanced civilization.

But in both the hospital and Rhabwar, Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of

its working day. It had to wear gravity nullifiers everywhere outside its own

special quarters because the gravity pull which the majority of its colleagues

considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat. When Prilicla held

a conversation with anyone it kept well out of reach of any thoughtless movement

of an arm or tentacle which would easily have caved in its eggshell body or

snapped off one of the incredibly fragile limbs.

Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt the little being— it was far too well

liked. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty forced it to be considerate to everyone

in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for

itself as possible—except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and

associated violent emotion in a patient or to the un­intentionally unpleasant

feelings of its colleagues.

“You should be sleeping, Prilicla,” Conway said with con­cern, “or are Murchison

and Naydrad emoting too loudly for you?”

“No, friend Conway,” the empath replied timidly. “Their emotional radiation

troubles me no more than that of the other people on the ship. I came for a

consultation.”

“Good!” Conway said. “You’ve had some useful thoughts on the treatment of our—”

“I wish to consult you about myself,” Prilicla said, com­mitting the—to it—gross

impoliteness of breaking in on an­other’s conversation without prior apology.

For a moment its pipestem legs and body shook with the strength of Conway’s

reaction, then it added, “Please, my friend, control your feel­ings.”

Conway tried to be clinical about the little Cinrusskin who had been his friend,

colleague, and invaluable assistant on virtually every major case since his

promotion to Senior Phy­sician. His sudden concern and unadmitted fear of the

possible loss of a close friend were not helping that friend and were, in fact,

causing it even greater distress. He tried hard to think of Prilicla as a

patient, only as a patient, and slowly the em­path’s trembling abated.

“What,” Conway said in time-honored fashion, “seems to be the trouble?”

“I do not know,” the Cinrusskin said. “I have no previous experience and there

are no recorded instances of the condition among my species. I am confused,

friend Conway, and fright­ened.”

“Symptoms?” Conway asked.

“Empathic hypersensitivity,” Prilicla replied. “The emo­tional radiation of

yourself, the rest of the medical team, and the crew is particularly strong. I

can clearly detect the feelings of Lieutenant Chen in the Power Room and those

of the rest of the crew in Control with little or no attenuation with distance.

The expected, low-key feelings of disappointment and sorrow caused by the

unsuccessful rescue bid are reaching me with shocking intensity. We have

encountered these tragedies before now, friend Conway, but this emotional

reaction to the con­dition of a being who is a complete stranger is—is—”

“We do feel bad about this one,” Conway broke in gently, “perhaps worse than we

normally do, and the feelings are cumulative. And you, as an emotion-sensitive,

could be ex­pected to feel them much more strongly. This might explain your

apparent hypersensitivity.”

The empath trembled with the effort needed to express dis­agreement. It said,

“No, friend Conway. The condition and emotional radiation of the EGCL, highly

unpleasant though it is, is not the problem. It is the ordinary, everyday