White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

sound.

Still keeping his mouth and nostrils sealed with one hand, he used the other to

feel along the Illensan’s body and pressure envelope. His eyes were stinging

even though they were now tightly shut.

The creature’s skin felt hot, slippery, and fibrous, with patterns of raised

lines which made it seem that the whole body was covered by the leaves of some

coarse-textured plant, and there were times when MacEwan did not know whether he

was touching the skin or the ruptured pressure suit. The sound of the pulse in

his head was incredible, like a constant, thudding explosion, and the

constriction in his chest was fast reaching the stage where.he was ready to

inhale even chlorine to stop that fiery, choking pain in his lungs. But he

fought desperately not to breathe, pressing his hand so tightly against his face

that his nose began to bleed.

After what seemed like a couple of hours later, he felt the shape of a large

cylinder with a hose connection and strange-feeling bumps and projections at one

end—the Illensan’s air tank. He pulled and twisted desperately at controls

designed for the spatulate digits of an Illensan, and suddenly the hiss of

escaping chlorine ceased.

He turned and staggered away, trying to get clear of the localized cloud of

toxic gas so he could breathe again. But he had gone only a few yards when he

tripped and fell into a piece of broken e-t furniture covered by a tangle of

plastic drapery which had been used to decorate the lounge. His free arm kept

him from injuring himself, but it was not enough to enable him to escape from

the tangle of tubing and plastic which had somehow wrapped itself around his

feet. He opened his eyes and shut them again hastily as the chlorine stung them.

With such a high concentration of gas he could not risk opening his mouth to

shout for help. The noise inside his head was unbelievable. He felt himself

slipping into a roaring, pounding blackness, and there was a tight band gripping

and squeezing his chest.

There was something gripping his chest. He felt it- lifting him, shaking him

free of the debris entangling his arm and legs, and holding him aloft while it

carried him for an unknown distance across the lounge. Suddenly he felt his feet

touch the floor and he opened his eyes and mouth.

The smell of chlorine was still strong but he could breathe and see. Grawlya-Ki

was standing a few feet away, looking concerned and pointing at the blood

bubbling from his nose, and one of the two paint-spraying extraterrestrials was

detach­ing one of its thick, iron-hard tentacles from around his chest. He was

too busy just breathing again to be able to say anything. “I apologize most

abjectly and sincerely,” his rescuer boomed over the sounds being made by the

injured all around them, “if I have in any fashion hurt you, or subjected you to

mental trauma or embarrassment by making such a gross and perhaps intimate

physical contact with your body. I would not have dared touch you at all had not

your Orligian friend insisted that you were in grave danger and requested that I

lift you clear. But if I have given offense—”

“You have not given offense,” MacEwan broke in. “On the contrary, you have saved

my life at great risk to your own. That chlorine is deadly stuff to all us

oxygen breathers. Thank you.”

It was becoming difficult to speak without coughing because the cloud of gas

from the dead Illensan’s suit was spreading, and Grawlya-Ki was already moving

away. MacEwan was about to follow when the creature spoke again.

“I am in no immediate danger.” Its eyes glittered at him from behind their hard,

organic shields as it went on. “I am a Hudlar, Earthperson. My species does not

breathe, but absorbs sustenance directly from our atmosphere, which, near the

plan­etary surface, is analogous to a thick, high-pressure, semigas-eous soup.

Apart from requiring our body surface to be sprayed at frequent intervals with a

nutrient paint, we are not incon­venienced by any but the most corrosive of

atmospheres, and we can even work for lengthy periods in vacuum conditions on