White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

said, “Yes, sir. The being we examined was a warm-blooded oxygen breather with

the type of basic metabolism associated with that physiological grouping. The

cadaver was massive, measuring approximately twenty meters in length and three

meters in diameter, excluding projecting appendages. Physically it resembles the

DBLF Kel­gian life-form, but many times larger and possessing a leathery

tegument rather than the silver fur of the Kelgians. Like the DBLFs it is

multipedal, but the manipulatory appendages are positioned in a single row along

the back.

“There were twenty-one of these dorsal limbs, all showing evidence of early

evolutionary specialization. Six of them were long, heavy, and claw-tipped and

were obviously evolved for defense since the being was a herbivore, and there

were fifteen

in five groups of three spaced between the six heavier tentacles. Each of the

thinner limbs terminated in four digits, two of which were opposable, and were

manipulatory appendages originally evolved for gathering and transferring food

to the mouths, of which there are three on each flank opening into three

stomachs. Two additional orifices on each side open into a very large and

complex lung. The structure inside these breathing orifices suggests that

expelled air could be interrupted and modulated to produce intelligence-bearing

sounds. On the underside were three openings used for the elimination of wastes.

“The mechanism of reproduction was unclear,” he contin­ued, “and the specimen

showed evidence of possessing both male and female genitalia on the forward and

rear extremities, respectively. The brain, if it was the brain, took the form of

a cable of nerve ganglia with localized swellings in three places, running

longitudinally through the cadaver like a central core. There was another and

much thinner nerve cable running par­allel to the thicker core, but below it and

about twenty-five centimeters from the underside. Positioned close to each

ex­tremity were two sets of three eyes, two of which were mounted dorsally and

two on the forward and rear flanks. They were recessed but capable of limited

extension and together gave the being complete and continuous vision vertically

and horizon­tally. The type and positioning of the visual equipment and

appendages suggest that it evolved on a very unfriendly world.

“Our tentative classification of the being,” Conway ended, “was an incomplete

CRLT.”

“Incomplete?” Thornnastor said.

“Yes, sir,” Conway said. “The cadaver we examined had sustained minimum damage

since it had died during a slow decompression while in suspended animation. We

could be wrong, but there were signs of some kind of radical surgery having

taken place, a double removal of what may have been the head and tail of the

being. This was not a traumatic am­putation caused by the disaster to their

ship, but a deliberate procedure which may have been required to fit the being

into its suspended animation container for the colonization attempt. The body

tegument overall is thick and very tough, but at the extremities the only

protection is a hard, transparent layer of

organic material, and the underlying protrusions, fissures, ori­fices, and

musculature look raw. This suggests—”

“Conway,” O’Mara said sharply, with a glance toward the suddenly paling Colonel.

“With respect to Thornnastor, you have moved too quickly -from the general to

the particular. Please confine yourself at this stage to a simple statement of

the problem and your proposed solution.”

Colonel Skempton was the man responsible for making Sec­tor General function as

an organization— but, as he was fond of telling his medical friends when they

started to talk shop in grisly detail, he was a glorified bookkeeper, not a

bloody sur­geon! The trouble was that there was no way Conway could state his

problem simply without offending the sensibilities of the overly squeamish

Colonel.

“Simply,” Conway said, “the problem is a gigantic, worm-like entity, perhaps

five kilometers or more in length, which has been chopped into many hundreds of

pieces. The indicated treatment is to join the pieces together again, in the

correct order.”

The Colonel’s stylus stopped in mid-doodle, Thornnastor made a loud,

untranslatable sound, and O’Mara, normally a phlegmatic individual, said with

considerable vehemence, “Conway, you are not considering bringing that—that

Midgard Serpent to the hospital?”

Conway shook his head. “The hospital is much too small to handle it.”