White, James – Sector General 07 – Code Blue Emergency

slow. I have gone as far as I can go with the physiological data provided by the

cadaver, but to produce one that will be safe to use in large doses I require

blood and gland secretion samples from a living FGHJ.”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, then she turned to include Prilicla as she

said, “I could not find any trace of injured or unconscious survivors during my

preliminary search, but I shall search again more diligently when the required

samples have been obtained. Is the being still alive? Can you give me even an

approximate guide to its location?”

“I can still feel it, friend Cha,” Prilicla replied. “But the cruder, conscious

emoting of the other survivors is obscuring it.”

“Then the sooner Pathologist Murchison has its samples the sooner we’ll have the

anesthetic to knock outthe emotional interference,” Cha Thrat said briskly. “My

medial digits are strong enough to restrain the arms of the FGHJ on the control

couch while my upper manipulators take the samples. From which veins and organs,

and in what quantities, must they be removed?”

Murchison laughed suddenly and said, “Please, Cha Thrat, let the medical team do

something to justify its existence. You will hold the crew member tightly to its

couch, Doctor Danalta will position the scanner, and I will obtain the samples

while—”

“Control here.” Fletcher’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Jump in five

seconds from . • •now- The extra mass of the distressed ship will delay our

return somewhat. We are estimating Sector General parking orbit in just under

four days.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said. Suddenly there was the familiar but

indescribable sensation, unseen, unheard, and unfelt but indisputably present,

that signaled their removal from the universe of matter to the tiny, unreal, and

purely mathematical structure that the ship’s hyperdrive generators had built

around them. She forced herself to look through the casualty deck’s direct

vision panel. The tractor and pressor beams that laced the ships rigidly

together were invisible, so that she saw only the ridiculously flimsy boarding

tube joining them and, at the bottom of the metal chasm formed by the two hulls,

the heaving, flickering grayness that seemed to reach up through her eyes and

pull her very brain out of focus.

She returned her attention to the solid, familiar if temporarily unreal world of

the casualty deck before hyper-space could give her an eyestrain headache.

Cha Thrat had time for only a few words with Rhone before following Murchison,

Danalta, and Naydrad to the boarding tube. The Charge Nurse was helping hercarry

packages of the material that Murchison had identified as food, and she had only

to compare them with the hundreds of others in the other ship’s stores to be

able to feed all of the surviving crew members until they bulged at the seams.

Her last sight of the casualty deck for a long time, although she did not know

it just then, was of Senior Physician Prilicla hovering above the .widely

scattered remains of the cadaver and interspersing its quiet words to Khone with

untranslatable duckings and trillings to the younger Gogleskan.

“If we can spare the time,” Cha Thrat said to the Pathologist when they were

standing around the control couch and its agitated and weakly struggling

occupant, “we could feed it before taking your samples. That might make the

patient more contented, and amenable.”

“We can spare the time for that,” Murchison replied, then added, “There are

times, Cha Thrat, when you remind me of somebody else.”

“Who do we know,” Naydrad asked in its forthright Kelgian manner, “who’s that

weird?”

The Pathologist laughed but did not reply, and neither did Cha Thrat. Without

realizing it, Murchison had moved into a sensitive and potentially highly

embarrassing area, and, if it ever did learn exactly what had happened to the

Sommaradvan’s mind on Goglesk, it should be from its life-mate, Conway, and not

Cha Thrat—Prilicla had been quite insistent about that.

There was surprisingly little variety in the FGHJs’ food containers—two

differently shaped plastic bottles, one holding water and the other a faintly

odorous nutrient liquid, and there were uniform blocks of a dry, spongy material