“That could be very serious,” said Dr. Sennelt as it tapped buttons on its antigravity harness and the limp body of Kledenth and it began rising toward the entrance, “but there’s nothing much I can do right now without special equipment to lift it upright and out of the water. I’ll have a team with a Tralthan-sized antigravity pallet here in ten minutes and be back myself to supervise.”
“That could be too late…” O’Mara broke in.
“Meanwhile,” Sennelt called back as it rose to the entrance, “I’m taking Kledenth to sickbay.”
O’Mara swore, not quite under his breath, looked at Joan, who was still clinging to the furniture above him, and said urgently, “Joan, would you climb down here, carefully but quickly please? I need your help.” He swung around to the other Tralthan, who was still gasping and spluttering but no longer seemed distressed, and pointed at its unconscious life-mate, whose flank and one side of its head were coming into view above the subsiding water level.
“You’ll be all right in a few minutes,” he said quickly, “but right now I need you to help lift your life-mate onto its feet and hold it there. You know how important that is for your particular life-form. Move around to this side. Slide your forward tentacles under it, just here and here. Now lift! That’s it. But hold it steady, it’s wobbling all over the place.”
With the two storerooms filled and nowhere else for it to go, the water level was no longer dropping. Only the Tralthan’s six stubby legs and underside were submerged now. O’Mara took a deep breath, hunkered down underwater, and, one by one, tried to pull the legs laterally outward as far as they would go in an attempt to give the body more vertical stability. It was the most intensive period of hard work that he had ever done and, he knew, if he hadn’t already been underwater he would have been sweating like a pig. When it was over and he surfaced gasping, Joan was beside him.
“How can I help?” she said calmly.
“With artificial respiration…” O’Mara began, but had to stop for a moment to catch his breath. Then he pointed to one of the Tralthan’s gills before going on quickly, “With their general physical structure and breathing orifices like those – they have four of them – you can understand that they can’t give each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But we can. It’s done by first filling our lungs, pressing our lips tightly around the gill opening, and blowing the air in hard. Wait for a count of three, then suck to remove some of the liquid content of the lung, spit out, and repeat the process as regularly and as quickly as you can. I’ll show you.”
He demonstrated briefly then looked at her. “You got that?”
Joan made a face and said, “Yes, but I’m not sure I want it. But oh, well, I did offer.”
Hesitating at first but soon getting into the rhythm, she joined O’Mara in blowing hard, sucking, and spitting out. Only once did she stop to look at him and wipe her lips with the back of her hand.
“Yuk,” she said with feeling. “That stuff smells and tastes awful! Are you sure I’m blowing and sucking at the right body orifice?”
“Trust me,” said O’Mara.
They continued working for perhaps a minute while the other Tralthan silently held its life-mate upright. It had stopped asking them if they knew what they were doing. He became aware that their patient’s legs were beginning to stiffen and its four tentacles, which had been hanging limply at it sides, were beginning to twitch.
“Quickly, back off!” he said urgently. “It’s coming to.”
Suddenly the unconscious Tralthan came alive again, stamping its feet and thrashing around with its tentacles while water, bubbles, and mucus jetted from its gills, until the comforting words and encircling tentacles of its life-mate made it settle down. Joan laughed quietly.
“I think we did it,” said O’Mara.
“Yes,” said Joan, raising a fist in triumph as she looked at him. “And would you believe that was my first time for giving mouth-to-mouth?”