Sometime and somewhere, he told himself as he lifted the scanner and keyed for the metal penetration setting, everything has to happen for the first time.
Prilicla moved closer until his head was only a few inches. from the bulbous swelling in the protective garment which, in the majority of life-forms, was the location of the cranium and the nerve center of the sensory equipment. Slowly and carefully he passed the scanner over the area, continuing for several minutes to scan with his feelings at ultra-short range while at the same time searching with the instrument for clinical signs of life in any underlying organic material. He could not believe it when he found neither. He even had trouble finding his voice.
“Friend Murchison,” he said finally, “I have a casualty here which requires further examination. Do you need me there?”
“We do, but not urgently,” the pathologist replied. It emitted a sudden burst of concern before it brought the feeling under control. “You have been with that one for over half an hour. The situation here is that all four casualties have been cut free of their suits but there are a few small areas where pieces of burned clothing and charred body tissue are adhering, which will require surgical separation. The escharred areas and deeper burn locations where obvious necrosis has taken place will need to be trimmed away and the sites covered with surrogate skin until proper replacement surgery is available at the hospital. Meanwhile, IV nutrients, rehydration, and replacement of lost protein is currently under way while the casualties are being supported on cushions of cool, sterile air. Their present condition is critical but stable, and one of them, the last one you sent to us, is barely on the plus side of terminal. We may lose that one. Earth-human vital organs don’t take kindly to being casseroled in their own juices. But you sound as if you might have another casualty for us. Is it a new boy on the block?”
Prilicla hesitated, then said, “I’m not yet certain whether it is a casualty for treatment or a new specimen for postmortem investigation. Certainly I’ve never encountered a life-form like this one before, or seen references to anything like it in the literature.”
“Sounds interesting,” said Murchison, its matter-of-fact tone belying the mounting curiosity it was feeling. “When can we see it? Shall I send Naydrad with a litter to—”
“No,” Prilicla broke in. He could feel the other’s surprise because normally he would never have spoken so sharply to a subordinate. In a gentler voice he went on. “I have the feeling that you have the clinical situation under control over there. Continue as you are doing, but do nothing else until or unless I tell YOU otherwise.”
“Sir,” it said, emoting intense puzzlement. The feeling was being shared and reinforced by Naydrad, Danalta, and the officers on Rhabwar who were monitoring the images and conversations coming from Terragar. But Prilicla needed answers himself before he could try to give them to others, and he had 0 pause for a moment to steady his shaking limbs before he could return to the scanner examination.
Since he was the only empath present, there was of course nobody to know of or feel his fear. The minds of the medical team were engaged exclusively with their own clinical concerns, but the people on the ambulance ship had little more to do than to monitor and observe his actions, and those observations would have included the minor and continuing tremor in his limbs. Very soon friend Fletcher would deduce the reason for his terror, if it and the others hadn’t done so already.
They knew as well as he did that the crew of Terragar had sought desperately to avoid all contact with their fellow officers and would-be rescuers, and that it was a virtual certainty that the entity he was trying to examine was the reason. It came as no surprise when the long period of silence was broken hesitantly by the captain.
“Doctor,” it said. “Possibly this is none of my clinical business, and I’ll understand if you tell me to shut up in your usual polite fashion, but your examination of the alien casualty puzzles me. I’ve been watching you for the past half an hour and have observed that while you began by closely approaching but not touching the creature, for reasons that I think we both understand, you are now making continuous contact with it. In what way has the situation changed? Is the creature no longer a threat to you, and, if so, why is your body language suggesting otherwise? And why are you examining every square inch of the body surface, including its hands and individual digits which, in my layperson’s opinion, are not usually the site of life-threatening injuries?”