CHAPTER 12
When Prilicla wakened he felt rested and clearheaded but he was also feeling, in spite of the source being half the ship’s length away, the angry impatience of the captain. He had been semicomatose from fatigue when he had returned from the alien vessel, and had not been able to make a coherent report, and now friend Fletcher was waiting to talk to him. The trouble was that he was still feeling so confused by his discoveries inside the ship that the report would sound incoherent. He needed more time to think.
Cowardice—both physical and moral—and procrastination were second nature to him. He flew down the central well to the casualty deck and used its communicator to contact Pathologist Murchison for a detailed report on the condition of Terragar’s casualties.
It told him that Captain Davidson and the two surviving officers were stable, responding to the limited treatment available in a temporary medical facility, and being maintained on a regimen of IV feeding and heavy sedation. Personally, it felt that the quarantine arrangements between the patients and the ambulance ship were totally unnecessary, and a rapid casualty transfer to Rhabwar and a fast return to Sector General for more aggressive treatment were indicated. It ended by saying that the investigation and first-contact situation with a bunch of intelligent robots was a technical matter and none of their medical business Prilicla was unable to detect the pathologist’s emotional radiation from orbit, naturally, but he could imagine the intense irritation and concern it and the rest of the team were feeling for their patients. He also knew that friend Fletcher would be routinely monitoring all radio traffic between the ship and the surface so that what he was about to say would mean that he could not delay speaking to the captain any longer.
“Friend Murchison,” he said gently, “I don’t foresee an immediate return to Sector General because the situation here is becoming more complicated. There are two other-species casualties on the alien vessel who may also require attention….”
“Other-species casualties!” it broke in. “Sir, with respect, we’re not running a bloody robot-repair shop down here.”
“You are assuming that the alien casualties are non-organic life forms,” he replied. “That may not be so. But I have no wish to answer the same questions twice, so keep your communications channel open and listen in while I talk to the captain. I can feel friend Fletcher very badly wanting to talk to me.”
“You’re right, Doctor,” said the captain as he flew onto the control deck a few minutes later. It gestured towards the communicator whose monitor light was showing and went on, “What was that all about? Other-species casualties? What did you find after I left you alone back there?”
Prilicla hesitated, but not for long because the other’s impatience was so intense that it was making him tremble. He said, “I’m not sure what it was that I found, and even less sure of what it means….”
Briefly he described the events following the captain’s departure for Rhabwar, the silent but obvious efforts of the robot crew member to entice him to follow it forward to the end of the central passageway where he could go no farther, and all that he had seen, thought, and felt there.
“… On the way back,” he continued, “I decided that I had enough time to spare before I fell asleep to explore the ship’s stern, and followed the passageway all the way aft. The inside of that ship is like a three-dimensional spider’s web, with thin supporting and bracing members, open-netting passageways, and most of all, cable runs linking the major internal structures. Considering the color-coding on the majority of the cable looms I saw, especially those linking the microcircuitry underlying the ship’s outer hull to what is presumably the control center forward, there are close similarities in the overall structure to the layout of major organs, musculature, and central nervous system of an organic life-form. The skin is highly sensitive and we know how it can react to an attack, or what it thinks is an attack, by an outside agency.
“We were safe,” he went on quickly, “because we entered through the damaged hatch, which is analogous to a traumatized and desensitized surface wound. The forward structure obviously houses the brain and . ..”