Then next morning he received orders to present himself at the office of the Chief Psychologist. .
CHAPTER 3
TROUBLE WITH EMILY
It must have been one of the big colonial transports of the type which carried four generations of colonists between the stars before the hyper-drive made such gargantuan ships obsolete, Conway thought, as he stared at the great tear-drop shape framed in the direct vision port beside O’Mara’s desk. With the exception of the pilot’s greenhouse, its banks of observation galleries and view ports were blocked off by thick metal plating, and braced solidly from the outside to withstand considerable internal pressure. Even beside the tremendous bulk of Sector General it looked huge.
“You are to act as liaison between the hospital here and the doctor and patient from that ship,” said Chief Psychologist O’Mara, watching him closely. “The doctor is quite a small life-form. The patient is a dinosaur.
Conway tried to keep the astonishment he felt from showing in his face. O’Mara was analyzing his reactions, he knew, and perversely he wanted to make the other’s job as difficult as possible. He said simply, “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” said O’Mara.
“It must be psychological, then.. .
O’Mara shook his head.
“Then what is a healthy, sane and intelligent being doing in a hos-”
“It isn’t intelligent.”
Conway breathed slowly in and out. O’Mara was obviously playing guessing games with him again-not that Conway minded that, provided he was given a sporting chance to guess the right answers. He looked again at the great mass of the converted transport, and meditated.
Putting hyper-drive engines into that great sow of a ship had cost money, and the extensive structural alterations to the hull a great deal more. It seemed an awful lot of trouble to go to for a…
“I’ve got it!” said Conway grinning. “It’s a new specimen for us to take apart and investigate. .
“Good Lord, no!” cried O’Mara, horrified. He shot a quick, almost frightened look at a small sphere of plastic which was half hidden by some books on his desk, then went on seriously, “This whole business has been arranged at the highest level-a sub-assembly of the Galactic Council, no less. As to what exactly it is all about neither I nor anyone else in Sector General knows. Possibly the doctor who accompanied the patient and who has charge of it may tell you sometime. .
O’Mara’s tone at that point implied that he very much doubted it.
However, all that the hospital and yourself are required to do is cooperate.
Apparently the being who was the doctor in the case came from a race which had been only recently discovered, O’Mara went on to explain, which had tentatively been given the classification VUXG: that was, they were a life-form possessing certain psi faculties, had the ability to convert practically any substance into energy for their physical needs and could adapt to virtually any environment. They were small and well-nigh indestructible.
The VUXG doctor was telepathic, but ethics and the privacy taboo forbade it using this faculty to communicate with a non-telepathic life form, even if its range included the Earth-human frequency. For that reason the Translator would be used exclusively. This doctor belonged to a species long-lived both as individuals and in recorded history, and in all that vast sweep of time there had been no war.
They were an old, wise and humble race, O’Mara concluded; intensely humble. So much so that they tended to look down on other races who were not so humble as they. Conway would have to be very tactful because this extreme, this almost overbearing humility might easily be mistaken for something else.
Conway looked closely at O’Mara. Was there not a faintly sardonic glean in those keen, iron-gray eyes and a too carefully neutral expression on that square-chiseled competent face? Then with a feeling of complete bafflement he saw O’Mara wink.
Ignoring it, Conway said, “This race, they sound stuck up to me.”
He saw O’Mara’s lips twitch, then a new voice broke in on the proceedings with dramatic suddenness. It was a flat, toneless, Translated voice which boomed, “The sense of the preceding remark is not clear to me. We are stuck-adhering-up where?” There was a short pause, then, “While I admit that my own mental capabilities are very low, at the same time I would suggest in all humility that the fault may not altogether lie with me, but be due in part to the lamentable tendency for you younger and more impractical races to make sense-free noises when there is no necessity for a noise to be made at all.”