It was then that Conway’s wildly searching eyes lit on the transparent plastic globe on O’Mara’s desk. Now that he was really looking at it he could see several lengths of strapping attached to it, together with the unmistakable shape of a Translator pack. Inside the container there floated a something…
“Dr. Conway,” said O’Mara dryly, “meet Dr. Arretapec, your new boss.” Mouthing silently, he added, “You and your big mouth!”
The thing in the plastic globe, which resembled nothing so much as a withered prune floating in a spherical gob of syrup, was the VUXG doctor! Conway felt his face burning. It was a good thing that the Translator dealt only with words and did not also transfer their emotional- in this instance sarcastic-connotations, otherwise he would have been in a most embarrassing position.
“As the closest cooperation is required,” O’Mara went on quickly, and the mass of the being Arretapec is slight, you will wear it while on duty.” O’Mara deftly suited actions to his words and strapped the container onto Conway’s shoulder. When he had finished he added, “You can go, Dr. Conway. Detailed orders, when and where necessary, will be given to you direct by Dr. Arretapec.”
It could only happen here, Conway thought wryly as they left. Here he was with an e-t doctor riding on his shoulder like a quivering, transparent dumpling, their patient a healthy and husky dinosaur, and the purpose of the whole business was something which his colleague was reluctant to clarify. Conway had heard of blind obedience but blind cooperation was a new-and he thought, rather stupid-concept.
On the way to Lock Seventeen, the point where the hospital was joined to the ship containing their patient, Conway tried to explain the organization of Sector Twelve General Hospital to the extra-terrestrial doctor. Dr. Arretapec asked some pertinent questions from time to time, so presumably he was interested.
Even though he had been expecting it, the sheer size of the converted transport’s interior shocked Conway. With the exception of the two levels nearest the ship’s outer skin, which at the moment housed the artificial gravity generators, the Monitor Corps engineer had cut away everything to leave a great sphere of emptiness some two thousand feet in diameter. The inner surface of this sphere was a wet and muddy shambles. Great untidy heaps of uprooted vegetation were piled indiscriminately about, most of it partially trampled into the mud. Conway also noticed that quite a lot of it was withered and dying.
After the gleaming, aseptic cleanliness which he was used to Conway found that the sight was doing peculiar things to his nervous system. He began looking around for the patient.
His gaze moved out and upward across the acres of mud and tumbled vegetation until, high above his head on the opposite side of the sphere the swamp merged into a small, deep lake. There were shadowy movements and swirling below its surface. Suddenly a tiny head mounted on a great sinuous neck broke the surface, looked around, then submerged again with a tremendous splash.
Conway surveyed the distance to the lake and the quality of the terrain between it and himself. He said, “It’s a long way to walk, I’ll get an antigravity belt. .
“That will not be necessary,” said Arretapec. The ground abruptly flung itself away from them and they were hurtling toward the distant lake.
Classification VUXG, Conway reminded himself when he got his breath back; possessing certain psi faculties.
They landed gently near the edge of the lake. Arretapec told Conway that it wanted to concentrate its thinking processes for a few minutes and requested him to keep both quiet and still. A few seconds later an itching started deep inside his ear somewhere. Conway manfully refrained from poking at it with his finger and instead kept all his attention on the surface of the lake.
Suddenly a great gray-brown, mountainous body broke the surface, a long tapering neck and tail slapping the water with explosive violence. For an instant Conway thought that the great beast had simply bobbed to the surface like a rubber ball but then he told himself that the bed of the lake must have shelved suddenly under the monster, giving an optically similar effect. Still threshing madly with neck, tail and four massive columnar legs the giant reptile gained the lake’s edge and floundered onto, or rather into, the mud, because it sank over its knee joints. Conway estimated that the said knee-joints were at least ten feet from ground level, that the thickest diameter of the great body was about eighteen feet and that from head to tail the brute measured well over one hundred feet. He guessed its weight at about 80,000 pounds. It possessed no natural body armor but the extreme end of its tail, which showed surprising mobility for such a heavy member, had an osseous bulge from which spouted two wicked, forward-curving bony spikes.