Conway was forced from his state of deep and oddly comfortable unconsciousness by pain: something was making strong and repeated attempts to cave in his chest. He stuck it just as long as he could, then opened his eyes and said, “Get off me, dammit, I’m all right!”
The hefty intern who had been enthusiastically engaged in giving Conway artificial respiration climbed to his feet. He said, “When we arrived, daddy-longlegs here said you had ceased to emote. I was worried about you for a moment-well, slightly worried.” He grinned and added, “If you can walk and talk, O’Mara wants to see you.
Conway grunted and rose to his feet. Blowers and filtering apparatus had been set up in the corridor and were rapidly clearing the air of the last vestiges of chlorine and the casualties were being removed, some on tented stretcher-carriers and others being assisted by their rescuers. He fingered the raw area of forehead caused by the hurried removal of his helmet and took a few great gulps of air just to reassure himself that the nightmare of a few minutes ago was really over.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said feelingly.
“Don’t mention it, Doctor,” said the intern.
They found O’Mara in the Educator Room. The Chief Psychologist wasted no time on preliminaries. He pointed to a chair for Conway and indicated a sort of surrealistic wastepaper basket to Prilicla and barked, “What happened?”
The room was in shadow except for the glow of indicator lights on the Educator equipment and a single lamp on O’Mara’s desk. All Conway could see of the psychologist as he began his story was two hard, competent hands projecting from the sleeves of a dark green uniform and a pair of steady gray eyes in a shadowed face. The hands did not move and the eyes never left him while Conway was speaking.
When he was finished O’Mara sighed and was silent for several seconds, then he said, “There were four of our top Diagnosticians at Lock Six just then, beings this hospital could ill afford to lose. The prompt action you took certainly saved at least three of their lives, so you’re a couple of heroes. But I’ll spare your blushes and not belabor that point. Neither,” he added dryly, “will I embarrass you by asking what you were doing there in the first place.”
Conway coughed. He said, “What I’d like to know is why the SRTT ran amok like that. Because of the crowd running to meet it, I’d say, except that no intelligent, civilized being would behave like that. The only visitors we allow here are either government people or visiting specialists, neither of which are the type to be scared at the sight of an alien life form. And why so many Diagnosticians to meet it in the first place?”
“They were there,” replied O’Mara, “because they were anxious to see what an SRTT looked like when it was not trying to look like something else. This data might have aided them in a case they are working on. Also, with a hitherto unknown life-form like that it is impossible to guess at what made it act as it did. And finally, it is not the type of visitor which we allow here, but we had to break the rules this time because its parent is in the hospital, a terminal case.
Conway said softly, “I see.
A Monitor Lieutenant came into the room at that point and hurried across to O’Mara. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I’ve been able to find one item which may help us with the search for the visitor. A DBLF nurse reports seeing a PVSJ moving away from the area of the accident at about the right time. To one of the DBLF caterpillars the PVSJs are anything but pretty, as you know, but the nurse says that this one looked worse than usual, a real freak. So much so that the DBLF was sure that it was a patient suffering from something pretty terrible-”
“You checked that we have no PVSJ suffering from the malady described?”
“Yes, sir. There is no such case.”
O’Mara looked suddenly grim. He said, “Very good, Carson, you know what to do next,” and nodded dismissal.