The conversation dried up quickly after that and Conway, still anxious about the younger SRTT’s activities, hurried back to the nursery section. The whole area was infested with maintenance men and green-uniformed Monitors, but the runaway had not been sighted again. Conway placed a DBDG nurse-the one Mannon was so fond of pulling his leg about, strangely enough-on duty in a diving suit at the AUGL ward, because he was expecting developments there at any time, and prepared with Prilicla to pay a call on the methane nursery.
Their work among the frigid-blooded beings in that ward was also routine, and during it Conway pestered Prilicla with questions about the emotional state of the elder SRTT they had just left. But the GLNO was very little help; all it would say was that it had detected an urge toward dissolution which it could not describe more fully to Conway because there was nothing in its own previous experience which it could relate the feeling to.
Outside again they discovered that Colinson had wasted no time. From the wall annunciators there poured out a staccato howl of static through which could be dimly heard an alien gobbling which was presumably the SRTT sound tape. Conway thought that if positions were reversed and he was a frightened small boy listening to a voice striving to speak to him through that incredible uproar, he would feel anything but reassured. And the atmosphere of the SRTT’s home planet would almost certainly be of a different density to this one, which would further increase the distortion of the voice. He did not say anything to Prilicla, but Conway thought that it would be nothing less than a miracle if this cacophony produced the result which O’Mara had intended.
The racket cut off suddenly, was replaced by a voice in English which droned out, “Would Dr. Conway please go to the intercom,” then it returned unabated. Conway hurried to the nearest set.
“This is Murchison in the AUGL lock, Doctor,” said a worried female voice. “Somebody-I mean something-just went past me into the main ward. I thought it was you at first until it began opening the inner seal without putting on a suit, then I knew it must be the runaway SRTT.” She hesitated, then said, “Considering the state of the patients inside I didn’t give the alarm until checking with you, but I can call-”
“No, you did quite right, Nurse,” Conway said quickly. “We’ll be down at once.
When they arrived at the lock five minutes later, the nurse had a suit ready for Conway, and the combination of physiological features which made it impossible for the Earth-human members of the Staff to regard Murchison with anything like a clinical detachment were rendered slightly less distracting by her own protective suit. But Conway had eyes at the moment only for the inner inspection window and the thing which floated just inside it.
It was, or had been, very like Conway. The hair coloring was right, also the complexion, and it was in whites. But the features were out of proportion and ran together in a way that was quite horrible, and the neck and hands did not go into the tunic, they became the collar and sleeves of the garment. Conway was reminded of a lead figure that had been crudely fashioned and carelessly painted.
At the moment Conway knew that it was not a threat to the lives of the ward’s tiny patients, but it was changing. There was a slow growing together of the arms and legs, a lengthening out and the sprouting of long, narrow protuberances which could only be the beginnings of fins. The AUGL patients might be difficult for an Earth-human DBDG to catch, but the SRTT was adapting to water also, and speed.
“Inside!” said Conway urgently. “We’ve got to herd it out of here before it-”
But Prilicla was making no attempt to begin the bodily contortions which would bring it inside its protective envelope. “I have detected an interesting change in the quality of its emotional radiation,” the GLNO said suddenly. “There is still fear and confusion present, and an overriding hunger. .
“Hunger… !” Murchison had not realized until then just what deadly danger the patients were in.