“You can see,” O’Mara went on, “the area of skin where the food compound has hardened. This has to be washed at intervals because it clogs the being’s absorption mechanism in those areas, causing the food intake to drop. This makes a young Hudlarian very unhappy and, ah, noisy…
O’Mara trailed off into silence. He saw that Caxton wasn’t looking at the infant but was watching the water which rebounded from its hide streaming along the now steeply slanted bedroom door, across the living room and into the open airlock. Which was just as well, because O’Mara’s sprayer had uncovered a patch of the youngster’s hide which had a texture and color he had never seen before. Probably there was nothing to worry about, but it was better not to have Caxton see it and ask questions.
“What’s that up there?” said Caxton, pointing toward the bedroom ceiling.
In order to give the infant the petting it deserved O’Mara had had to knock together a system of levers, pulleys and counterweights and suspend the whole ungainly mass from the ceiling. He was rather proud of the gadget; it enabled him to administer a good, solid pat-a blow which would have instantly killed a human being-anywhere on that half ton carcass. But he doubted if Caxton would appreciate the gadget. Probably the section chief would swear that he was torturing the baby and forbid its use.
O’Mara started out of the bedroom. Over his shoulder he said, “Just lifting tackle.”
He dried up the wet patches of floor with a cloth which he threw into the now partly water filled airlock. His sandals and coveralls were wet so he threw them in, also, then he closed the inner seal and opened the outer. While the water was boiling off into the vacuum outside he readjusted the gravity grids so that the floor was flat and the wails vertical again, then he retrieved his sandals, coveralls and cloth which were now bone dry.
“You seem to have everything well organized,” said Caxton grudgingly as he fastened his helmet. “At least you’re looking after the youngster better than you did its parents. See it stays that way.
“The Monitor will be along to see you at hour nine tomorrow,” he added, and left.
O’Mara returned quickly to the bedroom for a closer look at the colored patch. It was a pale bluish gray and in that area the smooth, almost steel-hard surface of the skin had taken on a sort of crackle finish. O’Mara rubbed the patch gently and the FROB wriggled and gave a blast of sound that was vaguely interrogatory.
“You and me both,” said O’Mara absently. He couldn’t remember reading about anything like this, but then he had not read all the book yet. The sooner he did so the better.
The chief method of communicating between beings of different species was by means of a Translator, which electronically sorted and classified all sense-bearing sounds and reproduced them in the native language of its user. Another method, used when large amounts of accurate data of a more subjective nature had to be passed on, was the Educator tape system. This transferred bodily all the sensory impressions, knowledge and personality of one being into the mind of another. Coming a long way third both in popularity and accuracy was the written language which was somewhat extravagantly called Universal.
Universal was of use only to beings who possessed brains linked to optical receptors capable of abstracting knowledge from patterns of markings on a flat surface-in short, the printed page. While there were many species with this ability, the response to color in each species was very rarely matched. What appeared to be a bluish-gray patch to O’Mara might look like anything from yellow-gray to dirty purple to another being, and the trouble was that the other being might have been the author of the book.
One of the appendices gave a rough color-equivalent chart, but it was a tedious, time-consuming job checking back on it, and his knowledge of Universal was not perfect anyway.
Five hours later he was still no nearer diagnosing the FROB’s ailment, and the single blue-gray patch on its hide had grown to twice its original size and been joined by three more. He fed the infant, wondering anxiously whether that was the right thing to do in a case like this, then returned quickly to his studies.