Finally it was in position, strapped down and turning in the direction and at the same velocity as its “couch” on the spacecraft. Mannon, Prilicla and Conway attached themselves as close to the center of the wheel and their rotating patient as possible and, as their examination proceeded, theater staff, special instruments, diagnostic equipment and the very special, thought-controlled “tool” from Meatball added themselves or were attached to the framework of the wheel and whirled up and over and around through the nearly opaque soup.
The patient was still deeply unconscious at the end of the first hour.
For the benefit of O’Mara and Skempton, who had relinquished their places on the wheel to members of the theater staff, Conway said, “Even at close range it is difficult to see through this stuff, but as the process of breathing is involuntary and includes ingestion, and as the patient has been short of food and air for a long time, I’d prefer not to work in clear, food-free water at this time.”
“My favorite medicine,” said Mannon, “is food.”
“I keep wondering how such a life-form got started,” Conway went on. “I suppose it all began in some wide, shallow, tidal pool-so constituted that the tidal effects caused the water to wash constantly around it instead of going in and out. The patient might then have evolved from some early beastie which was continually rolled around in the shallows by the circular tides, picking up food as it went. Eventually this prehistoric creature evolved specialized internal musculature and organs which allowed it to do the rolling instead of trusting to the tides and currents, also manipulatory appendages in the form of this fringe of short tentacles sprouting from the inner circumference of its body between the series of gill mouths and eyes. Its visual equipment must operate like some form of coeleostat since the contents of its field of vision are constantly rotating.
“Reproduction is probably by direct fission,” he went on, “and they keep rolling for every moment of their lives, because to stop is to die.”
“But why?” O’Mara broke in. “Why must it roll when water and food can be sucked in without it having to move?”
“Do you know what is wrong with the patient, Doctor?” Skempton asked sharply, then added worriedly, “Can you treat it?”
Mannon made a noise which could have been a snort of derision, a bark of laughter or perhaps merely a strangled cough.
Conway said, “Yes and no, sir. Or, in a sense, the answer should be yes to both questions.” He glanced at O’Mara to include the psychologist and went on, “It has to roll to stay alive-there is an ingenious method of shifting its center of gravity while keeping itself upright by partially inflating the section of its body which is on top at any given moment. The continual rolling causes its blood to circulate-it uses a form of gravity feed system instead of a muscular pump. You see, this creature has no heart, none at all. When it stops rolling its circulation stops and it dies within a few minutes.
“The trouble is,” he ended grimly, “we may have almost stopped its circulation once too often.”
“I disagree, friend Conway,” said Priicla, who never disagreed with anyone as a rule. The empath’s body and pipe stem legs were quivering, but slowly in the manner of a Cinrusskin who was being exposed to emotion of a comfortable type. It went on, “The patient is regaining consciousness quickly. It is fully conscious now. There is a suggestion of dull, unlocalized pain which is almost certainly caused by hunger, but this is already beginning to fade. It is feeling slightly anxious, very excited and intensely curious.
“Curious?” said Conway.
“Curiosity is the predominating emotion, Doctor.”
“Our early astronauts,” said O’Mara, “were very special people, too .
It was more than an hour later by the time they were finished, medically speaking, with the Meatball astronaut and were climbing out of their suits. A Corps linguist was sharing the ferris wheel with the alien with the intention of adding, with the minimum of delay, a new e-t language to the memory banks of the hospital’s translation computer, and Colonel Skempton had left to compose a rather tricky message to the Captain of Descartes.