Naydrad’s silvery fur was beginning to twitch and ripple, indicating that the Kelgian charge nurse was about to reply. But the entrance of the non-patient from the outer office put an end to what could have been an interesting ethical debate.
O’Mara nodded briefly to everyone in turn, and took the only other physiologically suitable seat in the room, his own. The Chief Psychologist’s features were about as readable as a lump of weathered basalt, which in some respects they resembled, but the eyes which regarded them were backed by a mind so keenly analytical that it gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty.
Caustically, he began: “Before I tell you why I have asked for you four in particular to accompany Major Fletcher, and give you the details of your next assignment, which no doubt you have already learned in outline, I have to give you some background information of a non-medical nature.
“The problem of briefing people like yourselves on this subject,” he went on, “is that I cannot afford to make assumptions regarding your level of ignorance in matters outside your specialties. Should some of this information seem too elementary, you are at liberty to allow your attention to wander, so long as I don’t catch you at it.”
“You have our undivided attention, friend O’Mara,” said Prilicla, who, of course, knew this to be a fact.
“For the time being,” Naydrad added.
“Charge Nurse Naydrad!” Major Fletcher burst out, his reddening face clashing with the dark green of his uniform. “You are being something less than respectful to a senior officer. Such offensive behavior will not be tolerated on my ship, nor shall I-”
O’Mara held up his hand and said dryly, “I didn’t take offense, Major, and neither should you. Up until now, your career has been free of close personal contact with e-ts, so your mistake is understandable. It is unlikely to be repeated when you learn to understand the thought processes and behavior of the beings who will be working with you on this project.
“Charge Nurse Naydrad,” O’Mara went on, politely for him, is a Kelgian, a caterpillar-like life-form whose most noticeable feature is an all-over coat of silver-gray fur. You will already have noticed that Naydrad’s fur is constantly in motion, as if a strong wind was continually blowing it into tufts and ripples. These are completely involuntary movements triggered by its emotional reactions to outside stimuli. The evolutionary reasons for this mechanism are not clearly understood, not even by the Kelgians themselves, but it is generally believed that the emotionally expressive fur complements the Kelgian vocal equipment, which lacks emotional flexibility of tone. However, you must understand that the movements of the fur makes it absolutely clear to another Kelgian what it feels about the subject under discussion. As a result, they always say exactly what they mean because what they think is plainly obvious-at least to another Kelgian. They cannot do otherwise. Unlike Doctor Prilicla, who is always polite and sometimes edits the truth to remove the unpleasant bits, Charge Nurse Naydrad will invariably tell the truth regardless of your rank or your feelings. You will soon grow used to it, Major.
“But I did not intend to give a lecture on Kelgians,” he continued. “I did intend to discuss briefly the formation of what is now called the Galactic Federation .
On the briefing screen behind him there appeared suddenly a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As they watched and listened a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another-the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extraterrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared, the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.
Several decades had passed before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. (Beings tended to be suspicious in those days, on one occasion even to the point of war.) But time as well as distance was being compressed on this representation.