producing some unpleasant emotional radiation. With his eyes still closed he
listened to the faint tapping and plopping sounds which moved along the ceiling
toward him and came to a halt overhead. There was a burst of low, musical
clicks and trills which came through his translator as “Excuse me, friend
Conway, were you sleeping?”
“You know I wasn’t,” Conway said, opening his eyes to see Prilicla clinging to
the ceiling above him, trembling uncontrollably as it was washed by his own and
the patient’s emotional radiation.
Doctor Prilicla was of physiological classification GLNO— an insectile,
exoskeletal, six-legged life-form with two pairs of iridescent and not quite
atrophied wings and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty. Only on
Cinruss, with its dense atmosphere and one-eighth gravity, could a race of
insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and an
advanced civilization.
But in both the hospital and Rhabwar, Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of
its working day. It had to wear gravity nullifiers everywhere outside its own
special quarters because the gravity pull which the majority of its colleagues
considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat. When Prilicla held
a conversation with anyone it kept well out of reach of any thoughtless movement
of an arm or tentacle which would easily have caved in its eggshell body or
snapped off one of the incredibly fragile limbs.
Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt the little being— it was far too well
liked. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty forced it to be considerate to everyone
in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for
itself as possible—except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and
associated violent emotion in a patient or to the unintentionally unpleasant
feelings of its colleagues.
“You should be sleeping, Prilicla,” Conway said with concern, “or are Murchison
and Naydrad emoting too loudly for you?”
“No, friend Conway,” the empath replied timidly. “Their emotional radiation
troubles me no more than that of the other people on the ship. I came for a
consultation.”
“Good!” Conway said. “You’ve had some useful thoughts on the treatment of our—”
“I wish to consult you about myself,” Prilicla said, committing the—to it—gross
impoliteness of breaking in on another’s conversation without prior apology.
For a moment its pipestem legs and body shook with the strength of Conway’s
reaction, then it added, “Please, my friend, control your feelings.”
Conway tried to be clinical about the little Cinrusskin who had been his friend,
colleague, and invaluable assistant on virtually every major case since his
promotion to Senior Physician. His sudden concern and unadmitted fear of the
possible loss of a close friend were not helping that friend and were, in fact,
causing it even greater distress. He tried hard to think of Prilicla as a
patient, only as a patient, and slowly the empath’s trembling abated.
“What,” Conway said in time-honored fashion, “seems to be the trouble?”
“I do not know,” the Cinrusskin said. “I have no previous experience and there
are no recorded instances of the condition among my species. I am confused,
friend Conway, and frightened.”
“Symptoms?” Conway asked.
“Empathic hypersensitivity,” Prilicla replied. “The emotional radiation of
yourself, the rest of the medical team, and the crew is particularly strong. I
can clearly detect the feelings of Lieutenant Chen in the Power Room and those
of the rest of the crew in Control with little or no attenuation with distance.
The expected, low-key feelings of disappointment and sorrow caused by the
unsuccessful rescue bid are reaching me with shocking intensity. We have
encountered these tragedies before now, friend Conway, but this emotional
reaction to the condition of a being who is a complete stranger is—is—”
“We do feel bad about this one,” Conway broke in gently, “perhaps worse than we
normally do, and the feelings are cumulative. And you, as an emotion-sensitive,
could be expected to feel them much more strongly. This might explain your
apparent hypersensitivity.”
The empath trembled with the effort needed to express disagreement. It said,
“No, friend Conway. The condition and emotional radiation of the EGCL, highly
unpleasant though it is, is not the problem. It is the ordinary, everyday