they did not have even a system of logic in common. And all too frequently the
foremost medical authorities of a planet, despite their eminence in the field of
healing, were very bad-tempered, aggressive, and unpleasant people indeed.
Such would not be the case with the GLNO tape, Conway knew, because Cinrusskins
were the most timid, friendly, and likable beings imaginable.
“I’ve thought about it,” Conway said.
O’Mara nodded and spoke into his desk set. “Carrington? Senior Physician Conway
is approved for the GLNO tape, with compulsory postimpression sedation of one
hour. I’ll be in Emergency Admissions on Level One Six Three—” he grinned
suddenly at Conway “—trying not to tell the medics their business.”
Conway woke to see a large, pink balloon of a face hanging °yer him.
Instinctively he tried to scramble up the wall beside “is couch in case the
enormous, heavily muscled body sup-Porting the face fell and crushed the life
out of him. Then suddenly there was a mental shift in perspective as the
features registered concern and withdrew and the slim, Earth-human body in
Monitor Corps green straightened up.
Lieutenant Carrington, one of O’Mara’s assistants, said, Easy, Doctor. Sit up
slowly, then stand. Concentrate on put-big your two feet onto the floor and
don’t worry because they aren’t a Cinrusskin’s six.”
He made good time back to 163 in spite of having to walk a large number of
beings who were much smaller than just because the Cinrusskin component of his
mind that they were big and dangerous. From Murchison he learned that O’Mara
was in Prilicla’s ward, having first called in to the OR to discuss the EGCL’s
basic physiology and probable environmental and evolutionary influence with
Thorn-nastor and Edanelt, both of whom had been too busy to speak to him.
They would not speak to Con way, either, and he could see why. The operation on
the EGCL had become an emergency with an unknown but probably extremely short
time limit.
When the splinters of depressed carapace had been removed from the brain over an
hour earlier, Murchison explained quietly between rumbled instructions from
Thomnastor, there had been a sudden and surprising deterioration in the EGCL’s
condition. The change had been detected by Prilicla who, because of its
condition, had been excluded from any part of the operation. But the Cinrusskin
had continued to act like a doctor by making use of its abnormally heightened
emotion-detection faculty. Prilicla had pulled rank to send Ward Seven’s duty
nurse to the operating theater with its empathic findings and a diffident
suggestion that if they were to relay the operational proceedings to Seven’s
viewscreen, it would be able to assist them.
The cause of the deterioration was a number of large blood vessels in the
cerebral area which had ruptured when the pressure from the depressed fracture
had been removed. Trie two surgeons had been forced to accede to Prilicla’s
request” because, without the empath’s monitoring of the patient’s level of
consciousness, they had no way of knowing whether the delicate, dangerous, and
perforce hurried repair work in the cerebral area was having a good or bad
effect—if any.
“Prognosis?” Conway murmured. But before Murchison could reply, one of
Thornnastor’s eyes curled backward over its head to glare down at him.
“If this patient does not succumb to a massive cerebral hemorrhage within the
next thirty minutes,” the Diagnostician said crossly, “it is probable that it
will perish, in time, from the degenerative diseases associated with extreme old
age. No* stop distracting my assistant, Conway, and tend to your own patient.”
On the way to Seven Conway wondered briefly how the empath’s emotion sensitivity
could detect the unconscious level
of emoting of the EGCL without the signals beings swamped by the emotional
radiation of dozens of fully conscious entities in the area. Maybe Prilicla’s
recent hypersensitivity was responsible, but there was a niggling doubt at the
back of his mind which suggested that there was another reason.
O’Mara was still in the ward, steadying himself in the close to zero-gravity
conditions with a hand on an equipment rack while he and Prilicla watched the
scene in the operating theater.
“Conway, stop that!” O’Mara said sharply.
He had tried not to react when he had seen the empath’s condition. But half his