Their only safety lay in the fact that the lock antechamber was weightless, and the flailing tentacles of the Protector sent it spinning helplessly away from every wall or obstruction they encountered, which simply increased its anger and the savagery of its attack. It also made it more difficult to observe the birth which was taking place. But the violence of the Protector’s attack was beginning to diminish. Weightlessness combined with physical damage sustained during encounters with the ship’s now-dead crew and the subsequent malfunctioning of the on-board life-support system had left it with barely enough strength to complete the birth process, which was already well advanced as the parent spun slowly to give a good if intermittent view of the emergence of the Unborn.
Conway’s mind was on an aspect of the birth which the recording could not reproduce-the last few moments of telepathic contact with the fetus before it left its parent and became just another vicious, insensate, completely nonsentient young Protector- and for a moment he could not speak.
Thornnastor must have sensed his difficulty because it reached past him and froze the picture. In its ponderous, lecturing manner it said, “You can see that the head and most of the carapace have appeared, and that the limbs which project from it are limp and unmoving. The reason for this is that the secretions which are released to reverse the prebirth paralysis of the Unborn, and at the same time obliterate all cerebral activity not associated with survival, have not yet taken effect. Up to this point the expulsion of the Unborn is solely the responsibility of the parent Protector.”
In the characteristically forthright manner of a Kelgian, one of the nurses asked, “Is the nonsentient parent to be considered expendable?”
Thornnastor curled an eye to regard Conway, whose mind was still fixed immovably on the circumstances of that earlier birth.
“That is not our intention,” the Tralthan said when he did not respond. “The parent Protector was once a sentient Unborn, and is capable of producing anything up to three more sentient Unborn. Should the circumstances arise where a decision is needed whether to assist the birth of the sentient infant at the expense of the life of the presently nonsentient parent, or to allow the birth to proceed normally so that we end with two nonsentient Protectors, that must be the decision of the Surgeon-in-Charge.
“If the latter decision was to be considered,” it went on, with one eye still fixed on Conway, “it could be argued in support that with two Protectors, a young and an old one who will both produce telepathic embryos in time, we will have another chance or chances to solve the problem. But this would mean subjecting the two FSOJs to lengthy gestation periods in a highly artificial life-support system, which might have long-term ill effects on the new embryos, and would simply mean deferring the decision. The whole procedure would have to be repeated with, in all likelihood, the same decision having to be taken by a different Surgeon-in-Charge.”
Murchison’s eyes were on him as well, and she was looking worried. Those last few words had been something more than a not particularly direct answer to the nurse’s question; they were in the nature of a professional warning. Conway was being reminded that he was still very much on probation, and that the Diagnostician-inCharge of Pathology did not, in spite of its seniority, bear the ultimate responsibility for this case. But still he could not speak.
“You will observe that the Unborn’s tentacles are beginning to move, but slowly,” Thornnastor continued. “And now it is beginning to pull itself out of the birth canal..
It had been at that moment that the soundless telepathic voice in Conway’s mind had lost its clarity. There had been a feeling of pain and confusion and deep anxiety muddying up the clear stream of communication, but the final message from the Unborn had been a simple one.
To be born is to die, friends, the silent voice had said. My mind and my telepathic faculty are being destroyed, and I am becoming a Protector with my own Unborn to protect while it grows and thinks and tries to make contact with you.