He pointed in the direction of Jasam and used the broken pipe to indicate, he hoped, that they were both broken. Then he raised a hand to his eyes before pointing first at an undamaged section of piping and then at the inner door of Keet’s compartment.
“To fix the broken Jasam,” he mimed as he said the words, “I must see the unbroken Keet.”
Again there was understanding, but with it there was a sudden return of the earlier fear and hatred.
“Keep that accursed druul away from us!” it said, so loudly that it must have been its equivalent of a shout. “I don’t trust it! We are both weakened and helpless and it will eat us. We thought that interstellar space, at least, would be clear of such vermin!”
Prilicla tried to ignore the captain’s scandalized emotional radiation, and said reassuringly, “Don’t be afraid, Fletcher won’t touch you. Fletcher fixes machines. Prilicla fixes people.”
The captain’s low-voiced comment was lost in the sound of the inner door hissing open.
It revealed a small compartment whose interior was an almost-solid mass of support brackets, piping, and cable runs leading into a flattened oval dish at its center. The upper half of the receptacle had a sealed, transparent cover that gave a clear view of the co-captain of the ship. Physically Keet was classification CHLI and closely resembled its robot crew member in size and shape except that instead of the silvery metal skin there was the veined brownish-pink of organic tissue. A continuous control-and-sensor-input panel laterally encircled the inner surface of the body container, and the operating keys were within easy reach of the creature’s short digits. Its food, water-supply, and waste-extraction systems had been surgically implanted into the relevant organs.
Prilicla’s body shook briefly with a feeling composed of pity, revulsion, and the claustrophobic fear known only to free-flying beings like himself when he realized that the ship’s organic crew had been confined to their control and life-support pods with no freedom to move, not even around their own ship.
They had been installed with the rest of the ship’s equipment.
From his medical satchel he took his scanner, reversed it so that Keet could see the viewplate, and demonstrated its function by touching it against parts of his own body, before moving it close to the other’s pod.
“This will not hurt you,” he said. “It will enable me to see inside your body so that I can understand and fix anything that is wrong.”
“Will you be able to fix Jasam, too?”
Its speech was going and coming through his translator now, clearly and with the possibility for misunderstanding being reduced with every word. The prime rule during a first-contact situation was to find out as much a possible about the other life-form so as to further reduce that risk, and to tell the truth at all times.
But it was also sound medical practice to encourage a patient to talk about itself, or any other pleasant subject in which it was interested, so as to take its mind off a frightening or possibly embarrassing examination.
“I will try to fix Jasam,” he said. “But to do that, I must first discover everything I can about you and your people. For the best results I would like to have full knowledge, even though there is no way of knowing which pieces of information will be helpful during the repairs, so just tell me about your partner, your lives, your customs, the food you eat, and the things you like to do. In the event of an unsuccessful repair, which is a faint possibility, who and where are your next of kin? You are a completely new and scientifically advanced life-form and everything you say will be interesting and useful.
“Tell me about yourself, and your world.”
CHAPTER 20
A few minutes into the examination there was an interruption. The two courier ships had arrived and, although they were keeping station at the requested distance, their impatience for a full report on the situation could almost be felt. The courier captains’ voices were being relayed through Rhabwar to the alien ship so that Prilicla and Fletcher, but not the alien casualties, could hear them.