James White - Code Blue Emergency

“Perhaps they are starved,” Khone ended, “not of food but of their civilizing drug.”

“A neat idea,” Murchison said warmly, then matching the Gogleskan’s impersonal tone it went on. “Admiration is felt for the originality of the healer’s thinking but, regrettably, the medication concerned would not increase awareness and the ability to mentate, it would decrease it to the point where continuous use would cause these people to spend their entire lives in a state of semi-consciousness.”

“Perhaps,” Cha Thrat joined in, “the state of semi-consciousness is pleasant and desirable. It shames me to admit it, but on Sommaradva there are people who deliberately affect and often damage their minds with sub-stances for the purely temporary pleasure they give the user …”

“Sommaradva’s shame,” Naydrad said angrily, “is shared by many worlds in the Federation.”

“… And when these harmful substances are withdrawn suddenly from habitual users,” she went on, “their behavior becomes irrational and violent and similar, in many respects, to that of the FGHJs on the other ship.”

Murchison was shaking its head. “Sorry, no again. I cannot be absolutely certain because we are dealing with the metabolism of a completely new life-form here, but I would say that the traces found in the cadaver’s brain was a simple tranquilizer that deadens rather than heightens awareness, and is almost certainly nonaddic-tive. Had this not been so I would have suggested using it as an anesthetic.

“And before you ask,” the Pathologist went on, “progress with the anesthetic is slow. I have gone as far as I can go with the physiological data provided by the cadaver, but to produce one that will be safe to use in large doses I require blood and gland secretion samples from a living FGHJ.”

Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, then she turned to include Prilicla as she said, “I could not find any trace of injured or unconscious survivors during my preliminary search, but I shall search again more diligently when the required samples have been obtained. Is the being still alive? Can you give me even an approximate guide to its location?”

“I can still feel it, friend Cha,” Prilicla replied. “But the cruder, conscious emoting of the other survivors is obscuring it.”

“Then the sooner Pathologist Murchison has its samples the sooner we’ll have the anesthetic to knock outthe emotional interference,” Cha Thrat said briskly. “My medial digits are strong enough to restrain the arms of the FGHJ on the control couch while my upper manipulators take the samples. From which veins and organs, and in what quantities, must they be removed?”

Murchison laughed suddenly and said, “Please, Cha Thrat, let the medical team do something to justify its existence. You will hold the crew member tightly to its couch, Doctor Danalta will position the scanner, and I will obtain the samples while—”

“Control here.” Fletcher’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Jump in five seconds from now- The extra mass of the distressed ship will delay our return somewhat. We are estimating Sector General parking orbit in just under four days.”

“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said. Suddenly there was the familiar but indescribable sensation, unseen, unheard, and unfelt but indisputably present, that signaled their removal from the universe of matter to the tiny, unreal, and purely mathematical structure that the ship’s hyperdrive generators had built around them. She forced herself to look through the casualty deck’s direct vision panel. The tractor and pressor beams that laced the ships rigidly together were invisible, so that she saw only the ridiculously flimsy boarding tube joining them and, at the bottom of the metal chasm formed by the two hulls, the heaving, flickering grayness that seemed to reach up through her eyes and pull her very brain out of focus.

She returned her attention to the solid, familiar if temporarily unreal world of the casualty deck before hyper-space could give her an eyestrain headache.

Cha Thrat had time for only a few words with Rhone before following Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad to the boarding tube. The Charge Nurse was helping hercarry packages of the material that Murchison had identified as food, and she had only to compare them with the hundreds of others in the other ship’s stores to be able to feed all of the surviving crew members until they bulged at the seams.

Her last sight of the casualty deck for a long time, although she did not know it just then, was of Senior Physician Prilicla hovering above the.widely scattered remains of the cadaver and interspersing its quiet words to Khone with untranslatable duckings and trillings to the younger Gogleskan.

“If we can spare the time,” Cha Thrat said to the Pathologist when they were standing around the control couch and its agitated and weakly struggling occupant, “we could feed it before taking your samples. That might make the patient more contented, and amenable.”

“We can spare the time for that,” Murchison replied, then added, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you remind me of somebody else.”

“Who do we know,” Naydrad asked in its forthright Kelgian manner, “who’s that weird?”

The Pathologist laughed but did not reply, and neither did Cha Thrat. Without realizing it, Murchison had moved into a sensitive and potentially highly embarrassing area, and, if it ever did learn exactly what had happened to the Sommaradvan’s mind on Goglesk, it should be from its life-mate, Conway, and not Cha Thrat — Prilicla had been quite insistent about that.

There was surprisingly little variety in the FGHJs’ food containers — two differently shaped plastic bottles, one holding water and the other a faintly odorous nutrient liquid, and there were uniform blocks of a dry, spongy material wrapped in a thin plastic film with a large ring for tearing it open. The liquid and solid foods were synthetic, according to Murchison, but nutrition-ally tailored to the requirements of the FGHJs’ metabolism, and the small quantities of nonnutrient material present were probably there to excite the taste buds.

But when Cha Thrat tossed one of the packages into the crew member’s hands, it began tearing at it with its teeth without removing the plastic wrapping. The simple, spring-loaded caps sealing the bottles were also ignored. It tore open the neck of the container with its teeth and sucked out the liquid that it had not already spilled down its chest.

A few minutes later the Pathologist made an untranslatable sound and said, “Its table manners certainly leave a lot to be desired, but it doesn’t appear to be hungry anymore. Let’s get started.”

Feeding the crew member made no perceptible difference to its behavior except, perhaps, to give it more strength to resist them. By the time Murchison had withdrawn its samples, Naydrad, Cha Thrat, and the Pathologist itself were displaying several areas of surface bruising and Danalta, whose body could not be injured or deformed except by the application of ultrahigh temperatures, had been forced into some incredible shape-changes in order to help them immobilize the brute. When the task was done, Murchison sent Naydrad and Danalta ahead with its test samples while it remained, breathing rapidly, and with its eyes fixed on the crew member.

“I don’t like this,” it said.

“It worries me, too,” Cha Thrat said. “However, if a problem is restated often enough, in different words, a solution sometimes emerges.”

“I suppose some wise old Sommaradvan philosopher said that,” Murchison said drily. “I’m sorry, Technician. What were you going to say?”

“An Earth-human Lieutenant called Timmins said it,” she replied. “And I was about to restate the problem, which is that we are faced with a ship’s crew who are apparently suffering from a disease that leaves them completely healthy, but mindless. Not only can they not operate their own undamaged and fully functioning ship, they do not remember how to unfasten their leg restraints, unlatch doors, or open food containers. They have become like healthy animals.”