James White: Code Blue Emergency

“Not clearly,” Prilicla replied quickly, obviously feeling her own growing excitement, and fear. “One of those disklike objects is in the way.”

“But that’s it,” she said. “I thought at first that one of them had drifted against the cadaver and stuck to its head. But I was wrong. The thing attached itself deliberately to the FGHJ with those thick white tendrils you can see growing from the edge of the disk. Now that I’m looking for them, I can see that they all have the tendrils and, judging by their length, the penetration into the cadaver’s spinal column and rear cranium is very deep. That thing is, or was, alive, and could have been responsible for—”

“Technician,” Fletcher broke in harshly, “get out of there!”

“At once,” Prilicla said.

Very carefully Cha Thrat released her hold on the dead FGHJ, removed her vision pickup, and attached its magnetic clips to a clear area of wall. She knew that the medical team would want to study this strange and abhorrent life-form that was infesting the ship before deciding how to deal with it. Then she turned toward the entrance, which now seemed to be very far away.

The disks hung thickly like an alien minefield between the door and herself. Some of them were still moving slowly in the air eddies caused by her entry or by the blows with which she had so casually knocked them aside, or perhaps of their own volition. They presented views from every angle — the smooth surface of the mot-tied side, the gray and wrinkled reverse side, and the edges with their fringe of limp white tendrils.

She had been so busy searching for an FGHJ survivor that she had scarcely looked at the objects she had mistaken for cakes of food or dried wastes floating in the room. She still did not know what they were, only of what they were capable, which was the utter destruction of the highly trained and intelligent minds of their victims to leave them with nothing but the basic and purely instinctive responses of animals.

The thought of a predator who did not eat or physically harm its prey, but gorged itself on the intelligence of its victim, made her want to seek refuge in madness. She was desperately afraid of touching one of them again, but there were too many of them for her to avoid doing so. But if any of them got in her way, Cha Thrat decided grimly, she would touch it, hit it, very hard.

The gentle, reassuring voice of Prilicla sounded in her earpiece. It said, “You are controlling your fear well, friend Cha. Move slowly and carefully and don’t—”

She winced as a high-pitched, piercing sound erupted from the earpiece, signifying that too many people were talking to her at once and had overloaded her translator. But they realized immediately what was happening because the oscillation wavered and died to become one voice, the Captain’s.

“Technician, behind yourBy then it was too late.

All of her attention had been directed ahead and to the sides, where the greatest danger lay. When she felt the surprisingly light touch, followed by a sensation of numbness on the back of her neck, a cool, detached part of her mind thought that it was considerate of the thing to anesthetize the area before inserting its tendrils. She swung an eye to the rear to see what was happening, andinstinctively raised her upper hands to push away the disk that had left the dead FGHJ and was attaching itself to her. But the hands fumbled weakly, their digits suddenly powerless, and the arms fell limply away.

Other parts of her body ceased working, or began twitching and bending in the random, uncoordinated fashion of a person with serious brain damage. The calm, detached portion of her mind thought that her condition was not a pleasant sight for friends to see.

“Fight it, Cha Thrat!” Murchison’s voice shouted from her earpiece. “Whatever it’s doing, fight it! We’re on our way.”

She heard and appreciated the concern in the Patholo-gist’s voice, but her tongue was one of the organs that was not working just then because her jaw was clamped shut. Altogether, she was in a state of considerable physiological confusion as muscles continued to twitch uncontrollably, her body writhed in weightless contortions, and sensations of heat, cold, pain, and pleasure affected random areas of her skin. She knew that the creature was exploring her central nervous system, trying to find out how her Sommaradvan body worked so that it would be able to control her.

Gradually the twitchings and writhings and even her fear diminished and were gone, and her body was able to resume its interrupted journey. The lens of the vision pickup turned to follow her. When she reached the door, she slammed it closed and locked it with fastenings that had suddenly become familiar.

“Technician,” Fletcher said sharply, “what are you doingTIt was obvious that she was locking the door from the inside, Cha Thrat thought irritably. Probably the Captain meant why was she doing it. She tried to reply but her lips and tongue would not work. But surely her actionswould tell all of them that she, it, both of them, did not wish to be disturbed.

They were all talking at once again. She had to bend the earpiece back to reduce the sudden howl of translator oscillation that was making it difficult to think. The vision pickup was still following her and they must have realized the significance of her action because the babble died quickly and became one voice.

“Friend Cha,” Prilicla said, “listen to me carefully. Some kind of parasitic life-form has attached itself to you and the quality of your emotional radiation is changing. Try, try hard to pull it off and get out of there before your condition worsens.”

“I’m all right,” Cha Thrat protested. “Honestly, I feel fine. Just leave me alone until I can—”

“But your thoughts and feelings aren’t your own anymore,” Murchison broke in. “Fight, dammit! Try to keep control of your mind. At least try to open that door again so we won’t waste time burning through it when we get to you.”

“No,” the Captain said firmly. “I’m very sorry, Technician, they aren’t leaving this ship …”

The argument that ensued immediately overloaded Cha Thrat’s translator again, which made it impossible for her to talk to any of them. But there were parts of it,particularly when Fletcher was speaking in its ruler’s voice, that she heard clearly.

The Captain was reminding them, and calling on Prili-cla to support it, that the strictest possible rules of quarantine governed this situation. They had encountered a life-form that absorbed the memory, personality, and intelligence of its victims and left them like mindless animals. Moreover, judging by their recent observations of Technician Cha Thrat, the things were capable of adapting to and quickly controlling any life-form.

By then nobody was trying to interrupt Fletcher as it went on. “This could mean that they are not native to the planet of the FGHJs, that they may have come aboard anywhere, and are capable of doing this to the members of every intelligent species in the Federation! I don’t know what drives them, why they’re content to suck out the intelligence of their victims instead of feeding on the bodies, and I don’t even want to think about it. Or about how, or how rapidly, they can reproduce themselves. There are dozens of them in the room with Cha Thrat, and they’re so small that more of them could be hidden in odd corners all over the ship.

“Until we get a properly equipped and protected decontamination squad in there,” Fletcher went on, “I have no choice but to seal and place a guard on the boarding tube. This is something completely new to our experience, and it may well be that the hospital will advise the complete destruction of the ship, and its contents.