Hal Clement: Natives of Space

He lay motionless, watching. He was beginning to feel restless, and could tell that he was running a mild fever — the normal result of the refresher reaction. He would be a trifle below par for the rest of the day. That was not worrying him seriously; he could rest until blackness fell, and as soon as that desirable event had occurred, they could be out and away.

He did feel a little impatient with his subject, who was taking a long time to regain consciousness. Of course, the creature had received a far heavier dose of anaesthetic than had the other, and had lost more blood; it might be a little longer in recuperating, on that score; but he had occupied fully ten minutes with the operation and stage-setting, which was about twice as long as the total period of unconsciousness of yesterday’s subject.

His patience wore thinner in the additional ten minutes that elapsed before Jimmy Wade began to stir. His first motion attracted the alien’s wandering attention, and Thrykar gathered himself together preparatory to leaving. Jimmy moaned a little, stirred again, and suddenly rolled over on his back. After a moment his eyes opened, to stare blankly at the overshadowing tree; then he rolled over again, this time obviously under conscious control, and started to get to his feet.

Thrykar, behind his concealing bush, did likewise. He was the only one to complete the movement. The boy got as far as his hands and knees, and was starting to get one foot under him, when Thrykar saw the small body go limp as though it had received a second shot of gas, and slump back into a huddled heap on the road.

Thrykar stood frozen for a moment, as though he expected to be similarly stricken; and even when he relaxed, be kept both eyes fixed on the inert form for fully half a minute. Then, heedless of the risk of being seen should the creature regain its senses, he rushed out on the road and bent over the body, simultaneously tapping out an urgent call to Tes. Once more he picked Jimmy up, feeling as though his tentacles were about to come out at the roots, and bore him carefully back to the scene of the operation.

His emotions were almost indescribable. To say that he felt criminally guilty in causing serious injury to a sensitive being would not be strictly true; although he had an intellectual realization that human beings were social creatures in a plane comparable to that of his own race, he could not sympathize with them in the etymologically correct sense of the word. At the same time, he was profoundly shocked at what he had done; and he experi-enced an even deeper feeling of pity than had Tes the day before.

With careful tentacles he opened the loose shirt, and felt for the heart he had located the day before. It was still beating, but fully twice as rapidly as it should have been; and so weakly that for a moment Thrykar could not find it. The chest was rising and falling slightly, in slow, shallow breaths. A man would have detected at once the pallor underlying the tan on the boy’s face, but it was unnoticeable to the alien.

Tes arrived and bent over the pair, as her husband performed the examination. Thrykar told her what had happened in a few words, without looking up. She gave a single word of understanding, and let a tentacle slide gently across Jimmy’s forehead.

“What can you do?” she asked at last.

“Nothing, here. We’ll have to get it down to the ship somehow. I’m afraid to take it under water —

none of them went more than a few feet below the surface yesterday, and none stayed down for more than a few seconds. I hate to do it, but we’ll have to bring the ship up in broad daylight. I’ll stay there; you go down, cast off, and bring the ship over to this side of the pit. Raise it just far enough to bring the upper hatch out of the water. I’ll keep this communicator, and when you are ready to come up call me to make sure it’s safe.”

Tes whirled and made for the quarry without question or argument; a few seconds later Thrykar heard the faint splash as she hurled herself into the water. She must have worked rapidly; a bare five minutes later Thrykar’s communicator began to click, and when he responded, the curved upper hull of the spaceship appeared immedi-ately at the near edge of the quarry. Thrykar picked up the boy once more, carried him to the water’s edge, eased him in and followed, holding the head well above the surface. He swam the few feet necessary, found the climbing niches in the hull with his own appendages, crawled up the shallow curve of metal, and handed the limp form in to Tes, who was standing below the hatch. She almost fell as the weight came upon her, but Thrykar had not entirely released his hold, and no damage resulted. A few moments later Jimmy was stretched on a metal table in a room adjacent to the control chamber, and the ship was lying at the bottom of the quarry.

Tes had to go out once more for the equipment Thrykar had left above, which included the all-important book. She took only a few minutes, and reported that there was no sign of any other human being.

Thrykar seized the book, although he had already practically memorized the section dealing with Earth and its natives. He had already set the room thermostat at human blood temperature for safety’s sake, and had the air not been already saturated with moisture Jimmy’s clothes would have dried very quickly. As it was, he was at least free from chill. The chemist checked as quickly as possible the proper values for respiration rate and fre-quency of heartbeat, and sought for information on symptoms of excessive exsanguination; but he was unable to find the last. His original opinion about heartbeat and breathing was confirmed, however; the subject’s pulse was much too rapid and his breathing slow and shallow.

There was only one logical cause, book or no book, symptoms or no symptoms. The only source of organic disturbance of which Thrykar had any knowledge was his own removal of the creature’s blood. It was too late to do anything about that. The extra dose of gas might be a contributing factor, but the worried chemist doubted it, having seen the negligible effects of the stuff on the human organism the day before.

“Why does that blasted handbook have to be right often enough to make me believe it, and then, when I trust it on something delicate, turn so horribly wrong?” he asked aloud. “I would almost believe I was on the wrong planet, from what it says of the cultural level of this race; then it describes their physical make-up, and I know it’s right; then I trust it for the right amount of blood to take, and — this. What’s wrong?”

“What does it say about their physical structure?” asked Tes softly. “I know it is fantastically unlikely, but we might have the wrong reference.”

“If that’s the case, we’re hopelessly lost,” replied her husband. “I know of no other race sufficiently like this in physical structure to be mistaken for it for a single moment. Look — there are close-ups of some of the most positive features. Take the auditory organ — could that be duplicated by chance in another face? And here — a table giving all the stuff I’ve been using: standard blood temperature, coloration, shape, height, representative weights. Tes!”

“What is wrong?”

“Look at those sizes and weights! I couldn’t have moved a body that bulky a single inch, let alone carry one twenty yards! You had the right idea; it is the wrong race. or… or else — “

“Or else,” said Tes softly but positively. “It is the right planet, the right race, and the right reference. Those values refer to adult members of that race; we took as a donor an immature member — a child.”

Thrykar slowly gestured agreement, inwardly grateful for her use of the plural pronoun. “I’m afraid you must be right. I took blood up to the limit of tolerance of an adult, with a reasonable safety margin; this specimen can’t be half grown. Yesterday’s must have been still younger. How could I possibly have been so unobservant? No wonder it collapsed in this fashion. I hope and pray the collapse may not be permanent — by the way, Tes, could you make some sort of blindfold that will cover its eyes without injuring them? They seem deeply enough set to make that a fairly simple job. If it does recover consciousness, there are still laws which should not be broken.”