Pohl, Frederik - The Siege of Eternity

None of that was really necessary, of course. No one thought there was any real need for Category Five containment for Dopey and the two Docs. If the things had brought any horrible alien plagues to Earth with them there had been plenty of opportunities to spread the disease before they ever saw Camp Smolley. But the director had decreed Category Five containment.

Hilda would have done the same. Not for any epidemiological need, but just to cover your butt for the congressional inquiry that sooner or later was sure to come.

Hilda's heavy uniform coat was taken away from her and then she was allowed into the wing where the aliens were housed. The warmth was wonderful, after the damp cold of outdoors, but suddenly Camp Smelly began to deserve its old nickname. The stench of alien metabolism was startling. In one room the two Docs were kept, one characteristically standing immobile, the other very uncharacteristically lying on a pallet on the floor, with two or three medics hovering around. The cadet who was guiding her explained, "It's diarrhea, Brigadier Morrisey. They were trying to get some minerals into their diet. They think it was the soluble calcium and iron that did it. Now Captain Terman's waiting for you in the laboratory."

There were two more armed guards in front of the laboratory door, but they stepped aside to let Hilda and the cadet enter. The stink of the laboratory was different from the one that came from the sick Doc, but not a lot more pleasant; it seemed to come from an opened canister. Captain Terman stood there, watching a medic carefully measure out spoonfuls of what looked like lavender slime. The stuff had orange-and-black lumps in it, and it smelled like a brewery.

Charity-at a Price!

When the High Governor's office announced that our brothers to the North were graciously willing to remove the "device" that was implanted in the brain of our brave astronaut, General Martin Delasquez, they were polite about it. They did not mention that the Yankee authorities have presented a rather large bill for the "costs" of these services.

If our information is correct, the only "services" the Washington government will contribute is the provision of a room for the operation to take place in. The actual surgery will not be done, in fact cannot be done, by any North American. It will be performed by the very "Doc" creature which General Delasquez himself did so much to bring to us. So once again we Floridians learn that "gifts" from the North are never without a price.

-El Diario, Miami, Florida

The captain was an elderly man, even more past his proper age-in-grade than Hilda had been, and he waited until the canister had been capped before he turned to greet her. "Sorry I couldn't meet you myself, ma'am," he said, not really sounding very sorry at all, "but they're very strict about how much of this we can give them at a serving. Has the cadet told you what we do here?"

"I can see what you do here," Hilda said, looking around. "Show me what else you do, then I want to talk to Dopey."

What they were doing was a lot. Through a plate-glass window she got a look at a sterile-environment biology lab. Everyone inside wore clean suits and face masks; one woman was starting a centrifuge, two men were titrating drops of something into Petri dishes of something else; three other people, including Dr. ben Jayya, were clustered around a screen with dancing curves of red and blue and green-doing what Hilda could not guess. (But didn't think she needed to, since this was the sort of thing Camp Smolley was supposed to be best at.) In another room there was a long table that contained half a dozen objects, mostly metal. They were not any kind of objects Hilda had ever seen before; with a shock, she realized these were some of the things the rocket had brought back from Starlab. Inside a containment hood two technicians were carefully dismantling a six-sided gold-colored object the size of a hatbox. "Dopey says it's a recording unit," Captain Terman told her. "Wait a minute, I'll give you a better look."

He turned on a wall screen, and she was looking down into something that didn't look like any recording unit she had ever seen. No revolving spool, no drive heads; what was coming out of the machine, layer by layer, was a succession of flat, thin hexagonal things that looked more like filter paper than any mechanical device, but in half a dozen different colors, some of them faintly glowing. "We have three of these," Captain Terman said with satisfaction, "so we figured we could try to take one apart. That other stuff? Junk, mostly. That long green thing looks like a crowbar. If you ask me, that's what it is. There's no internal mechanism at all. Do you want to see Dopey now?

"Probably. What's he doing?"

"Being debriefed, of course. Wait a minute, I'll show you." The captain touched the controls again, and Dopey appeared. The little alien was perched glumly on a chair, surrounded by his debriefers. His cat whiskers were drooping and his fan had turned leaden gray. He was talking in a low monotone, and when Hilda tried to make out what he was saying she frowned. "Is that Spanish he's talking? Why?"

The captain looked unhappy. "He said he was tired of speaking English, and both Herrera and Ortiz are bilingual. He was quite insistent. He's not easy to get along with, ma'am." He looked aggrieved. "You know that belly bag of his?"

It wasn't the most sensible question anyone could ask; Hilda was looking right at the thing. "What about it?"

"Well, the lab people want it for study. Only he won't let us take it."

"The last man to try that," Hilda said, remembering the flight back from Calgary, "nearly got electrocuted."

"Yes, ma'am. They know that, but they think they could use insulated tongs or something. Funny thing is, it doesn't seem to shock him, you know? I can't figure that part out. Anyway, he complains that our tests-they've been going over it with radiation counters and things-the tests are depleting its power reserve, and he can't live without it."

"Do we have any idea whether that's true?"

"No, ma'am. Only one way to find out, though-take it away from him and see if he dies. But I can't do that without orders."

Hilda nodded, eyeing the man. She wasn't going to be the one to get him off the hook; if someone ever gave that order, it wouldn't be Hilda Morrisey. "We'll let that go for a while. Let's go see him."

As soon as Dopey saw Hilda he pushed his way past his debriefers and scurried over to her. "Colonel Morrisey, you must help me!-what?" He paused to listen to something one of the debriefers said in Spanish, then apologized. "Oh, it is now Brigadier Morrisey, my congratulations. Please make these people understand that we are starving! We must return to the Starlab and get more of our food."

"You have food," Captain Terman said quickly, glancing at Hilda.

"It is not food! It is certainly not our food-a teaspoon of that at a time, that's all you give us-and that other stuff will kill us. You see what happened to my poor bearer!"

"It is only diarrhea," the captain said. "The medics say he'll be better as soon as he gets it out of his system."

"And what if I get it, too?" Dopey bristled his whiskers at them. "I do not like to complain, Brigadier Morrisey, but these people simply do not know me. Can you not have one of the Dr. Adcocks come here? Or even an Agent Dannerman? Someone with whom I have been through adversity, who appreciates the sacrifices I have made? Who would surely not allow these people to give us such foul food?"

Hilda was losing patience. "Shut up about the food for a while," she commanded.

"But I cannot! It is not as though I am asking you for something on my own behalf alone, Brigadier Morrisey! If you go to the Starlab orbiter, there is more than food there, there are wonderful things. Things that will be of great value to you! I have given Captain Terman a complete inventory-"