by James White
"If the parasites are responsible for the coating," he sad sickly, "then there was no earlier attempt to cure the patient. Our heavy-gravity patient was probably attacked on the light-gravity planet of the flying barnacles, they sank in their rootlets or tendrils, paralyzed its muscles and nervous system and encased it in a ... a shell of slowly feeding maggots when it wasn't even dead—"
"A little more clinical detachment, Lieutenant," said Conway sharply. "You're bothering Prilicla. And while something like that may have happened, there are still a few awkward facts which don't fit. That depression under the inverted barnacle still bothers me."
"Maybe it sat on one of them," said Brenner angrily, his feeling of revulsion temporarily overcoming his manners. "And I can understand why its friends dumped the patient into space—there was nothing else they could do."
He hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry, Doctor. But is there anything else that you can do?"
"There is something," said Conway grimly, "that we can try. ..."
Four ACCORDING to Prilicla their patient was, just barely, alive, and now that the barnacles were known to be the attacking organisms and not just surface eruptions, they and their coating must be removed as quickly as possible. Removal of the tendrils would require more delicate and time-consuming work, but the surface condition would respond to heat and, with the barnacles removed, the patient just might recover enough to be able to help Conway to help it. Pathology had already suggested methods for restarting its paralyzed life processes.
He would need at least fifty cutting torches operating simultaneously with high-pressure air hoses to blow the ash away. They would begin burning on the head, neck, breast and wing-muscle areas, freeing the patient of barnacle control of the brain, lungs and heart. If the heart was in a terminal condition emergency surgery would be necessary to bypass it—Murchison had already mapped out the arterial and venous processes in the area. And in case the patient twitched or began napping its wings, they would need the protection of heavy-duty suits.
But no—Prilicla, who would be monitoring the emotional radiation during the op, would need maximum protection. The others would have to dodge until it could be immobilized with pressors. If emergency surgery was necessary, heavy-duty suits were too cumbersome, anyway. As well, the communicator would have to be moved to a side compartment in case it was damaged, because the adjoining levels would have to be alerted and various specialist staff would have to be standing by.
While he gave the necessary orders Conway moved briskly but unhurriedly and his tone was quiet and confident. But all the time he had a vague but persistent feeling that he was saying and doing and, most of all, thinking all the wrong things.
O'Mara did not approve of his proposed line of treatment but, apart from asking whether Conway intended curing or barbecuing the patient, he did not interfere. He added that there was still no report from Torrance.
Finally they were ready to go. The maintenance technicians with cutting torches and air lines hissing—but directed away from the patient—were positioned around the head, neck and leading edges of the wings. Behind them waited the specialist and medical technicians with stimulants, a general purpose heart-lung machine and the bright, sterile tools of their trade. The doors to the side compartments were dogged open in case the patient revived too suddenly and they had to take cover. There was no logical reason for waiting any longer.
Conway gave the signal to begin only seconds before his communicator chimed and Murchison, looking disheveled and very cross, filled the screen.
"There has been a slight accident, an explosion," she said. "Our type two flew across the lab, damaged some test equipment and scared hell out of—"
"But it was dead," protested Conway. "They were both dead—Prilicla said so."
"It still is," said Murchison, "and it didn't fly exactly— it shot away from us. I'm not yet sure of the mechanics of the process, but apparently the thing produces gases in its intestinal tract which react explosively together, propelling it forward. Used in conjunction with its wings this would help it to escape fast-moving natural enemies like the barnacle. The gases must still have been present when I began work.
"There is a similar species, much smaller," she went on, "which is native to Earth. We studied the more exotic types of Earth fauna in preparation for the e-t courses. It was called a bombardier beetle and it-—"
"Doctor Conway!"
He swung away from the screen and ran into the main compartment. He did not need to be an empath to know that something was seriously wrong.
The team leader of the maintenance men was waving frantically and Prilicla, encased in its protective globe and supported by gravity milliners, was drifting above the man's head and trembling.
"Increasing awareness, friend Conway," reported the empath. "Suggesting rapidly returning consciousness. Feelings of fear and confusion."
Some of the confusion, thought Conway, belongs to me. ... The maintenance man simply pointed.
Instead of the hard coating he had expected to see there was a black, oily, semi-liquid that flowed and rippled and dripped slowly on to the floor plating. As he watched the area where the flame was being applied, the stuff rolled away from one of the barnacles, which twitched and unfolded its wings. The wings flapped, slowly at first, and it began pulling free of the patient, drawing its long tendrils out of the bird until it was completely detached and it went blundering into the air.
"Kill the torches," said Conway urgently, "but cool it with the air hose. Try to harden that black stuff."
But the thick, black liquid would not harden. Once initiated by the heat the softening process was self-sustaining. The patient's neck, no longer, supported by solid material, slumped heavily on to the deck followed a few seconds later by the massive wings. The black pool around the patient widened and more and more of the barnacles struggled free to blunder about the compartment on wide, membraneous wings, trailing their tendrils behind them like long, fine plumes.
"Back everybody! Take cover, quickly!"
Their patient lay motionless and almost certainly dead, but there was nothing that Conway could do. Neither the maintenance men nor the medical technicians were protected against those fine, harmless-looking tendrils of the barnacles—only Prilicla in its transparent globe was safe there, and now there seemed to be hundreds of the things filling the air. He knew that he should feel badly about the patient, but somehow he did not. Was it simply delayed reaction or was there another reason?
"Friend Conway," said Prilicla, bumping him gently with its globe, "I suggest that you take your own advice."
The thought of fine, barnacle tendrils probing through his clothing, skin and underlying tissues, paralyzing his muscles and scrambling his brain made him run for the side compartment, closely followed by Brenner and Prilicla. The lieutenant closed the door as soon as the Cinruss-kin was inside.
There was a barnacle already there.
For a split second Conway's mind was like a camera, registering everything as it was in the small room: the face of O'Mara on the communicator screen, as expressionless as a slab of rock with only the eyes showing his concern;
Prilicla trembling within its protective globe; the barnacle hovering near the ceiling, its tendrils blowing in a self-generated breeze, and Brenner with one eye closed in a diabolical wink as he pointed his gun—a type which threw explosive pellets—at the hovering barnacle.
There was something wrong.
"Don't shoot," said Conway, quietly but firmly, then asked, "Are you afraid, Lieutenant?"
"I don't normally use this thing," said Brenner, looking puzzled, "but I can. No, I'm not afraid."
"And I'm not afraid because you have that gun," said Conway. "Prilicla is protected and has nothing to fear. So who . . ." He indicated the empath's trembling feelers. "... is afraid?"
"It is, friend Conway," said Prilicla, indicating the barnacle. "It is afraid and confused and intensely curious."
Conway nodded. He co
uld see Prilicla beginning to react to his intense relief. He said, "Nudge it outside, Prilicla, when the lieutenant opens the door—just in case of accidents. But gently."
As soon as it was outside, O'Mara's voice roared from the communicator.
"What the blazes have you done?"
Conway tried to find a simple answer to an apparently simple question. He said, "I suppose you could say that I have prematurely initiated a planetary re-entry sequence. ..."
The report from Torrance arrived just before Conway reached O'Mara's office. It said that one of the two stars had a light-gravity planet that was inhabitable while showing no indications of advanced technology, and that the other possessed a large, fast-spinning world that was so flattened at the poles that it resembled two soup bowls joined at the rims. On the latter world the atmosphere was dense and far-reaching, gravity varied between three Gs at the poles to one-quarter G at the equator, and surface metals were nonexistent. Very recently, in astronomical terms, the world had spiraled too close to its sun and planet-wide volcanic activity and steam had rendered the atmosphere opaque. Torrance doubted that it was still habitable.
"That supports my theory," said Conway excitedly when O'Mara had relayed the report to him, "that the bird and the barnacles, and the other insect life-form, originate from the same planet. The barnacles are parasites, of course, with a small individual brain capacity, but intelligent when linked and operating as a gestalt. They must have known that their planet was heading for destruction for centuries, and decided to escape. But just think of what it must have taken to develop a space-travel capability completely without metal...."
Somehow they had learned how to trap the giant birds from the heavy-gravity polar regions and to control them with their tendrils—the barnacles were a physically weak species and their ability to control nonintelligent hosts was the only strength they had. The birds, Conway now knew, were a nonintelligent species, as were the-tendrilless beetles. They had taken control of the birds and had flown them high above the equator, commanding maximum physical effort to achieve the required height and velocity for the linkup with the final propulsion stage—the beetles. They also had been controlled by the barnacles, perhaps fifty to each parasite, and they had attached themselves to the areas behind the wings in a gigantic, narrow cone. Meanwhile the bird had been shaped and paralyzed Into the configuration of a supersonic glider, its claws removed to render it aerodynamically clean, and injected with the secretions which would arrest the process of decomposition. The crew had then sealed it and themselves in position and gone into hibernation for the duration of the voyage using the bird's tissue for life-support.
Once in position the propulsion cone comprising millions of insects, hundreds of thousands of which were the intelligent controllers, had begun firing. They had done so very evenly and gently, so as not to shatter or crush the narrow apex of the cone where it was attached to the bird. The beetles could be made to deliver their tiny modicum of thrust whether they were alive or dead and, even with their ability to seal themselves inside a hard coating, the propulsion controllers had not lived for very long—they also were expendable. But in dying they had helped an organic starship carrying a few hundred of their fellows to achieve escape velocity from their doomed planet and its sun.
"... I don't know how they intended to position the bird for reentry," Conway went on admiringly, "but atmospheric heating was intended to trigger the organic melting process when they had braked sufficiently, allowing the barnacles to pull free of the bird and fly to the surface under their own wing-power. In my hurry to get rid of the coating I applied heat over a wide area of the forward section, which simulated re-entry conditions and—"
"Yes, yes," said O'Mara testily. "A masterly exercise in medical deduction and sheer blasted luck! And now, I suppose, you will leave me to clean up after you by devising a method of communicating with these beasties and arranging for their transport to their intended destination. Or was there something else you wanted?"
Conway nodded. "Brenner tells me that his scoutship flotilla, using an extension of the search procedure for overdue ships, could cover the volume of space between the home and destination stars. There are probably other birds, perhaps hundreds of them—"
O'Mara opened his mouth and looked ready to emulate a bombardier beetle. Conway added hastily, "I don't want them brought here, sir. The Corps can take them where they are going, melt them on the surface to avoid re-entry casualties, and explain the situation to them.
"They're colonists, after all—not patients."
COMMUTER
THE suspect was disheveled and, if he was contused as well, the sergeant had left his marks in places where they did not show. Never a very pleasant man at the best of times, Sergeant Greer was completely lacking in charm when he was angry. One of the things that made him very angry was the kind of crime that this suspect had almost certainly been intending to commit, and another was suspects who tried to be smart when they had been caught trying to commit them.
In this instance Inspector Michaelson agreed with his sergeant.
"This could be a very serious charge," said Michaelson. "Why wouldn't you give the sergeant your name and address?"
Michaelson kept his tone firm but friendly, suggesting that the other's lack of cooperation had been due to an understandable dislike of the arresting officer, which need not, however, include the inspector. If the other did not give his name at once he should at least begin to talk—if only to demand details of the charge he was being held on, or to make formal complaint about his rough handling or to ask for a lawyer. But the suspect remained silent.
Irritated, Michaelson said, "I take it he speaks English?"
"Fluently," said Greer.
"I see."
"No, sir," said the sergeant, "not four-letter fluent. When I was sure he wasn't armed I eased my hold on him —that was when he became fluent. When he saw that I wasn't believing any of the stories he was trying on me he said that he wasn't carrying much money but that I was welcome to it if I let him go and that he had not intended harming the old lady, just watching her. I told him that attempting to bribe a police officer would get him into worse trouble and since then he hasn't said a word."
"He may not have known that you were a policeman when he offered the money," said Michaelson coldly, "and he stopped doing so as soon as you identified yourself."
Greer, who was long used to the Inspector's unorthodox interrogations during which he sometimes gave the impression that he was giving his subordinates a harder time than the suspects, played his part by looking surly.
"But it isn't very polite," he went on to She suspect, "talking about you as if you weren't there. Sit down, please. Can you tell me your first name, at least?"
The suspect opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"Your age, then?"
"Twenty-three."
Michaelson nodded. "I expect your parents will worry if you're late getting home—"
"They died, a long time ago."
"I see," said Michaelson sympathetically. A good defense counsel with that sort of background to enlarge on and with expert psychiatric support could make a judge react sympathetically as well, but his sympathy would be real. He added, "Both at once, I suppose. Traffic accident?"
"No, they died when . . ." the suspect began, then stopped as if he had almost said too much.
Knowing that it would be useless to continue asking questions until the other had a chance to relax his guard, Michaelson nodded for Greer to make his report. While the sergeant went through the preliminaries of setting the lime and place, Michaelson studied the suspect more closely. There was something about his appearance which bothered him.
Certainly it was not the suspect's clothing, which had been neatly casual before Greer had treated their wearer like an opposing halfback. If anything the man was too conservatively dressed for his age and his hair was too short. That was it—his hair was unusually tidy and short. Not skinhead s
hort but neat, combed and parted. Michaelson began to study the suspect's face, closely.
The play of expression on a face, the lines and contours pulled into it by experience of one kind or another, could loll an awful lot about its owner. But there were occasions, Michaelson knew, when it could tell an awful lot of lies.
If there was any such thing as a criminal face, this certainly was not it. Oh, the man was worried, of course, and hiding something—the bumps of tension along his jaw, the listening look and the sweaty highlights developing on his forehead and around his mouth were clear indications of guilt of some kind. But the overall impression was one of innocence and he looked far too honest and clean-cut to be true.
Michaelson had known high court judges with faces like pickpockets and he himself had steadfastly refused to grow his hair longer or wear colored shirts. But being old-fashioned and neatly trimmed at his age was normal. In the suspect's age group it was rare, perhaps abnormal.
". . . He was seen in the shop and several times in the street since the rumor began going around that Mrs. Timmins had come into money," Greer was saying. "Three times he visited the shop yesterday, buying newspapers on each visit—the same newspaper on two of the occasions. But the old lady hasn't served in the shop since—"
"Did she come into money?" Michaelson preferred facts to rumors, even though a rumor like this was enough to make the vultures gather.
"If she did, it came too late to do much good," said Greer, who obviously was feeling so strongly about it that he had forgotten to answer the question. Michaelson understood why.
Mrs. Timmins had been forced by age and ill health to sell her shop and live in the flat above sixteen years earlier, and she had been virtually bedridden for the past five years. By rights she should have given up trying to work long before then, but she had never been quite right in the head—a condition which, Michaelson had heard, dated from the time her husband had deserted her during the second year of their marriage. And she was old, she had been old even when Michaelson had been a kid at school.