“In one of them, the condition presenting respiratory distress symptoms, there has been a minor but positive response to treatment. But the main effort is being directed toward finding a specific for the adult condition, because it has become evident that if the massive debilitation and growth-retarding effects of the plague were removed, the diseases currently afflicting the pre-adult Cromsaggar would be countered by their bodies’ natural defense mechanisms and would no longer be life-threatening.”
If that much was known, Lioren thought, then progress was indeed being made.
“The trials conducted so far,” Murchison continued, “have been inconclusive. Initially the medication was introduced in trace quantities and the patients’ condition monitored routinely for fifty standard hours before the dosage was increased, until on the ninth day, within a few moments of the injection being given, both patients lost consciousness.”
It paused for a moment to look at Prilicla then, seeming to receive a signal undetectable by Lioren, resumed. “Both patients were placed in isolation some distance from the others and each other. This was done so as to minimize same-species interference in their emotional radiation. Doctor Prilicla reported that the level of unconsciousness was extraordinarily deep, but that there was no sign of the subconscious distress that would have been present had they been drifting into termination. It suggested that the unconsciousness might be recuperative since it had many of the characteristics of sleep following a lengthy period of physical stress and that nutrient should be given intravenously. A few days after this was done there was a minor remission of symptoms in both cases, and evidence of slight tissue regeneration, although both patients remained deeply unconscious and in a critical condition.”
“Surely that means—!” Lioren began, and broke off as Mur-chison held up one hand as if it and not himself had the rank. But suddenly he was too excited to verbally tear its insubordinate head off as he should.
“It means, Surgeon-Captain,” Murchison said, “that we must proceed very carefully and, if the first two test subjects regain consciousness rather than drifting into termination, we must closely monitor their clinical and psychological condition before the trial is extended to the other patients. Diagnostician Thornnastor and everyone in its department believes, and Doctor Prilicla feels sure, that we are on the way to finding the cure. But until we are certain we must exercise patience for a time until—”
“How much time?” Lioren demanded harshly.
Prilicla’s fragile body was shaking as if a strong wind was blowing through the casualty deck, but Lioren could no more have controlled the emotional storm of impatience, eagerness, and excitement that raged within him than he could have flown on the empath’s fragile wings. He would apologize to Prilicla later, but now all that he could think of was the steadily dwindling number of Cromsaggar who still clung to life on this plague world, and who might now have a chance to remain alive. More quietly, he asked, “How long must I wait?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the pathologist said. “I only know that Tenelphi has been ordered to remain at flight readiness at Sector General until the medication has been approved for general use, so as to bring you the first production batch without delay.”
CHAPTER 4
RHABWAR departed with its casualty deck filled principally with non-adult Cromsaggar. There were many adult cases in Vespasian’s sick bay — and in the widely dispersed medical stations that Lioren visited every day — who were in a much more serious condition, but the future survival of any species lay with its young, and those fortunate enough to be under the care of Thornnastor would be the first to be cured.
He ignored the polite but increasingly sarcastic messages from Colonel Skempton, the administrative head of Sector General, reminding him that the hospital was unable to accept the entire Cromsag population, depleted though it might be, for hospital-ization, and that they had already received more than enough members of that species for the purposes of clinical investigation. The entire Rhabwar crew would have been aware of Skempton’s uncoded messages and the pressure on ward accommodation that had prompted them, but Prilicla had raised no objections to transporting the additional twenty patients.
Prilicla must be the least objectionable entity in the known galaxy, Lioren thought, unlike the Cromsaggar, who were his patients but who would never be his friends — unless there was a species-wide personality reconstruction by the Galactic Federation’s many deities, of whose existence he had the gravest doubts.
Nevertheless, he spent all of his time, when he was not engaged in eating or sleeping, visiting the worst of his massively unlikable patients or encouraging the two hundred Corps medics and food technicians scattered across the continent who were trying, not always with success, to keep them alive. Always he hoped for a change of attitude, a willingness to talk to him and give information that would enable him to help them or that a tiny crack would show in their impenetrable wall of noncoop- eration, but in vain. The Cromsaggar, adult and young alike, continued dying at a steadily increasing rate because, like Sector General, he did not have the facilities to feed intravenously the entire population.
Occasionally, and in spite of the surface and orbital surveillance, they managed to die at each others’ hands.
It had happened while he had been flying over one of the forest settlements that had long since been searched and declared empty of intelligent life, but that must have been because the occupants had taken to the trees to elude the searchers. Lioren spotted the small-scale war being waged by six of them in a grassy clearing between two buildings. By the time the flier, which would have carried a crew of four Nidians had it not been for his long Tarlan legs, had circled back to land and Dracht-Yur had helped him extricate himself from the tiny vessel’s seating, the hand-to-hand fighting was over and four Cromsaggar lay still on the ground.
In spite of the numerous bites and digitally inflicted wounds covering the bodies, they were able to identify them as three dead males and one female whose life expectancy would be measured in seconds. Dracht-Yur pointed suddenly to the ground nearby where two separate trails of crushed and blood-spattered grass converged toward the open door of one of the buildings.
The advantage of a longer stride meant that Lioren went through the entrance seconds ahead of the Nidian, and his first sight of the two writhing, bloody bodies locked together in mortal combat on the floor reinforced the anger and disgust he felt at such animal behavior between supposedly intelligent beings. Moving forward, he quickly interposed his medial arms between the tightly pressed bodies and tried to push them apart. Only then did he make the disconcerting discovery that they were not, as he had first thought, two males fighting each other to the death but a male and female indulging in a sexual coupling.
Lioren released them and backed away quickly, but suddenly they broke apart and launched themselves at him just as Dracht-Yur arrived and blundered into his rear legs. The weight of the combined attack toppled him over backward so that he sprawled flat on the floor with the two Cromsaggar on top of him and the Nidian somewhere underneath. Within moments he was fighting for his life.
After the first few days on Cromsag had shown the natives to be too severely weakened by the plague to warrant the use of heavy protective suits, all Corps personnel had taken to wearing their cooler and less restrictive shipboard coveralls, which gave protection only against the sun, rain, and insect bites.
It was with a sense of outrage that Lioren realized that for the first time in his life the hands — not to mention the feet, knees, and teeth — of another person had been raised in anger against him. On Tarla disputes were not settled in this barbaric fashion. And even though the number of his limbs equaled the total of theirs, they did not behave like plague-weakened Cromsaggar. They were inflicting serious damage to his body and causing him more pain than he had ever thought it possible to feel.
As he fended off the more disabling body blows and tried desperately to keep the two Cromsaggar from pulling off his dirigible eye-supports, Lioren was aware of Dracht-Yur wriggling from underneath him and crawling toward the door. He was pleased when his attackers ignored it, because the Nidian’s small, furry limbs had neither the muscle power nor the reach to make a useful contribution to the struggle. A few seconds later he caught a glimpse of the Nidian’s head enclosed by a transparent envelope, heard the expected soft explosion of a bursting sleep-gas bulb, and felt the bodies of his attackers go suddenly limp and collapse on top of him before rolling slowly onto the floor.
For the few moments that the bodies, covered as they were by livid patches of discoloration and the oozing sores characteristic of preterminal plague victims, made heavy and almost intimate contact with him, it was a great
