relief to remember that one world’s pathogens were ineffective against the members of off-planet species.
Designed as it was for maximum effect on the Cromsaggar metabolism, the anesthetic gas produced similar if less immediate results on other warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Lioren was unable to move, but he was aware of the Nidian growling and barking urgently into its headset while it applied dressings to the worst of his wounds. Presumably it was telling the pilot of their flier to send for medical assistance, but his own translator pack had been damaged in the struggle and he could not understand a word. This did not worry him unduly, because the intense discomfort of his many injuries had faded to the mildest of irritations and the hard floor beneath him felt like the softest of sleeping pits. But his mind was clear and seemed unwilling to follow his body into sleep.
Interrupting the two Cromsaggar in the sex act had been a serious mistake, but an understandable one because none of his people had witnessed the occurrence of anything like a sexual coupling since arriving on Cromsag, and everyone, himself included, had assumed that the species had become too physically debilitated by the plague to make much of such activity possible. And their reaction, the sheer strength and ferocity of their attack, had surprised and shocked him.
During the very short breeding season on Tarla such activity, especially among the aging who had been lifemates for many years, was a cause for celebration and public display rather than a matter for concealment — although he knew that many species within the Federation, races who were otherwise highly intelligent and philosophically advanced, considered the mating process to be a private matter between the beings concerned.
Naturally, Lioren had no personal experience in this area, since his dedication to the healing arts precluded him indulging in any pleasure which would allow emotional factors to affect the clinical objectivity of his mind. If he had been an ordinary Tarlan male, an artisan or a member of one of the noncelibate professions interrupted in similar circumstances, there would have been a verbal impoliteness, but certainly not violence.
Distressing and distasteful as the incident had been, Lioren’s mind would not rest in its search to find a reason for such an unreasonable reaction, however alien or uncivilized that reason might be. Could it be that, gravely ill and seriously injured as they had been in the fighting outside, they had crawled into the house to seek a moment of mutual pleasure together before dying? He knew that the coupling must have been by mutual agreement, because the Cromsaggar mechanics of reproduction were physiologically too complicated for the attentions of one partner to be forced on another.
That did not rule out the possibility that the coupling was the end result of the fighting, the bestowal of a female’s favor on a warrior victorious in battle. There were many historical precedents for such behavior, although not, thankfully, in the history of Tarla. But that reason was unsatisfactory because both male and female Cromsaggar fought, although not each other.
Lioren made a mental note to prepare a detailed report of the incident for the cultural contact specialists who would ultimately have to produce a solution to the Cromsaggar problem, if any of the species survived and it was invited to join the Federation.
The four separate images of the room, including the one of Dracht-Yur working on the other casualties, that his immobilized eyes were still bringing him dimmed suddenly into blackness, and he remembered a feeling of mild irritation before he fell asleep in midthought.
Dracht-Yur confined him to the sick bay on Vespasian until the worst of his injuries healed, reminding him, as only a hairy, small-minded, and sarcastic dwarf of a Nidian could, that until then the relationship between them was one of doctor and patient and that in the present situation it was the Surgeon-Lieutenant who had the rank.
It could not, however, no matter how often it stressed the advisability of post-trauma rest and mental recuperation, bind Lioren’s jaw closed or keep him from setting up a communication system by his bedside.
Time passed like a pregnant strulmer climbing uphill, and the medical situation on Cromsag worsened until the daily death rate climbed from one hundred to close on one-fifty, and still Tenelphi did not come. Lioren sent a necessarily brief hyper-space radio signal to Sector General, prerecorded and repeated many times so that its words could be reconstructed after fighting their way through the interference of the intervening stars, requesting news. He was not surprised when it was ignored, because the expenditure of power needed for a lengthy progress report would have been wasteful indeed. All that he was telling them was that he and the medical and support personnel on Cromsag were beginning to feel so helpless and angry and impatient that the condition verged on the psychotic, but the hospital probably knew that already.
Five days later he received a reply stating that Tenelphi had been dispatched and was estimating Cromsag in thirty-five hours. It was carrying medication, as yet incompletely tested for long-term effects, which was a specific against the grosser, more life-threatening symptoms of the plague, and that the details of the pathological investigation and directions for treatment accompanied the medication.
During the excitement that ensued Lioren went over his plans for fast distribution. Dracht-Yur relented to the extent of allowing him to transfer from sick bay to the communications center of Vespasian, but not to risk compounding his injuries by traveling the air or surface of Cromsag in vehicles totally unsuited to the Tarlan physiology. But the general feeling of relief and euphoria lasted only until the arrival of Tenelphi.
The scout ship carried more than enough of the antiplague specific, which required only a single, intravenous application, to treat every Cromsaggar on the planet, but Lioren was forbidden to use it until additional field trials had been carried out.
According to Chief Pathologist Thornnastor, the physiological results following a minimum dosage had been very good, but there were indications of possibly damaging side effects. Symptoms of mental confusion and periods of semiconscious-ness had been observed. These might prove to be temporary, but further investigation was required.
The single injection was followed by a slight but continuing reduction in symptoms, a slow improvement in the vital signs, and evidence of tissue and organs regeneration throughout the body in the days which ensued. During the periods of semicon-sciousness the test subjects had requested and consumed food in quantities which, considering stomach size and the clinical condition of the patients involved, seemed unusually large. There was a steady increase in body weight.
The non-adult subjects had responded in similar fashion, including the periods of unconsciousnessness interspersed with episodes of semiconsciousness and mental confusion, except that with the young the food demand in relation to their smaller size had been greater. Daily measurement had shown a steady increase in growth, both in body mass and limb dimensions.
It was thought probable that with the gradual remission of the condition the non-adult patients, whose physical growth had been retarded by the plague, were returning to optimum size for their ages. The periods of unconsciousness and impaired thinking were in response to a demand by the body for maximum rest during these periods of regeneration and were of little clinical importance. The medication was being used in minimum quantities, but a very small increase in the dosage of one test subject resulted in a strengthening and acceleration of the effects already noted. In spite of the excellent physiological results so far, the associated episodes of mental confusion were cause for concern lest a side effect of the medication led to long-term brain damage.
Thornnastor apologized for sending medication that it had not completely cleared for use, but said that Lioren’s hyperspace radio signals had emphasized the urgency of the situation, and in order to save a few days’ transit time between the medication’s approval and its administration to the patients the final tests should be made concurrently on Cromsag and in Sector General.
“I have been instructed to conduct tests on a maximum of fifty Cromsaggar,” Lioren said, when he was relaying Thorn-nastor’s report to his senior medical officers. “The subjects are to include the widest possible variation in age and clinical condition, as well as minor variations in the dosage administered within that number. We are to pay particular attention to the mental state of these subjects during their periods of semiconsciousness, in the hope that their degree of confusion will be lessened when they are on their home world among others of their kind rather than in the strange and doubtless unsettling environment of Sector General. The initial test period will require ten days, followed by a further—”
“In ten days we would lose a quarter of the remaining population,” Dracht-Yur broke in suddenly, its barking speech sounding angry even through the translator, “which has already shrunk to two-thirds of the number alive when Tenelphi found this Crutath-accursed planet. They’re dying out there like, like …”
“That was my thought exactly,” Lioren said, omitting the reprimand the Nidian deserved for its bad manners, and making a mental note to check on the meaning of the word “Crutath.” “It is a thought which all of you share. But it is not because of our common feelings that I will disobey Thornnastor and ignore its recommendations. The
