of people who know a helluva lot more about this than I do.”
“Is there anybody on the team with you that can help me?” Corvus’s voice was almost pleading.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to take these brain scans and convert them into visual imagery. I want to put what Baby and Dee were seeing into images that you and I can see.”
Yeager gave out a low whistle. “That’s a tall order, pal. I don’t know if anybody knows how to do that.”
“Well, then we’ll be the first!”
Shaking his head, Yeager said, “You want to take the electrical impulses flickering through a brain and turn them into visual pictures?”
“Right!” Corvus bobbed his head up and down so hard his hair flopped down over his forehead. Pawing at it, he explained, “The brain receives electrical impulses along the nerve path from the retinas of the eyes. It transmutes those impulses into visual imagery. Pictures. Why can’t we do that with the data we’ve got from their brain scans?”
Yeager looked around for a place to sit down. There was none. The bed was covered with gadgetry. The other chairs in the compartment were also loaded with junk. Corvus himself was sitting on the only available chair.
Looking down at Andy, Yeager said, “You’re dealing with the difference between the brain and the mind.”
Corvus nodded.
“We can scan the electrical activity of the brain. Been doing that for more than a century. But how those pulses get translated into pictures is something that the human mind does, and we don’t have any idea of how that works.”
“Not just the human mind,” Corvus maintained. “The dolphins see pictures in their heads, too.”
“You have any hard data to back up that statement?” Yeager demanded.
“Behavioral data.”
Shaking his head, the engineer objected, “Not good enough, friend. You don’t know what goes on in a dolphin’s mind. You’ll probably never know.”
Almost defensively, Corvus said, “Well, that’s what I want to find out. We’ve got to figure out a way to do it. How can we ever make any meaningful contact with the leviathans if we can’t even make real contact with a species from our own planet?”
Yeager shook his head sadly. “Beats me, Andy. Beats the hell out of me.”
INFIRMARY
“I infected you?” Dr. Pohan slowly rose from behind his desk, like a cloud of smoke boiling up. “You accuse me of deliberately infecting you?”
“Not deliberately, perhaps,” Deirdre said placatingly.
Dorn, sitting beside her, was unimpressed with the doctor’s ire. “How else could she be infected, except by the needle you injected into her arm? Her skin hasn’t been broken by anything else.”
Visibly trembling, the doctor hissed, “This accusation is monstrous. Outrageous!”
Deirdre could see that Dr. Pohan’s face had turned beet red. His mustache fairly quivered with fury.
“You told me,” she said, in a low, calm voice, “that another passenger had died on the trip between Selene and
Slowly settling back in his chair, Dr. Pohan glared at the two of them. Finally he nodded curtly. “That is true.”
“I’ve been aboard this ship since it left lunar orbit,” Dorn said. “I’ve heard nothing about a passenger dying.”
His voice dripping with scorn, Dr. Pohan said, “Do you think that we would
Unmoved, Dorn said, “May we see her file?”
“To what purpose?”
“To prove to ourselves that she existed.”
Deirdre expected the doctor to explode again. Instead, he simply glared at Dorn for a long, fuming moment. Then he snapped, “Computer. Display file of Frieda Nordstrum.”
The screen on the bulkhead to one side of Dr. Pohan’s desk glowed to life. It showed an ID image of a blond, ruddy-faced woman. Deirdre thought she looked at least twenty years older than herself, although with modern rejuvenation therapies it was difficult to guess ages. The dossier accompanying the image said that she was a Norwegian microbiologist, aged thirty-eight, a graduate of Uppsala University in Sweden. She had left her most recent post at Selene University, on the Moon, to accept a position on the research staff at station
“And she died?” Deirdre asked.
“Aboard this ship,” said Dr. Pohan. “Under my care.”
“Of rabies.”
The doctor glowered at Deirdre, but called out, “Computer, display medical record of Frieda Nordstrum.”
The dossier disappeared in an eyeblink, replaced by a brief medical record, which ended in a death certificate. Deirdre supposed that the signature scrawled at its bottom was Dr. Pohan’s.
“Are you satisfied now?” Dr. Pohan growled.
Dorn said nothing, but Deirdre got to her feet as she apologized, “I’m sorry we bothered you, Doctor. It’s just that … none of this makes sense!”
Dr. Pohan rose also. In a gentler tone he said, “I know it must be very frightening to you. But we will have your condition under control within the next twenty-four hours.”
Under control doesn’t mean cured, Deirdre thought.
Standing up beside her, Dorn said, “This still doesn’t explain how Ms. Ambrose contracted rabies.”
The doctor’s face flushed momentarily, but he brought himself under control with an obvious effort. “I have no explanation as yet,” he said stiffly. “It seems clear that Dr. Nordstrum was infected while visiting Earth and carried the infection back to Selene where she boarded this ship before her illness was detected.”
Turning toward Deirdre, Dorn began, “But how—”
“How Ms. Ambrose was infected is under investigation, intense investigation. Perhaps the virus has found a new pathway between one victim and another. A new vector. I am studying that possibility, with consultation by the corporation’s medical staff in Selene.”
“I see,” said Dorn.
Leaning the knuckles of both hands on his desktop, Dr. Pohan said firmly, “I can assure you, I do not appreciate being accused of infecting my patient, either accidentally or deliberately.”
“I understand,” Deirdre said. With that, she and Dorn left the doctor’s office.
Once outside the infirmary, in the passageway leading to the elevators, Deirdre said, “He’s doing his best to track down the way the virus infected me.”
Dorn seemed unimpressed. “Perhaps he sees a chance to make an important discovery, tracking down a new vector for the rabies virus. It could be a considerable feather in his cap.”
“You think that’s what he’s after?”
“It could be a considerable feather in his cap,” Dorn repeated.
Deirdre broke into a giggle. “He won’t get any feathers in his cap if he doesn’t learn how to control his anger. I thought he’d have a stroke!”
Nodding thoughtfully, Dorn agreed, “He did get very incensed, didn’t he?”
“Well, we did accuse him of deliberately infecting me. I don’t blame him for getting furious.”
“Methinks,” Dorn muttered, “that he doth protest too much.”
