Birthright

there was no way of telling whether a dose of forty percent oxygen would revive it or kill it; ditto for a ninety percent nitrogen dose. Its skin was extremely fine-textured, but he didn't dare take a sample, or even a scraping; for all he knew, the Pnathians, or at least this particular one, were chronic hemophiliacs. And for that reason he couldn't take a sample of the being's blood, either. Nor could he even make a guess about the gravity of the Pnathian's home world. It had three legs, allowing it a tripodal stance, which implied a heavier gravity; but the structure seemed much more fragile than a heavier gravity would allow. And, of course, he didn't dare X-ray it for fear of a fatal, or at least terribly adverse, reaction.

There were no hands or arms as such, but instead a trio of tubular appendages, all extremely flexible, not quite tentacles but far from hands. He tried to figure out what function they served, but couldn't. Obviously, the race was intelligent, and had developed the machinery of space travel and war, but when he tried to imagine the control panel of one of their ships, his mind came up blank. As for the head, it extended on a long thin stalk of a neck and contained not one but four orifices that might or might not have been mouths. They were arranged perpendicular to the ground, and the third

orifice was the only one that fogged the crystal of his watch. However, he had never come across any

being that required four mouths, nor did it seem likely that the remaining orifices could all be breathing apparatus, unless the being had the equivalent of three stuffed noses. Theycould be ears, but it seemed unlikely; in every species he had ever examined, human and nonhuman, sapient and nonsapient, the ears were set much farther apart for greater efficiency. Urethra and anus? Possibly; but, if so, which was which, and how could he differentiate them from the mouth? He grinned at the thought of some alien physician pouring the equivalent of hot chicken broth into his rectum, then frowned as he realized that it would only be funnyafter he cured the patient. Or, he admitted honestly to himself,if he cured it. The Pnathian had two eyes. The lids were over them, but he had lifted them and seen that they were quite dull, with the pupils reacting only very slightly to light stimuli. Just above the eyes was the cranium, an oblong structure stuck atop the rest of the face at a 45-degree angle, almost like a baby whose head was terribly misshapen due to a difficult birth. Its pulse was almost twice that of his own, but that could simply be because of the gravitational difference. Or it could be a sign of impending death. Or... Darlinski cursed once again, stepped back, and stared at the Pnathian. He felt terribly oppressed. Hell, oxygen-breathers weren't even his specialty. But Jacobson was on vacation somewhere on Deluros VIII, so they'd pulled the boy genius out of the chlorine ward, pointed him in the direction of the Pnathian, patted him on the head, and said Go.

The question, of course, was: Go where? Hammett broke his concentration, such as it was, by calling on the intercom. “Any ideas yet?”

“All of ‘em pertain to what I'm going to do to you once I get this patient out of my hair,” said Darlinski disgustedly.

“I hope we're both still here long enough for you to have a chance,” said Hammett. “I've been checking up on the story, and it's true. The government's bought us a little more time, but if we haven't got our ambassador on its feet and ready to exonerate us in a few days, that's it.” “I don't suppose anyone has yet thought to get me any useful information from a Pnathian medic?” said Darlinski.

“Yes and no,” said Hammett.

“And just what in blazes is that supposed to mean?” “Yes, they thought to ask, and no, nobody got you anything. You don't understand the political situation. I can hardly believe it myself. I don't know if this race is composed of nothing but paranoids or what, but they won't send anyone here or even feed us any information about their physiology until they know their ambassador is all right.”

“Thereby making sure that it's never going to be all right,” said Darlinski grimly.

“I did learn that it's a female, and her name is ... well, it's not really pronounceable, but the closest human

analog is Leonora. And no, she's not pregnant.” “They told you that?”

“Not in so many words, but I gather that she's only recently reached childbearing age.” “Then why in the name of pluperfect hell is she their sole ambassador to a race they're at war with?” demanded Darlinski.

“How should I know?” said Hammett. “We've got Psychology working on it, but they've got even less to go on than you do.”

“I hope you don't expect me to feel sorry for Psychology.” “Nope. Muff this one and you can spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for you and me.” “Very funny,” growled Darlinski.

“No,” corrected Hammett. “Very serious. I'd rather have you kill her by accident than have her just lie there and die for lack of treatment. I don't care if you begin by ripping her heart out with your bare hands, but you've got to do something. Is there anybody I can send to assist you?” Darlinski roared a negative and cut the intercom off. Then he walked back to the Pnathian and examined her again, armed with the knowledge that she was a female. This implied some bodily cavity that would be absent in a male, but as he went over her, inch by inch, he concluded that the only orifices on her entire body were the four pseudo- mouths on her head. One was obviously for breathing, which meant that of the remaining trio, one was for ingestion, one for sexual congress, and one was of undetermined properties. And, for the life of him, he still couldn't figure out which was which. He glanced at a clock, and realized that he'd been on his feet for more than twenty hours and would shortly be in a state of near-collapse. That meant he had to get something down to Pathology that they could analyze while he slept. He ordered a pair of nurses into the room and prepared to take small skin scrapings from each of the patient's tentacular appendages, another scraping from the trunk of the body, and smears from each of the three nonbreathing orifices. Careful as he was, he noticed that on the last scraping, a small amount of pinkish fluid began oozing out. It had to be blood, and he immediately placed it on a slide and sat back to see whether or not the bleeding would stop by itself. It did, almost immediately, and he instructed one of the nurses to take everything down to the Path lab.

“Get me a report within six hours, hunt me up a room, see that it has a hot shower, and have someone bring me some breakfast and a stimulant in five hours.” So stating, he waited until he'd been assigned some nearby sleeping quarters, and, with a sigh, put them to good if brief use.

He awoke feeling no better rested, and within a matter of minutes was standing next to Jennings of Pathology as they took turns viewing slides in the latter's lab. “Not that having very few red corpuscles proves a damned thing,” Jennings was saying. “It could, of

course, indicate a serious blood deficiency. On the other hand, maybe the damned beast doesn'tneed red

corpuscles. I think, though, that we'd better go under the assumption that this blood count is pretty near normal.”

“Any reason why?” asked Darlinski.

“The best,” Jennings grinned. “If it's not normal, we're out of luck. I've broken down the blood structure, and there's no way we could synthesize red corpuscles of a type this thing wouldn't reject before it died for lack of them. So, pragmatism being what it is, we'll pretend that whatever else is wrong, the blood count's normal.”

Darlinski nodded his head and grunted his assent. “How about the tissues?” “You mean the scrapings?” asked Jennings. “Well, we might be running into a little more luck there ... or worse luck, depending on your point of view.” “Suppose you tell me what my point of view is,” said Darlinski warily. “If your point of view is that of a doctor looking for something to cure, we might have something for you. Here, take a look.”

Darlinski bent low over the powerful microscope and peered through it. A tiny skin sampling was on the slide, and even without resorting to the highest magnification Darlinski was aware of an enormous amount of cellular activity.

“What's happening?” he asked.

“Can't say for sure,” said Jennings. “But by all rights, that ought to be a very dead piece of skin, and it just as obviously is not. For the life of me I can't figure out what's feeding it or supplying it with whatever it needs in the way of blood and oxygen.” “Speaking of oxygen,” said Darlinski, “what kind of dose can I give her?” “Based on the blood structure, I'd say she's living in her equivalent of an oxygen tent right now. I wouldn't want to be the guy responsible for giving her a higher dose. It just might burn her lungs out.” “How about the smears?”

“Now, that's something really interesting,” said Jennings. “You found