highly advanced medically might not take kindly to news that someone was botching the treatment of one of their sick. On the present evidence Conway thought that they would not take kindly to anything or anybody.
Interstellar wars of conquest were logistically impossible, Conway knew. But the same did not apply to simple wars of annihilation, where planetary atmospheres were exploded or otherwise rendered useless forever with no thought of eventual occupation or assimilation. Remembering his last contact with the patient, Conway wondered if at last they had encountered a completely vicious and inimical race.
The communicator buzzed suddenly. It was Kursedd reporting that the patient had been quiet for the last hour, but that the growth seemed to be spreading rapidly and threatened to cover one of the being’s breathing openings. Conway said he would be along presently. He put out a call for Dr. Prilicla, then sat down again.
He dare not tell anyone of his discovery, Conway told himself as he resumed his interrupted thought. To do so would mean a force of Monitors swarming out there to make premature contact-premature, that was, so far as Conway was concerned. For he was afraid that that first meeting between cultures would be in the nature of an ideological head-on collision, and the only possibility of cushioning the shock would be if the Federation could show that they had rescued, taken care of, and cured one of the intergalactic colonists.
Of course there was the possibility that the patient was atypical of its race, that it was mentally ill as O’Mara had suggested. But Conway doubted if the aliens would consider that an excuse for not curing it. And against that idea was the fact that the patient had had logical-to it-reasons for being afraid and hating the person trying to help it. For a moment Conway wondered wildly if there was such a thing as a contra terrene mind, a mentality wherein assistance produced feelings of hate instead of gratitude. Even the fact of its being found in an ambulance was no reassurance. To people like himself the concept of an ambulance had altruistic implications, errands of mercy, and so on. But many races, even within the Federation, tended to look upon illness as mere physical inefficiency and corrected it as such.
As he left his room Conway did not have the faintest idea of how to go about curing his patient. Neither, he knew, did he have much time to do it in. At the moment, Captain Summerfield, Hendricks and the others investigating the wreck were too dazzled by a multiplicity of puzzles to think about anything else. But it was only a matter of time before they got around to it, a matter of days or even hours, and then they would come to the same conclusions as had Conway.
Shortly thereafter the Monitor Corps would make contact with the aliens, who would naturally want to know about their ailing brother, who by that time would have to be either cured or well on the way to recovery.
Or else.
The thought which Conway tried desperately to keep from thinking was: What if the patient died …
Before beginning the next examination he questioned Prilicla regarding the patient’s emotional state, but learned nothing new. The being was now motionless and practically unconscious. When Conway spoke to it via the Translator it emoted fear, even when Prilicla assured him that it understood what he was saying.
“I will not harm you,” Conway said slowly and distinctly into the Translator, moving closer as he spoke, “but it is necessary that I touch you. Please believe me, I mean no harm …” He looked enquiringly at Prilicla.
The GLNO said, “Fear and … and helplessness. Also acceptance mixed with threats … no, warnings. Apparently it believes what you say, but is trying to warn you about something.”
This was more promising, Conway thought. It was warning him, but it didn’t mind him touching it. He moved closer and gently touched the being with his gloved hand on one of the unaffected areas of tegument.
He grunted with the violence of the blow which knocked his arm aside. He backed away hurriedly, rubbing his arm, then switched off the Translator so as to give vent to his feelings.
After a respectful pause, the GLNO said, “We have obtained a very important datum, Dr. Conway. Despite the physical reaction, the patient’s feelings toward you are exactly the same as they were before you touched it.”
“So what?” said Conway irritably.
“So that the reaction must be involuntary.”
Conway digested that for a moment, then said disgustedly, “It also means we can’t risk a general anesthetic, even if we had one, because the heart and lungs use involuntary muscles, too. That’s another complication. We can’t knock it out and it won’t cooperate …” He moved to the ward control panel and pushed buttons. The clamps holding the net opened and the net itself was whisked away by a grab. He went on, “It keeps injuring itself on that net, you can see where it has nearly lost another appendage.”
Prilicla objected to the removal of the net, saying that if the patient was free to move about it was more likely than ever to injure itself. Conway pointed out that in its present posture — head to tail and underbelly, which contained its five sets of tentacles, facing outward — it could do little moving about. And now that he thought of it, that position looked like the perfect defensive stance for the creature. It reminded him of the way an Earth cat lies on its side during a fight, so as to bring all four of its claws to bear. This was a ten-legged cat who could defend itself from all directions at once.
Built-in involuntary reactions of that order were the product of evolution. But why should the being adopt this defensive position and make itself completely unapproachable at the time when it needed help the most …?
Suddenly, like a great light bursting in his mind, Conway knew the answer. Or, he amended with cautious excitement, he was near ninety percent sure that he did.
They had all been making wrong assumptions about this case from the start. His new theory hinged on the fact that they had made a further wrong assumption, single, simple and basic. Given that then the patient’s hostility, physical posture and mental state could all be explained. It even indicated the only possible line of treatment to be taken. Best of all, it gave Conway reason for thinking that the patient might not belong to the type of vicious and implacably hostile race which its behavior had led him to believe.
The only trouble with the new theory was that it, also, might be wrong.
His first wild enthusiasm waned and his degree of certainty dropped to the mid-eighties. Another trouble was that he could not possibly discuss his intended line of treatment with anyone. To do so might mean demotion, and to insist on carrying through with it would mean his dismissal from the hospital should the patient die. What he contemplated was as serious as that.
Conway approached the patient again and switched on the Translator. He knew before he spoke what the reaction would be so it was probably an act of wanton cruelty to say the words, but he had to test this theory once more for his own reassurance. He said, “Don’t worry, young fellow, we’ll have you back the way you were in no time …
The reaction was so violent that Dr. Prilicla, whose empathic faculty made it feel everything which the patient felt at full intensity, had to leave the ward.
It was only then that Conway finally made his decision.
During the three days which followed, Conway visited the ward regularly. He took careful notes on the rate of growth of the thick, fibrous encrustation which now covered two thirds of the patient’s body. There could be no doubt that it was both accelerating and growing thicker. He sent specimens to Pathology, which reported that the patient appeared to be suffering from a peculiar and particularly virulent form of skin cancer and asked if curative radiation or surgery was possible. Conway replied that in this opinion neither were possible without grave danger to the patient.
About the most constructive thing he did during that time was to post instructions that anyone contacting the patient via Translator was to avoid trying to reassure it at all costs. The being had suffered too much already from that form of well-meaning stupidity. If Conway could have forbidden entrance to the ward to everyone but Kursedd, Prilicla and himself he would have done so.
But the greater part of his time was spent in trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.
Conway had been deliberately avoiding Dr. Mannon since the original examination. He did not want his old friend discussing the case with him, because Mannon was too smart to be foisted off with double talk, and Conway could not tell even him the truth. He thought longingly that the ideal situation would be for Captain Summerfield to be kept too busy at the wreck to put two and two together, for O’Mara and Skempton to forget his existence, and for Mannon to keep his nose completely out of the affair.
