Colonel Skempton was dogpaddling along on his other side, but silently. The psychologist went on, “This is an important one, Doctor, in case you’ve forgotten-hence our close personal interest. But now why don’t you pull that glorified alarm clock apart and get the patient out of there? You’ve proved your theory that it needed gravity to live, and we’re supplying that now …
“No, sir,” said Conway, “not just yet …
“Obviously the rotation of the being inside the capsule,” Colonel Skempton broke in, “compensates for the ship’s spin, thus allowing the pilot a stationary view of the outside world.”
“I don’t know,” said Conway doggedly. “The ship’s rotation does not quite match that of the astronaut inside it. In my opinion we should wait until we can transfer it quickly to the ferris wheel, which will almost exactly duplicate module conditions. I have an idea-it may be a pretty wild one-that we aren’t out of the woods yet.”
“But transferring the whole ship into the ward when the patient alone could be moved there in a fraction of the time …
“No,” said Conway.
“He’s the Doctor,” said O’Mara, before the argument could develop further, and smoothly directed the Colonel’s attention to the system of paddle-wheels which kept the water-breathing astronaut’s air circulating.
The enormous trolley, its weight supported in the water to a large extent by air-filled balloon tires, was manhandled along the corridor and into the tremendous tank which was one of the combined theater/wards of the hospital’s water-breathing patients. Suddenly there was another complication.
“Doctor! It’s coming out!”
One of the men swarming around the nose section must have accidentally pushed the astronaut’s ejection button, because the narrow hatch had swung open and the system of gears, sprocket wheels and chain drives was sliding into new positions. Something which looked like three five foot diameter tires was rolling toward the opening.
The innermost tire of the three was the astronaut while the two on each side of it had a metallic look and a series of tubes running from them into the central, organic tire-probably food storage tanks, Conway thought. His theory was borne out when the outer sections stopped just inside the hatch and the alien, still trailing one of the feeding tubes, rolled out of its ship. Still turning it began to fall slowly toward the floor eight feet below.
Harrison, who was nearest, tried to break its fall but could only get one hand to it. The being tipped over and hit the floor flat on its side. It bounced slowly just once and came to rest, motionless.
“It is unconscious again, dying! Quickly, friend Conway!”
The normally polite and self-effacing empath had turned the volume of its suit radio to maximum so as to attract attention quickly. Conway acknowledged with a wave-he was already swimming toward the fallen astronaut as fast as he could-and yelled at Harrison, “Get it upright, man! Turn it!”
“What …” began Harrison, but he nevertheless got both hands under the alien and began to lift.
Mannon, O’Mara and Conway arrived together. With four of them working on it they quickly lifted the being into an upright position, but when Conway tried to get them to roll it, it wobbled like a huge, soggy hoop and tended to fold in on itself. Prilicla, at great danger to life and its extremely fragile limbs, landed beside them and deafened everyone with details of the astronaut’s emotional radiation-which was now virtually nonexistent.
Conway yelled directions to the other three to lift the alien to waist height while keeping it upright and turning. Within a few seconds he had O’Mara pulling down on his side, Mannon lifting on his and the Lieutenant and himself at each flank turning and steadying the great, flaccid, ring-shaped body.
“Cut your volume, Prilicla!” O’Mara shouted. Then in a quieter, furious voice he snarled, “I suppose one of us knows what we’re doing?”
“I think so,” said Conway. “Can you speed it up-it was rotating much faster than this inside its ship. Prilicla?”
“It … it is barely alive, friend Conway.”
They did everything possible to speed the alien’s rotation while at the same time moving it toward the accommodation prepared for it. This contained the elaborate ferris wheel which Conway had ordered and a watery atmosphere which duplicated the soup of Meatball’s oceans. It was not an exact duplicate because the material suspended in the soup was a nonliving synthetic rather than the living organisms found in the original, but it had the same food value and, because it was nontoxic so far as the other water breathers who were likely to use the ward were concerned, the astronaut’s quarters were contained by a transparent plastic film rather than metal plating and a lock chamber. This also helped speed the process of getting the patient into its ward and onto the wheel.
Finally it was in position, strapped down and turning in the direction and at the same velocity as its “couch” on the spacecraft. Mannon, Prilicla and Conway attached themselves as close to the center of the wheel and their rotating patient as possible and, as their examination proceeded, theater staff, special instruments, diagnostic equipment and the very special, thought-controlled “tool” from Meatball added themselves or were attached to the framework of the wheel and whirled up and over and around through the nearly opaque soup.
The patient was still deeply unconscious at the end of the first hour.
For the benefit of O’Mara and Skempton, who had relinquished their places on the wheel to members of the theater staff, Conway said, “Even at close range it is difficult to see through this stuff, but as the process of breathing is involuntary and includes ingestion, and as the patient has been short of food and air for a long time, I’d prefer not to work in clear, food-free water at this time.”
“My favorite medicine,” said Mannon, “is food.”
“I keep wondering how such a life-form got started,” Conway went on. “I suppose it all began in some wide, shallow, tidal pool-so constituted that the tidal effects caused the water to wash constantly around it instead of going in and out. The patient might then have evolved from some early beastie which was continually rolled around in the shallows by the circular tides, picking up food as it went. Eventually this prehistoric creature evolved specialized internal musculature and organs which allowed it to do the rolling instead of trusting to the tides and currents, also manipulatory appendages in the form of this fringe of short tentacles sprouting from the inner circumference of its body between the series of gill mouths and eyes. Its visual equipment must operate like some form of coeleostat since the contents of its field of vision are constantly rotating.
“Reproduction is probably by direct fission,” he went on, “and they keep rolling for every moment of their lives, because to stop is to die.”
“But why?” O’Mara broke in. “Why must it roll when water and food can be sucked in without it having to move?”
“Do you know what is wrong with the patient, Doctor?” Skempton asked sharply, then added worriedly, “Can you treat it?”
Mannon made a noise which could have been a snort of derision, a bark of laughter or perhaps merely a strangled cough.
Conway said, “Yes and no, sir. Or, in a sense, the answer should be yes to both questions.” He glanced at O’Mara to include the psychologist and went on, “It has to roll to stay alive-there is an ingenious method of shifting its center of gravity while keeping itself upright by partially inflating the section of its body which is on top at any given moment. The continual rolling causes its blood to circulate-it uses a form of gravity feed system instead of a muscular pump. You see, this creature has no heart, none at all. When it stops rolling its circulation stops and it dies within a few minutes.
“The trouble is,” he ended grimly, “we may have almost stopped its circulation once too often.”
“I disagree, friend Conway,” said Priicla, who never disagreed with anyone as a rule. The empath’s body and pipe stem legs were quivering, but slowly in the manner of a Cinrusskin who was being exposed to emotion of a comfortable type. It went on, “The patient is regaining consciousness quickly. It is fully conscious now. There is a suggestion of dull, unlocalized pain which is almost certainly caused by hunger, but this is already beginning to fade. It is feeling slightly anxious, very excited and intensely curious.
“Curious?” said Conway.
“Curiosity is the predominating emotion, Doctor.”
“Our early astronauts,” said O’Mara, “were very special people, too.
It was more than an hour later by the time they were finished, medically speaking, with the Meatball astronaut and were climbing out of their suits. A Corps linguist was sharing the ferris wheel with the alien with the intention of adding, with the minimum of delay, a new e-t language to the memory banks of the hospital’s
