He braced himself against a control console which had remained in place and took out his scanner, but delayed beginning the examination until Murchison, who had just arrived, could climb up beside him. Then he said firmly, “We will have to remain with this casualty overnight, Captain. Please instruct Lieutenant Haslam to evacuate all the other casualties on the next trip, and to bring down the litter stripped of nonessential life-support equipment so that it will accommodate this new casualty. We also need extra air tanks for ourselves and oxygen for die casualty, heaters, lifting gear, and webbing, and anything else you think we need.”
For a long moment the Captain was silent, then he said, “You heard the Doctor, Haslam.”
Fletcher did not speak to them while they were examining the new casualty other than to warn them when a piece of loose wreckage was about to fall. The Captain did not have to be told that a wide path would have to be cleared between the big control cupola and the open hatch if the litter was to be guided in and out again carrying the large alien. It was likely to be a long, difficult job lasting most of the coming night, made more difficult by ensuring that none of the debris struck Murchison, Conway, or their patient. But the two medics were much too engrossed in their examination to worry about the falling debris.
“I won’t attempt to classify this life-form,” Conway said nearly an hour later when he was summing up their findings for Doctor Prilicla. “There are, or were, ten limbs distributed laterally, of varying thicknesses judging by the stumps. The sole exception is the one on the underside which is thicker than any of the others. The purpose of these missing limbs, the number and type of manipulatory and ambulatory appendages, is unknown.
“The brain is large and well developed,” he want on, looking aside at Murchison for corroboration, “with a small, separate lobe with a high mineral content in the cell structure suggesting one of the V classifications—”
“A wide-range telepath?” Prilicla broke in excitedly.
“I’d say not,” Conway replied. “Telepathy limited to its own species, perhaps, or possibly simple empathy. This is borne out by the-fact that its ears are well developed and the mouth, although very small and toothless, has shown itself capable of modulating sounds. A being who talks and listens cannot be a wide-range telepath, since the telepathic faculty is supplemented by a spoken language. But the being did not display agitation on seeing us, which could mean that it is aware our intentions toward it are good.
“Regarding the airway and lungs,” Conway continued, “you can see that there is the usual inflammation present but that the lung damage is minor. We are assuming that since the being was unable to move when the gas permeated the ship, it was able, with its large lung capacity, to hold its breath until most of the toxic vapor had dissipated. But the digestive system is baffling us. The food passage is extremely narrow and seems to have collapsed in several places, and with few teeth for chewing food it is difficult … to see how—”
Con way’s voice slowed to a stop while his mind raced on. Beside him Murchison was making self- derogatory remarks because she, too, had not spotted it sooner, and Prilicla said, “Are you thinking what I am thinking, friends?”
There was no need to reply. Conway said, “Captain, where are you?”
Fletcher had cleared a narrow path for himself to the open hatch. While they had been talking they had heard his boots moving back and forth along the outer hull, but for the past few minutes there had been silence.
“On the ground outside, Doctor,” Fletcher replied. “I’ve been trying to find the best way of moving out the big one. In my opinion we can’t swing it down the sides of the wreck, too much sprung plating and debris, and the stern isn’t much better. We’ll have to lower it from the prow. But carefully. I jarred my ankles badly when I jumped from it to the sand, which is only about an inch deep over a gently sloping shelf of rock in that area. Obviously the big life-form needed a special elevator to board and debark, because the extending ladder arrangement below the hatch is usable only by the three smaller life-forms.
“I’m about to reenter the ship through the cargo hold hatch,” he ended. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Captain,” Conway said. “But on your way here would you bring the cadaver from the Dormitory Deck?”
Fletcher grunted assent and Murchison and Conway resumed their discussion with Prilicla, stopping frequently to verify with their scanners the various points raised. When the Captain arrived pushing the dead DCMH ahead of him, Conway had just finished attaching an oxygen tank and breathing tube to the patient and covering its head in a plastic envelope against the time when, during the night, the entry hatch would be closed and the fumes produced by the cutting torch against the metal and plastic debris might turn out to be even more toxic than those from the hydraulic reservoir.
They took the cadaver from Fletcher and, holding it above their heads, fitted it into one of the control couches designed for it. The big alien did not react and they tried it in a second, then a third couch. This time the patient’s stub tentacles began to twitch and one of them made contact with the DCMH. It maintained the contact for several seconds then slowly withdrew and the big entity became still again.
Conway gave a long sigh, then said, “It fits, it all fits. Prilicla, keep your patients on oxygen and IV fluids. I don’t think they will return to full consciousness until they have food as well, but the hospital can synthesize that when we get back.” To Murchison he said, “All we need now is an analysis of the stomach contents of that cadaver. But don’t do the dissection here, do it in the corridor. It would probably, well, upset the Captain.”
“Not me,” Fletcher said, who was already at work with his cutting torch. “I won’t even look.”
Murchison laughed and pointed to the patient hanging above them. She said, “He was talking about the other Captain, Captain.”
Before Fletcher could reply, Haslam announced that he would be landing in fifteen minutes.
“Better stay with the patient while I help the Captain load the lander,” Conwaytold Murchison. “Radiate feelings of reassurance at it; that’s all we can do right now. If we all left it might think it was being abandoned.”
“You intend leaving her here alone?” Fletcher said harshly.
“Yes, but there is no danger—“Conway began, when the voice of Dodds interrupted him.
“There is nothing moving within a twenty-mile radius of the wreck, sir,” he said reassuringly, “except thorn patches.”
Fletcher said very little while they were helping Haslam move the casualties from the outcropping into the lander and while they were pushing the litter with its load of spare equipment to the wreck. It was unlike the Captain, who usually spoke his mind no matter who or what was bothering him, to behave this way. But Conway’s mind was too busy with other things to have time to probe.
“I was thinking,” Conway said when they reached the open cargo hatch, “that according to Dodds the thorn patches are attracted to food and warmth. We are going to create a lot of warmth inside the wreck, and there is a storage deck filled with food containers as well. Suppose we move as much food as we can from the wreck and scatter it in front of the thorn clumps — that might make them lose interest in the wreck for a while.”
“I hope so,” Fletcher said.
The lander took off in a small, self-created sandstorm as Conway was dragging the first containers of food toward the edge of the nearest thorn patch, which was about four hundred meters astern of the wreck. They had agreed that Fletcher would move the containers from the storage deck to the ground outside the hatch, and Conway would scatter them along the front of the advancing thorns. He had wanted to use,the litter with its greater capacity and gravity neutralizers, but Naydrad had stated in its forthright fashion that the Doctor was unused to controlling the vehicle and if the gravity settings were wrong or a part of the load fell off, the litter would disappear skyward or blow weightlessly away.
Conway was forced to do it the hard way.
“Make this the last one, Doctor,” the Captain said as he was coming in from his eighth round trip. “The wind is rising.”
The shadow of the wreck had lengthened steadily as he worked and the sky had deepened in color. The suit’s sensors showed a marked drop in the outside temperature, but Conway had been generating so much body heat himself that he had not noticed it. He threw the containers as far in front and to each side of him as he could, opening some of them to make sure that the thorns would know that the unopened containers also held food, although they could probably sense that for themselves. The thorn clumps covered the sand across a wide front like black, irregular crosshatching, seemingly motionless. But every time he looked away for a few minutes then back again, they were closer.
Suddenly the thorn patches and everything else disappeared behind a dark-brown curtain of sand and a gust of wind punched him in the back, knocking him to his knees. He tried to get to his feet but an eddy blew him onto
