indeed had just emerged from hyperspace. Automatically Lieutenant Haslam fed the bearing to the telescope and tapped for maximum magnification.
The tremendous, awe-inspiring sight of an Emperor-class battlecruiser filled the screen.
“Rhabwar, this is Vespasian.”
Fletcher paled visibly at the thought of giving instructions to the godlike entity who would be in command of that ship, whose communications officer was relaying the compliments of Fleet Commander Dermod and a request for full vision contact as soon as convenient. Conway, who had not had time to tell the Captain what to expect because it was already happening, got to his feet.
“I’ll be in the Casualty Deck lab,” he said. Grinning, he reached across to clap Fletcher reassuringly on the shoulder and added, “You’re doing fine, Captain. Just remember that, a long, long time ago, the Fleet Commander was a major, too.”
The conversation between Fletcher and the Fleet Commander, complete with visuals, was on the Casualty Deck’s repeater when he arrived, but the sound was muted because Prilicla was on another frequency giving instructions to one of the scoutship medical officers regarding a cadaver the other had found and which Murchison wanted brought in for examination. Murchison and Naydrad were still working on the first specimen, which had been reduced to what seemed to be its component parts.
Murchison nodded toward the repeater screen and said, “You seem to have been given everything you needed. Was O’Mara in a good mood?”
“His usual sarcastic, helpful self,” Conway said, moving to join her at the dissection table. “Do we know anything more about this outsize boa constrictor?”
“I don’t know what we know,” she said crossly, “but I know a little more and feel more than a little confused by the knowledge. For instance …”
The thick pencil of nerve ganglia with its localized bunch-ings and swellings which ran through the center of the cylindrical body was, almost certainly, the CRLT’s equivalent of a brain, and the idea of a missing head or tail was beginning to seem unlikely — especially since the transparent material which covered the raw areas fore and aft was, despite its appearance, equally as tough as the being’s leathery body tegument.
She had been successful in tracing the nerve connections between the core swellings and the eyes, mouths, and manipulatory appendages, and from both ends of the axial nerve bundle to the puzzling system of muscles which underlay the raw areas on the forward and rear faces of the creature.
The specimen appeared to be male — at least, the female genitalia at the other end were shrunken and seemed to be in a condition of early atrophy — and she had identified the male sperm generator and the method of transfer to a female.
“… There is evidence of unnatural organ displacement,” she went on, “which can only be caused by weightlessness. Gravity, real or artificial, is a physiological necessity for this life-form. During hibernation the absence of weight would not be fatal, but weightlessness while conscious would cause severe nausea, sensory impairment, and, I feel sure, intense mental and physical distress.”
Which meant that the being would have to be in position on the rim of its rotating vessel or affected by natural gravity, that of its target world, when it was revived. It isn’t a doctor this patient needed, Con way thought wryly, it’s a miracle worker!
“With the Captain’s help,” Murchison continued, “we have established that the medication which produces and or extends the hibernation anesthesia occupies the larger volume of a dispenser mechanism which also contains a smaller quantity of the complex organic secretion which can only be the reviver. Fletcher also traced the input to the automatic sensor and actuator which switches the mechanism from the hibernation to the resuscitation mode and found that it reacted to the combined presence of gravity and external pressure. The same actuator mechanism is also responsible for ejecting the endplates of its hibernation compartment which would enable the CRLT to disembark.
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to revive one of these things,” she ended worriedly, “and we’ll have to be very sure that we know what we are doing.”
Conway was already out of his spacesuit and climbing into his surgical coveralls. He said, “Anything in particular you’d like me to do?”
They worked on the cadaver while the hours flickered past on the time display to become days, then weeks. From time to time a terse, subspace message from Thornnastor would arrive confirming their findings or suggesting new avenues of investigation, but even so it seemed that their rate of progress was slow to nonexistent.
Occasionally they would look up at the Control Room repeater, but with decreasing frequency. Fletcher, a Hudlar space construction specialist, and variously qualified Monitor Corps officers were usually showing each other pieces of twisted metal via their vision channels, comparing identification symbols and talking endlessly about them. No doubt it was all vitally important stuff, but it made boring listening. Besides, they had their own organic jigsaw puzzle to worry about.
A pleasant break in the routine would occur when they had to go outside to look at one of the other cadavers which had been brought in and attached to the outer hull, there being room for only one CRLT at a time inside Rhabwar. On these occasions the investigations were conducted in airless conditions and only the organic material which was of special interest to them was excised for later study. As a result they found a bewildering variety of age and sex combinations which seemed to indicate that the older CRLTs were well-developed males whose raw areas at each extremity had a brownish coloration, while the younger beings were clearly female and the areas concerned were a livid pink under the transparent covering.
Once there was a break in the investigative routine which was not pleasant.' For several hours they had been studying a flaccid, purplish lump of something which might have been the organic trigger for the being’s hibernation phase, and making very little progress with it, when Prilicla broke into their angry, impatient silence.
“Friend Murchison,” the empath said, “is feeling tired.”
“I’m not,” the pathologist said, with a yawn which threatened to dislocate her firm but beautifully formed lower mandible. “At least, I wasn’t until you reminded me.”
“As are you, friend Conway—” Prilicla began, when there was an interruption. The furry features of Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul replaced the pieces of alien hardware which had been filling the repeater screen.
“Doctor Conway,” the Orligian medic said, “I have to report an accident. Two Earth-human DBDGs, simple fractures, no decompression damage—”
“Very well,” said Conway, clenching his teeth on a yawn. “Now’s your chance to get in some more other- species surgical experience.”
“—And a Hudlar engineer, physiological classification FROB,” Krach-Yul went on. “It has sustained a deep, incised, and lacerated wound which has been quickly but inadequately treated by the being itself. There has been a considerable loss of body fluid and associated internal pressure, diminished sen-soria, and—”
“Coming,” Conway said. To Murchison he muttered, “Don’t wait up for me.”
While Tyrell was taking him to the scene of the accident, an area where three of the coilship sections were being fitted together, Conway reviewed his necessarily scant surgical experience with the Hudlar life-form.
They were a species who rarely took sick, and then only during preadolescence, and they were fantastically resistant to physical injury, with eyes which were protected by a hardv transparent membrane, tegument like flexible armor, and no body orifices except for the temporary ones opened for mating and birth.
The FROBs were ideally suited to space construction projects. Their home planet, Hudlar, pulled four Earth gravities, and its atmospheric pressure — if that dense, soupy mixture of oxygen, inerts, and masses of microscopic animal and vegetable nutrient in suspension could be called an atmosphere — was seven times Earth-normal. At home they absorbed the food-laden air through their incredibly tough yet porous skin, while offplanet they sprayed themselves regularly and frequently with nutrient paint. Their six flexible and immensely strong limbs terminated in four-digited hands which, when the fingers were curled inward and the knuckles presented to the ground, served also as feet.
Environmentally, the Hudlars were a very adaptable species, because the physiological features which protected them against their own planet’s crushing gravity and pressure also enabled them to work comfortably in any noncorrosive atmosphere of lesser pressure right down to and including the vacuum of space. The only item of
