so you have just reproduced the conditions for resuscitation following a planetary landing.”
Conway nodded. He said, “Prilicla, can you detect anything?”
“Not yet, friend Conway.”
They moved closer so as to be able to look into the two opened cylinders, dividing their attention between the occupants who were lying flaccidly with their dorsal manipulators hanging limply along their sides. Then one of the enormous, tubular bodies began to quiver, and suddenly they were both moving ponderously toward each other.
“Move back,” Conway said. “Prilicla?”
“Consciousness is returning, friend Conway,” the empath replied, trembling with its own as well as everyone else’s excitement. “But slowly; the movements are instinctive, involuntary.”
As the forward extremity of one CRLT approached the rear of the other, the organic film which protected the raw areas on each creature softened, liquefied, and trickled away. At the center of the forward face a blunt, conical shape began to form surrounded by systems of muscles which twitched themselves into mounds and hollows and deep, irregular fissures. The rear face of the other CRLT had grown its own series of hollows and orifices which exactly corresponded with the protuberances of the other, as well as four large, triangular flaps which opened out like the fleshy petals of an alien flower. Then all at once there was just one double-length creature with a join which was virtually invisible.
And I was worried about joining them together, Conway thought incredulously. The problem might be to keep them apart!
“Are we observing a physical coupling for the purpose of reproduction?” Murchison said to nobody in particular.
“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, “the emotional radiation of both creatures suggests that this is not a conscious or involuntary sex act. A closer analogy would be that of an infant seeking the physical reassurance of its parent. However, both beings are seeking physical and mental reassurance, and have feelings of confusion and loss, and these feelings are so closely matched that the only explanation is shared mentation.”
“Tractor beamers,” Conway said urgently. “Pull them apart, gentlyl”
He had been delighted to find that the beings who made up the vast group entity would link together naturally when the conditions were right, although that might not be the case if too many intervening segments had been destroyed in the accident, but he most certainly did not want a premature and permanent link-up between these two at this stage. They would have to be returned to a state of hibernation and resume their positions in the coil, otherwise they might find themselves permanently separated, orphaned, from the group entity.
Even though the tractor beamers were no longer being gentle, the two CRLTs stubbornly refused to separate. Instead they were becoming more physically agitated, they were trying to emerge completely from their hibernation cylinders, and their emotional radiation was seriously inconveniencing Prilicla.
“We must reverse the process—” Conway began.
“The sensors react to gravity and air pressure,” Fletcher broke in quickly. “We can’t evacuate the hold without killing them, but if we cut the artificial gravity only it might—”
“The endplate release mechanism was also linked to those sensors,” Conway said, “and we can’t replace them in their slots without chopping the two beasties apart, in the wrong place.”
“It might stop the flow of resuscitation medication,” Fletcher went on, “and restart the hibernation sequence. The needles are still sited in both creatures and the connecting tubing is flexible and still unbroken, although it won’t be for long if we don’t stop them from leaving their cylinders. If we put a clamp on the resuscitation line of each beastie, Doctor, I believe I could bypass the endplate actuator and restart the hibernation medication.”
“But you will be working inside the cylinders,” Murchison said, “beside two very massive and angry e- ts.”
“No, ma’am,” the Captain said. “1 am neither foolhardy nor a xenophobe, and I shall work through an access panel in the outer skin. It should take about twenty minutes.”
“Too long,” Conway said. “They will have disconnected
themselves from the tubing by then. We can calculate the dosage needed to put them back to sleep. Can you drill through the wall of the container, ignoring the sensors and actuators, and withdraw the required quantity of medication directly?”
For a moment there was silence while Fletcher’s features fell into an angry, why-didn’t-I think-of-that? expression, then he said, “Of course, Doctor.”
But even when injections of the CRLTs own hibernation medication were ready their troubles were far from over. The pressor beam operators who were responsible for immobilizing the creatures could not hold down the two joined e-ts without also flattening the medics who were trying to work on them. Their best compromise was to leave a two-meters clearance on each side of the operative field wherein the medical team would not be inconvenienced by the pressors. But this meant that there was no restraint placed on the movements of the creature along a four-meter length of its body, which wriggled and humped and lashed out with its dorsal appendages and generally made it plain that it did not want strange beings climbing all over it and sticking it with needles.
Several times Conway was knocked away from the patient and once, if it had not been for a warning from Fletcher, he would have lost his helmet and probably the head inside it. Murchison observed crossly that the big advantage in dealing with cadavers was that, regardless of their physiological classifications, they did not assault the pathologist and leave her normally peachlike skin pigmentation black and blue. But with Naydrad’s long, caterpillarlike body wrapped around one appendage and both Fletcher and Colonel Okaussie hanging onto the other limb which threatened the operative field, and with Murchison steadying the scanner for him while he sat astride the creature like a bareback horserider, Conway was able to guide his hypo into the correct vein and discharge its contents before a particularly violent heave pulled the needle free.
Within a few seconds Prilicla, whose fragile body had no place in this violent muscular activity announced from its position on the ceiling that the being was going back to sleep. When they withdrew to turn their attention to its companion, its movements were already growing weaker.
By the time they had dealt similarly with the other CRLT, the two creatures had separated. The hollows and protuberances and flaps of muscle had collapsed and smoothed themselves out, and the raw interface areas began exuding the clear liquid which congealed into a thin, transparent film. Gently the tractor and pressor beam men lifted and pushed the two beings back into their respective hibernation cylinders. Conway signaled for the artificial gravity to be reduced to zero and, as expected, they were able to replace the cylinder endplates without trouble. The cargo hold’s air pressure was reduced gradually so that they could check whether the premature opening of the hibernation compartments had caused a leak. It had not.
“So far so good,” Conway said. “Return them to their positions in the coil and bring in the next two.”
The first two had been the occupants of adjoining cylinders and their linking up had been automatic, a natural process in all respects. But the second two had been separated by a compartment which had been ruptured by a piece of flying debris and its occupant killed. The affinity between these two might not be so strong, Conway thought.
However, they merged as enthusiastically and naturally as had the first two. The resuscitation process was reversed before they were fully conscious so as to eliminate the multispecies wrestling match needed to put them into hibernation again. Prilicla reported a minor variation in the emotional radiation associated with the initial body contact — a feeling, very faint and temporary … of disappointment. But the two segments of the group entity were compatible and that particular break in continuity in the coil could be closed up.
Conway felt uneasy. Too much good luck worried him. Something was bothering Prilicla, too, because he had long since learned to recognize the difference between the little empath’s reaction to its own feelings and those of the beings around it.
“Friend Conway,” Prilicia said, while they were awaiting the arrival of the third set of CRLTs. “The first two beings were relatively immature and taken from the forward section of the coil, that is, from the tail segments of this multiple creature, and the second two came from a position considerably aft of amidships. Our own deductions, supported by the information on the creatures’ probable planet of origin which arrived with Tyrell, suggest that the tail segments are immature beings, perhaps very young adults, and the head segments aft to be composed of the older, more experienced, and most highly intelligent of the beings since they are responsible for
