Angie slept for two hours. Clay dozed for a time as well, propped up in his corner. I was also tired, but I did my best to stay awake, coming alert each time my head dropped forward. I tried a little water myself, hoping that would help keep me from falling asleep.
Despite everything, I almost did drop off. The air in the room felt heavy—hot and stagnant despite blowers and conditioners. Neither Angie nor I had bothered to turn the thermostat back down. I became aware of the low background hum of the machinery that kept everything operating. It was a lullaby. The alien had closed his eyes and seemed to be sleeping as well after his second meal.
A string of words in the alien language coming from the radio speaker almost turned me inside out. I must have been on the verge of falling asleep. The shock started my heart pounding before I realized that it was Ebbie’s voice uttering the alien sounds. Clearly, she had made some progress.
Angie and Clay had also come awake, and the alien had his eyes open when I looked at him. He replied. Ebbie said something else in his language. Then she switched to English.
“It has not been easy,” she informed us. “There are still vast gaps in what I have been able to learn. After we worked through physical and mathematical constants, we compared operating similarities, finding words for common functions and features. The leap from there to conversation was most difficult, and there are a great many words we cannot yet bridge, but I believe that there is enough for a beginning. We will monitor conversation in the habitat, and do such translating as we can while we continue our direct work. In time, we should be able to fill in many of the gaps that exist now.”
“Ebbie, this is Angie McBroom. Can you ask him what else we can do to help his recovery?”
There were several exchanges between her and the alien in his language. I suspect that the alien’s computer got into the act as well, but I can’t be certain of that. The discussion went on for a couple of minutes before Ebbie switched back to English.
“You are probably doing all that is possible,” she said. “I am interpolating here, but I think that what he really needs most is a blood transfusion, and human blood would almost certainly not be appropriate.”
“What about a saline solution?” Angie asked, something I wouldn’t have thought of in a million years. Intravenous saline packets would be part of the shipwreck station’s medical stores. “Would that help?”
“Let me investigate,” Ebbie said before she switched back to the alien language. This time the conversation went on for a considerable time, and from the gaps in the talk between Ebbie and the alien I was certain that there were also contributions from his computer.
“It probably can’t hurt and might help,” Ebbie said. “The suggestion has been made that the appropriate place to insert the fluid would be near where his mate’s head has been attached to the chest, just above, where the sutures are closest together.”
“His mate’s head?” I said, rather loud.
“Yes, the head,” Angie said. “What is that all about?”
“An extreme measure to preserve the life of this one’s mate,” Ebbie said. “I queried the other computer at great length on this. Apparently—and I am once again interpolating through language gaps—it was the only possible way to preserve that life. The head was removed. This one made a number of cuts on his own chest and attached the head there, over his heart. Preserving the mate’s life is necessary to preserving the life of this one. These beings pair-bond so deeply that if one mate dies the other does also, without exception.”
“How does it work?” Angie asked. “How can grafting the head on do anything?”
“The other body appeared to be too badly damaged for repair, even without the decapitation,” I added.
“I cannot be certain of the details,” Ebbie said. “Some of what I have deduced may be total guesswork, and is therefore subject to a rather large margin of error. I think that once the alien returns to his own people their medical specialists will be able to grow a new body for the head. That is the only sense I can make of it.”
“How long can he, they, continue like this?” Angie asked. “We’re not going to be able to repair their ship here. We’ll have to take them back to Mars. Can they survive for however many years it takes to get them home like that?”
“I do not know.”
“Where do they come from?” Clay asked.
“The second planet of Alpha Centauri A,” Ebbie said quickly. “We established that quite early in our session.”
“We’ve never received any replies from our radio transmissions directed there,” Clay said. “And I am unaware that we ever heard anything from that location before we quit trying.”
“We did not go into any of that,” Ebbie said. “I doubt that it would do much good. The alien’s computer does not seem to have any great store of historical data in storage, at least not in those portions that have survived. As I said before, she did suffer considerable damage.”
“At least now we’ll be able to talk to them in their own language,” Angie said. She had moved away from the alien and was rummaging in the medical supply cupboard. When she had the IV packet she was looking for, she went back and knelt beside the alien. “Any suggestions on how I start this IV?” she asked. “How do I find a vein?”
Ebbie asked the alien. He tapped his chest a finger’s width to the left of the centerline. He talked at the same time.
“The main vein there is about a centimeter deep, I believe, from the low spot in his skin,” Ebbie said. “As close to the head of his mate as possible.”
There wasn’t enough gravity on the berg to count on that alone for an intravenous drip. The IV pack included a small pump. The entire unit was designed to adhere to the arm of a human. The needle would extend itself from the bottom of the pack. It would seek a vein in a human. We were about to find out if it could manage the same feat for this alien.
Angie hesitated for a long time, both before she set the pack in place under the chin of the second head, and before she activated it. “I’m afraid I might kill him,” she said. Ebbie did not translate that.
The alien must have had doubts of his own. He stiffened up as the needle punctured his skin. For a moment he remained almost rigid, holding his breath. His face paled, but returned to what we took as normal shortly. Angie kept track of his heart rate and respiration. She watched his eyes. We all waited.
After ten minutes, we started to think that at least we hadn’t killed him with the IV. It was too soon to look for any improvement, but at least he showed no signs of getting worse. He had not gone into shock or anything like that.
“Ebbie, tell him that we won’t be able to repair his ship here, that it’s too badly damaged. Tell him that we’ll take him and his ship to our home-world. I’m sure that we can either repair his ship there or provide him with a replacement.” Wouldn’t the cost of that raise a storm! I waited for Ebbie to pass that much information along. The alien spoke at some length in reply, with a couple of sidebars while he and Ebbie tried to decide on a translation for something or other.
“As near as I can make it out,” Ebbie said when they were finally done, “he offers thanks and says that he did not think that it would be possible to repair his ship here, that he knows that it needs major repairs. He asked how long it would take to get to our homeworld, and how far that was from his home.”
“Tell him,” I said.
I think that I saw something that might have been despair on the alien’s face once Ebbie got that information across to him. She spoke for nearly a minute. He replied slowly.