“It must be done quickly,” the Cinrusskin ended, “because the feeling is very weak indeed.”
Awkwardly Fletcher said, “1 understand, Senior Physician, but there is a problem. Pathologist Murchison needs all of the medical team and extending Rhabwar’s hyperenvelope and realigning our tractors for the Jump and deploying the boarding tube will require all of theship’s officers …”
“Which leaves me,” Cha Thrat said quietly, “withnothing to do.”
“… So which should be given priority?” the Captain went on, seeming not to have heard her. “The search for your unconscious FGHJ, or getting it and the rest of them to Sector General as quickly as possible?”
“I will search the ship,” she said, more loudly.
“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “1 felt you wanting to volunteer. But think carefully before you decide. The survivor, should you find it, will be too weak to harm you. But there are other dangers. This ship is e, and as strange to us as it is to you.”
“Yes, Technician,” the Captain said. “These aren’t the maintenance tunnels at Sector General. The color codings, if present, will mean something entirely different.! You can’t make assumptions about anything you see, and if you accidentally foul a control link … Very well, you may search, but stay out of trouble.
Fletcher turned to look at Prilicla and added plaintively, “Or do you feel me feeling that I’m wasting my breath?”
CHAPTER 17
With the printouts from Rhabwar’s sensors providing information on the ship’s layout, and in particular on the size and location of its empty spaces, Cha Thrat began a rapid and methodical search of the alien vessel. She ignored only the control deck, the occupied dormitories, and areas close to the ship’s reactor that the sensor maps showed to be uninhabitable by the FGHJ life-form or, for that matter, any other species who were not radiation-eaters. She was very careful to check all interiors with sound sensors and the heavy-duty scanner before opening every door or panel. She was not afraid, but there were times when shivers marched like tiny, icy feet along the length of her spine.
It usually happened when the realization came that she was searching an alien starship for survivors of a species whose existence she could not have imagined ashort time ago, at the direction of other unimaginable beings from a place of healing whose size, complexity, and occupants were like the solid manifestations of a disordered mind. But the unthinkable and unimaginable had become not only thinkable but acceptable to her, and all because a discontented and unloved warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva had risked a limb and her professional reputation to treat an injured off-world ship ruler.
At the thought of what her future would have been had she not taken that risk she shivered again, in dread.
Even though the first search was to be a fast, perfunctory one, it took much longer than Cha Thrat had expected. By the time it was completed, Rhabwar’s boarding tube was in position, and she could feel and hear the empty grumbling of both her stomachs.
Prilicla told her to relieve these symptoms before making her report.
When she arrived on the casualty deck, Prilicla, Mur-chison, and Danalta were working on the cadaver while Naydrad and Rhone, its hairy body pressed against the transparent dividing wall, watched with an interest so intense that only the Cinrusskin sensed her arrival.
“What’s wrong, friend Cha?” the empath asked. “Something disturbed you on the ship. I felt it evenhere.”
“This,” she replied, holding up one of the leg restraints that Murchison had removed from the cadaver and discarded before the dead FGHJ had been moved to Rhabwar. “The chain is not locked to the leg cuff, it is attached with a simple spring-loaded bolt that can be released easily when pressure is applied just here.”
She demonstrated, then went on. “When I was searching the control deck area I looked at the crew member chained to its couch, without being seen, and noticed that similar fastenings hold the chains to all fourof its leg cuffs. It and the cadaver here could have freed themselves simply by releasing the fastenings, which are within easy reach of its hands. It did not have to break free, and neither does the crew member chained to the control couch, who nevertheless continues to struggle violently against restraints that it could so easily remove. It is all very puzzling, but I think we must now discard the theory that any of these people were, prisoners under restraint.”
They were all watching her closely as she went on. “But what is affecting them? What is it that leaves a crew member normally a responsible, highly trained individual capable of guiding a starship, in such a state that it cannot unfasten its couch restraints? What has rendered the other crew members incapable of opening their own dormitory doors or finding food for themselves? Why has their behavior degenerated to that of unthinking animals? Could contaminated food, or the absence of specific foods, have caused this? And before you left me, the Senior Physician suggested that an organism might have invaded the brain tissues. Is it possible that—”
“If you will stop asking questions, Technician,” Mur-chison broke in crossly, “I’ll have a chance to answer some of them. No, the food supply is plentiful and contains nothing toxic to this life-form. I have analyzed and identified several varieties carried on the ship, so you will be able to feed them when you go back. As for the brain tissues, there are no indications of damage, circulatory impairment, infection, or any pathological abnormality.
“I found trace quantities of a complex chemical structure that, in the metabolism of this life-form, would act as a powerful tranquilizer. The residual material suggests that a massive dose was absorbed perhaps three or four days ago, and the effect has since worn off. A large sup-ply of this tranquilizer was found in one of the cadaver’s harness pouches. So it seems that the crew members tranquilized themselves before confining themselves to the control couch and their dormitories.”
There was a long silence that was broken by Khone, who was holding up its offspring where the scrawny little entity could see all the strange creatures on the other side of its transparent panel. Cha Thrat wondered if the Gogleskan was already trying to weaken the young one’s conditioning, even at the tender age of two days.
Impersonally it said, “It is hoped that the time of more intelligent and experienced healers will not be wasted by this interruption, but on Goglesk it is accepted that in certain circumstances, and against their will, otherwise intelligent and civilized beings will behave like vicious and destructive animals. Perhaps the entities on the other vessel have a similar problem, and must take strong and repeated doses of medication to keep their animal natures under control so that they can live civilized lives, and make progress, and build starships.
“Perhaps they are starved,” Khone ended, “not of food but of their civilizing drug.”
“A neat idea,” Murchison said warmly, then matching the Gogleskan’s impersonal tone it went on. “Admiration is felt for the originality of the healer’s thinking but, regrettably, the medication concerned would not increase awareness and the ability to mentate, it would decrease it to the point where continuous use would cause these people to spend their entire lives in a state of semi-consciousness.”