“Do you think I’m pregnant, Man?” she said. “That would be most inconvenient.”
The lowered head made her look as though she should have been blushing as she spoke. David snorted with suppressed laughter.
“I don’t think it’s likely, darling,” he said. “I know you go in for delayed implantation, but it must be a couple of years since you last went to a dance, isn’t it?”
“But it would be inconvenient, all the same?”
“Understatement of the century.”
Hippos were the kindest, gentlest, most lovable creatures David knew. This made their lifecycle seem even more horrifying than it was. At certain seasons on their native planet they would meet for a “dance”, a massive sexual thresh-about in the sludge, with all the males impregnating all the females, if possible. Then nothing happened till the wind was right and the weather was right, when the females would go through their incredibly brief pregnancy, which would end with their backs erupting into a series of vents and releasing a cloud of seedlike objects, each consisting of a hard little nut at the core which contained the foetus and a fluffy ball of sticky filaments surrounding it, the whole thing light enough to float on the wind like thistledown. These “seeds” seemed to have some instinct that drew them towards living flesh; those that failed to find any perished, but those that landed on a warm-blooded animal stuck there and burrowed in, completing their foetal development inside the host, supplying themselves with all their physical and chemical needs from the host’s organs. The host did not survive the process. The variety of possible hosts accounted for the different colours of Hippos.
David thought it extremely unlikely that this one was pregnant. For some reason he couldn’t at the moment recall the maximum known period between fertilization and birth, but it couldn’t possibly be two years. Surely not. But just supposing . . . the idea of surveying a planet in which Hippo spores might still be drifting on the wind made him shudder. And Hippo herself wouldn’t be much use till her back had healed. He decided to change the subject.
“I’m afraid Cat’s dead,” he said.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Hippo. “Where did you find him?”
“Out among the rocks over there. He must have been scrambling about and fallen, or something.”
“Are you sure he’s dead? Couldn’t Doc do anything?”
“I doubt it. He feels very dead to me.”
“Do go and fetch Doc, Man. Please”
“All right.”
Doc was in a bad mood. As David lifted his bucket off its gimbals he put a hooter out of the water and said, “I thought you told me this wasn’t an earthquake planet.”
“Nor it is.”
“Whole ship’s been jumping around like a . . . Hi! Careful! You’re going to spill me, you dry slob.”
David ignored him, but carried the bucket rapidly through the shuddering ship till he reached the entry port.
“Hippo” he yelled. “Stop that! You’ll have the ship over!”
Apologetically she moved away from the strut.
“Oh, I am sorry, Man,” she lowed. “The Bandy should have told me.”
“Didn’t notice,” squeaked the Bandicoot, awake now. “Why should I?”
“Where are the others, Bandy?” called David.
“Coming, coming,” shrilled the Bandicoot.
Bandicoots were a four-sexed species, deriving from a planet so harsh that it took many square miles to support a single specimen. They had evolved great telepathic powers in order to achieve occasional meetings of all four sexes, and this made them an ideal communications network on the many planets where mechanical systems were swamped by local radio stars. David had no idea why they were called Bandicoots—they looked more like armadillos on stilts—and even after years of companionship he couldn’t tell one from another. They could, of course, because the network only functioned at full strength when all four sexes took part. Their normal voices were far above David’s hearing-range; the twittering he could just hear was for them the deepest of basses.
“Here’s your patient, Doc,” he said, settling the bucket by Cat’s body.
Doc extended a pseudopod, shimmering orange with the firelight and green with its own luminescence, and made it flow up Cat’s spine. His hooter emerged from the water.
“Blunt instrument,” he said.
“Sure it wasn’t a fall?” said David.
“Course I am, you idiot. It takes more than a fall to kill a Cat. You have to know exactly how and where to hit. Somebody did.”
“Somebody?” said Hippo. “I thought there wasn’t anybody on this planet. Skunk said so.”
“How long ago, Doc?” said David. “Sure he’s dead?”
“I’m still looking. H’m.”
David had never much cared for Doc’s bedside manner, but had always trusted him totally, as all the crew had to trust each other. Now he wondered how, that time he was infested with green-fever larvae out round Delta Orion, he could have lain so calmly and let Doc extend his filaments all through his body, locating and destroying the little wrigglers and modifying David’s autoimmune system to produce antibodies against the bacteria they had carried. Doc was a sea anemone. The pseudopod he was using to explore Cat’s body was a specialized section of his digestive organs, and the filament tips were capable of recognizing at a touch the identity of all the microscopic particles which he needed for the endless process of renewing every cell in his body once a week. Almost all Doc’s life was taken up with the process of self-renewal, but he said it was worth the trouble because it made him immortal. It also made him a good doctor, when he could spare the time.
“Tsk, tsk,” he said. “Yes, dead as nails, whatever they are. About twenty minutes ago.”
“That’s not long,” said Hippo. “Can’t you patch him up?”
“I’d have a go if it was you, darling,” said Doc. “It’s not worth the effort for a Cat.”
“But you spent so much time looking after it,” said Hippo, pleadingly.
“It was a lousy hypochondriac.” said Doc. “I’ve got better things to do.”
“Coming, coming,” shrilled the Bandicoot.
“Hippo, get away from that strut,” said David. “Find a tree or something.”
“Trees on this planet are so feeble,” said Hippo. “I’ve used up all that lot.”
Through the remains of dusk David could see that the grove of primitive palms by which they had set up camp had considerably altered in outline. He remembered hearing a certain amount of splintering and crashing as he was walking back to camp.
“You’d better get Doc to have a look at you,” he said. “Doc, poor Hippo’s got an itchy back.”
“Never get through that ugly thick hide,” mumbled Doc “Got better things to do.”
“I know it’s nonsense, but I can’t help thinking I’m pregnant,” said Hippo.
“Get yourself an obstet . . . an obstet . . .” said Doc as he withdrew all but the limb of his pseudopod beneath the surface.
“Doc!” said David. “You aren’t eating Cat!”
“Oh, no!” said Hippo, with all the revulsion, normally suppressed in her case, of herbivores for meat eaters.
“Doc!” shouted David.
The hooter came an inch out of the water.
“Lot of good stuff in there,” said Doc, slurring the syllables until he was barely comprehensible. “No point wasting it. All these months, living on chemical soup.”
“What about the Hippocratic oath!” said David.