Rosaleen nodded, then checked herself, staring at the body. "Perhaps not," she said. "Look at that!"
Pat peered at the dead alien, and saw what Rosaleen meant. Something was happening to the corpse. The bottom of it, where it touched the floor, was soaked with a dark brown liquid, and Pat noticed a sharp, nasty smell, as of some foul brew cooking on a stove.
Dannerman knelt for a closer look. "The floor's dissolving it away," he announced incredulously.
"Please, Dan, don't get too close to it," Pat pleaded.
"Don't worry," he said dryly. "Although it's kind of interesting. That's a great waste removal system; I bet if I lay down right next to Dopey the floor would leave me alone-but, no, I'm not going to try it." He stood up and looked around. "How's the patient doing?"
Rosaleen was supporting Martin's head while holding a cup of water to his lips. "Seems to be improving. He opened his eyes and looked at me."
Dannerman nodded. "So the question now," he said, "is what we do when, and if, somebody takes a dim view of this. Do we just take our punishment, whatever it is? Or do we try to fight back?"
"What have we got to fight with?" Pat demanded.
He looked at her quizzically. "Whatever we can find," he said.
From her post by the patient Rosaleen called, "I do not think that fighting back would be advisable. Not now, anyway."
"I think you're right," Dannerman agreed. "After all, if they want to hurt us they wouldn't have to get into hand-to-hand combat. They wouldn't even need weapons. The easiest thing would be just to leave us here until we run out of food and starve. Speaking of which," he said, "why don't we see what cooking can do for some of those rations?"
Pat stared at him unbelievingly. "You want to eat now?" she demanded. "With this dead body turning into mush right here?"
"Well," he conceded, "maybe we might as well wait until it's gone. It seems to be going pretty fast right now, anyway."
Indeed it was, Pat saw, as she gazed down on it, holding Dannerman's arm for reassurance; more than half of Dopey had already turned liquid and been sucked away. The smell was still there, but no worse than before; and actually, Pat admitted to herself, Dannerman was right. The process was kind of interesting to watch, not to mention that it implied a kind of technology she had never before imagined. "Just one more damn thing," she murmured to Dannerman, "that would have been worth a fortune if we could have taken it back to Earth."
Dannerman looked down at her, seeming almost amused; tardily she remembered that she wasn't speaking to him. She looked away. Dopey's body was nearly gone, one of the little arms sticking up and then collapsing into the general mulch. Pat frowned. Something was missing. What had happened to the wristlet? "Dan?" she asked. "Did you notice-"
But he was giving her a scowl and a quick headshake. Puzzled, she opened her mouth to complete her question… just as the wall turned milky again.
They all spun around to face it as another Dopey walked in- this time not alone. Two of the golem-like Docs followed him and stood silently protective behind him as the Dopey glanced incuriously at the almost disappeared remains of his own body, and then said in reproach, "You should not have done that."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pat
"But they killed you." Pat gasped; and, "Yes, they did," Dopey confirmed, sounding impatient. "Please. One moment." It did not seem to be a subject that interested him greatly. He turned his great eyes on the two Docs, who instantly moved forward to pluck Martin out of Rosaleen's hands. Naturally the general squawked and protested; naturally it did no good. One of the things picked the general up from behind, the two great upper arms holding him, the other four restraining his arms and legs; the other golem methodically stroked and patted Martin all over, each touch lingering for a moment and then moving on. The whole process took no more than a minute or two. Then, without warning, the Docs dropped Martin sprawling. They retreated to stand, silent and impassive, with their backs to the wall, apparently no longer interested in their environment.
"Yes," Dopey said, as though one of the Docs had reported to him-but Pat hadn't heard a sound, "the examination shows that General Delasquez is not seriously injured. It will not be necessary to replace him, as it was me due to your ill-advised action."
"About that," Jimmy Lin said at once, swallowing hard. "You know that was just an accident, don't you? I mean, we didn't want to hurt you…"
Dopey gave him a severe look. "Whatever your intentions, your action caused the loss of some data, which I must restore for this copy. Please inform me of the nature of our discussion just prior to my death."
They all looked at him blankly. "You want to know what we were talking about?" Jimmy ventured.
"Yes. That is what I said."
"Well," Jimmy said, trying to remember, "actually, I don't think it was anything much-"
"Except, " Rosaleen cut in swiftly, with a hard stare at Jimmy Lin, "that you were explaining this whole matter of copies' to us."
"I was?"
"Oh, yes, absolutely," Pat said, picking up her cue. "Is that why you aren't angrier about getting killed by those idiots? Because you're just a copy?"
Dopey looked almost offended. "I do not understand the term 'just' in that context. Of course I am a copy. We are all copies, are we not? How else could we have been transmitted here from your Starlab?"
"Transmitted?" Rosaleen repeated, fumbling in the dark. "Then-well, then that means we didn't come here in a spaceship?"
Dopey seemed amused. "Indeed not. That is a strange notion, Dr. Artzybachova. Persons do not travel on spaceships. That would be impossible for almost any person, yourselves included, since the transit times would be greater than your life span, due to the limitation imposed by the speed of light. As an astronomer, you at least must know that, Dr. Adcock."
"Oh, right," Pat said, nodding vigorously, trying to help the process on. "That's what you were explaining to us. Please go on.
The funny thing was that he did go on. Pat did her best to keep an expression of pure exultation from her face: it was, after all, the very first time they had been able to trick their captor, and that in itself promised at least some hope for the future. The other prisoners listened in silence: Rosaleen concentratedly frowning; Martin frowning also, but probably about something else; Jimmy Lin merely curious; and Dan Dannerman-well, something was going on with Dan, too, Pat thought, because the man seemed abstracted, and he appeared to be turning something over and over in his pocket as he listened.
She postponed the question of Dan Dannerman, because what Dopey was saying was certainly fascinating. It seemed there was some sort of great search going on, all through the universe, for intelligent races. Automated probes had been sent out on the quest in uncounted numbers; they traveled slower than light, because there was no way for ordinary matter to go faster. But then, when some sort of civilization was detected, a "terminal" was set up and observers like Dopey were "transmitted" to a listening post; and when "specimens" like themselves were obtained they too were "transmitted" for further study-
"Hold it!" Pat commanded. "What do you mean, 'transmitted'? Not even photons can exceed light speed."
Dopey said patiently, "I did not use the word 'photons.' The transmissions are carried by a different particle, the name of which-" He hesitated, while his fingers moved rapidly in the muff. "-is 'tachyons' in your language."
"Oh, my God," Pat breathed, remembering her days in graduate school. "Tachyons! Yes, I've heard of tachyons. They were, what's his name, Gerald Feinberg's theory, right? Particles for which the speed of light was a limiting velocity, yes, but a lower limiting velocity, so that they could travel only faster than light."