The sergeant broke off as O’Mara turned back to look at him. It would not have been the first time that he had had to win an argument with his fists. But that had been in the bad old days and Craythorne would not like it if he started doing it again. Besides, the second Corpsman, Bates, was staring at his face and tugging urgently at the sergeant’s sleeve.
“I know this one, Sarge.” he said in a respectful undertone. “Forget it.”
O’Mara turned away again to resume his interrupted journey to the library. He had gone about twenty yards along the corridor when he heard the sergeant saying loudly, “He’s Major Craythorne’s assistant, you say? But what the hell is a bloody psychologist doing with muscles like that?”
It was a question that had been asked many times by many people during O’Mara’s life, and the answer, based on visual evidence alone, was usually provided by the questioner, who took one look and saw no reason to listen to anything he had to say.
Since his early teens, O’Mara’s life had been a series of such frustrations. He had lost both parents when he was three and his aunt, probably because of ill health plus the fact that he had been a really obnoxious child, had not given him the support needed against adults and superiors who kept telling him what he should be and do with his life.
Teachers took one look, relegated him to the sports field, and considered his efforts to study an interesting and unnecessary anomaly. Later a succession of company personnel officers could not believe that a young man with such square, ugly features and shoulders so huge that they made his head look inoronically small by comparison could be really interested in brainy stuff like electronics, medicine, or psychology. He had gone into space in the hope of finding a different situation and more flexible minds there, but in vain. Despite constant efforts during interviews to impress people with his quite considerable intelligence, they were too impressed by his muscle power to listen and his applications were invariably stamped APPROVED SUITABLE FOR HEAVY SUSTAINED LABOR.
So he had gone from one space construction job to another, always working with people whose minds as well as their bodies were muscle-bound, and ending with this one on the final assembly of Sector Twelve General Hospital. Here he had decided to relieve the physical monotony by using his intelligence to secretly tinker with other people’s minds.
It was not something one did to one’s friends, he thought, but then he had never had any.
One piece of covert therapy performed on an Earth-human workmate, plus some very rule-of-thumb treatment he had given to a space-orphaned and emotionally disturbed Hudlar infant weighing half a ton, had brought him to Graythorne’s attention. Not only had the investigating officer exonerated him of all blame in causing the accident that had killed the baby’s parents, but the ensuing trial had uncovered the finer details of his curative tinkering with the emotional problems of a seriously neurotic workmate and had impressed the other to the extent that the major had offered him, for a trial period that would last only until he showed himself incapable of doing it, a job where brains rather than his overlarge muscles were needed. It had turned out to be the hardest and most satisfying job he had ever had.
It was a job he didn’t want to lose.
But satisfying the major this time, he realized as soon as the library data on the Kelgian species and culture began to unroll, would not be easy. Of course, neither had any of his recent assignments. That first other-species job had nearly killed him at the time, but there were days when he found himself wishing that he had nothing more complicated to do than feed, bathe, and baby-sit half a ton of squalhing Hudlar infant.
Two hours later he was waiting inside Personnel Lock F on Level Thirty-Seven and watching the first Kelgians he had ever seen, other than in the library pictures, come crawling toward him along the boarding tube. At least they are warm-blooded oxygenbreathers like me, he thought dryly, but that was the only point of similarity.
They were like fat, silver-furred caterpillars averaging more than two meters from conical head to upturned tail, undulating forward on twelve pairs of stubby feet, although the four sets closest to the head were slightly longer, thinner, and terminated in delicate, pink hands. Their tiny, tightly grouped facial features were too alien to be readable, but, he had learned, the involuntary motion of the highly mobile fur that tufted, spiked, or rippled in waves along their entire body surface told everyone, or at least every other Kelgian, exactly what they were feeling from moment to moment. The result was that telling a lie or even trying to shade the truth was a complete waste of time where their species was concerned.
The Kelgians were soft and visually appealing creatures. Had they been scaled down by a factor often, as a boy he would not have minded keeping one as a pet, if he had been allowed to keep pets.
He backed away a little as they moved out of the boarding tube and began spreading around him in a semicircle. They had raised their bodies upright and were balancing on their rearmost four legs, and their heads were curved forward so that their tiny faces were at eye level. It felt as though he were being surrounded by a bunch of furry question marks.
So far as he was concerned, O’Mara realized with a stirring of butterflies in his stomach, he was close to being in a firstcontact situation. If he should do or say something wrong, it was unlikely that he would cause an interstellar war to start. The Kelgians were reputed to be a highly intelligent, technologically advanced, and civilized species who probably knew more about Earth-humans than he did about them and they would, he hoped, make allowances.
Faced with this situation, what would the cool and impecca- bly mannered Major Craythorne say and do?
O’Mara held out his hand toward the nearest Kelgian, then abruptly brought it back to his side. The library computer had not mentioned this form of physical greeting. With two-handed people of Earth it was a sign of friendship and trust, a legacy of a time when it made good sense for people meeting for the first time to grab and thereby immobilize each other’s weapon hand. But the Kelgians’ hands were ridiculously tiny and there were too many of them. O’Mara had the feeling that he had just avoided making his first mistake.
Instead he said slowly and clearly, “My name is O’Mara. Did you have a comfortable trip, and would you prefer to see—”
“My name is Crenneth” the one facing him broke in, its fur stirring restively. “The ship accommodation was cramped and uncomfortable and the food terrible. The speech of the Earth-human crew was rapid and precise. Why are you speaking so slowly? We do not have a problem with verbal comprehension. Do you?”
O’Mara choked, cleared his throat, and said, “No.”
“Are you a Healer?” Crenneth asked. “If so, what is your level of seniority?”
“No” said O’Mara again. “A, a psychologist” Silently he added, Without qualifications.
“Then you are a Healer of the Mind,” the other persisted. “What’s the difference?”
“We can discuss the difference when there is more time.” he replied, deciding that he was not going to reveal his lack of formal training, or anything else of a personal nature, to this inquisitive, outsized caterpillar on first acquaintance. He went on, “Earlier I was about to ask if you would prefer to see your living quarters, or visit the dining hall first? Your personal effects are being moved to your quarters as we speak.”
“I’m hungry” said one of the others, its fur rising in spikes. “After that indigestible ship food, your dining hail is bound to be an improvement.”
“There are no guarantees,” said O’Mara dryly.