Tes designed and applied a simple blindfold; after that at Thrykar’s direction, she made periodic tests of the subject’s blood temperature, pulse, and respiration. That left her husband free to think and read in the forlorn hope of finding something that would enable him to take positive action of some sort. Simply sitting and watching the helpless little creature die before his eyes was as impossible for him as for any human being with a heart softer than flint.
Unquestionably it could have used some form of sugar; perhaps dextrose, such as Thrykar himself could di-gest — perhaps levulose or fructose or even starch. That was something that Thrykar could have learned for himself, even though the book contained no information on the matter; for he was a chemist, and a good one.
But he didn’t dare take another blood sample from those veins, even for a test. And he didn’t dare resort to trial and error; there would probably be only a single error.
A saliva test would have given him the answer, had he dreamt that an important digestive juice could be found so high in any creature’s alimentary canal. He didn’t; and the afternoon passed at a funereal tempo, with the faint breathing of the victim of his carelessness sounding in his too-keen ears.
It must have been about sunset when Tes spoke to him.
“Thrykar, it’s changing a little. The heart seems stronger, though it’s still very fast; and the blood temper-ature has gone up several degrees. Maybe it will recover without help.”
The chemist whirled toward the table. “Gone up?” he exclaimed. “It was about where it should be before. If that thing is running a fever — “ He did not finish the sentence, but checked Tes’
findings himself. They were correct; and looking again at the figures in the book, he lost all doubt that the creature was suffering from a fever which would have been dangerous to a member of Thrykar’s own race and was probably no less so to his. He stood motionless beside the metal table, and thought still more furiously.
What had caused the fever? Certainly not loss of blood — not directly, at least. Had the creature been suffering from some disease already? Quite possible, but no way to make sure. An organic tendency peculiar to the race, resulting from lowered blood pressure, prolonged unconsciousness, or similar unlikely causes? Again, no way to prove it. A previously acquired injury? That, at least, gave hope of providing evidence. He had noted no signs of physical disrepair during the few moments he had seen the creature conscious, but it was more or less covered with artificial fabric which might well have concealed them. The exposed portion of the skin showed nothing — or did it? Thrykar looked more closely at the well-tanned legs, left bare from ankle to just below the knee by the corduroy knickers.
One — the right — was perceptibly larger than its fellow; and touching the brown skin, Thrykar found that it was noticeably hotter. With clumsy haste he unlaced and removed the sneakers, and peeled off the socks; and knew he had the source of the trouble. On the right foot, at the joint of the great toe, was an area from which the skin appeared to have been scraped. All around this the flesh was an angry crimson; and the whole foot was swollen to an extent that made Thrykar wonder how he had managed to get the shoe off. The swelling extended up the leg, in lesser degree, almost to the knee; the positions of the veins in foot and ankle were marked by red streaks.
Ignorant as he was of human physiology, Thrykar could see that he had a bad case of infection on his hands; taken in connection with the fever, it was probably blood poisoning. And, even more than before, there was nothing he could do about it.
He was right, of course, on all counts. Jimmy, in replacing his sock over the scrape the day before, had assured himself of trouble; the iodine had come far too late. By the next morning a battle royal was raging in the neighborhood of the injury. His healthy blood had been marshaling its forces all night and day, and struggling to beat back the organisms that had won a bridgehead in his body; it might possibly have won unaided had nothing further occurred; but the abrupt destruction of his powers of resistance by the removal of nearly half a liter of blood had given the balance a heavy thrust in the wrong direc-tion. James Wade was an extremely ill young man.
Tes, looking on as her husband uncovered the injured foot, realized as clearly as he the seriousness of the situation. The fear that she had been holding at bay for hours an emotion composed partly of the purely selfish terror that they might do something for which the law could punish them, but more of an honest pity for the helpless little being which had unwittingly aided her husband — welled up and sought expression; Thrykar’s next words set off the explosion.
“Thank goodness for this!” was what he said, beyond any possibility of doubt; and his wife whirled on him.
“What can you mean? You find yet another injury you’ve caused this poor thing, and you sound glad of it!”
Thrykar gave a negative flip of his great fins. “I’m sorry; of course my words would give that impression. But that was not what I meant. I am powerless to help the creature, and have been from the first, though I stubbornly refused to admit the fact to myself. This discovery has at least opened my eyes.
“I wanted to treat it myself before, because of the law against making our presence known; and I wasted my time trying to figure out means of doing so. 1 was attacking the wrong problem. It is not to cure this being ourselves, so that our presence will remain unsuspected; it is to get it to the care of its own kind, without at the same time betraying the secret. I suppose I assumed, without thinking, that the latter problem was insoluble.”
“But how can you know that the human race has a medical science competent to deal with this problem?” asked Tes. “According to the handbook, their science is practically nonexistent; they’re still in the age of supersti-tion. Now that I think of it, I once read a story that was supposed to take place on Earth, and the men treated some member of our own race on the assumption that he was an evil, supernatural being. Whoever wrote the story must have had access to information about the planet.” Thrykar smiled for the first time in hours as he an-swered.
“Probably the same information used by whoever compiled the Earth digest in this handbook.
Tes, my dear, can’t you see that whoever investigated this world couldn’t have stirred a mile from the spot he landed — and must have landed in a very primitive spot. He made no mention of electrical apparatus, metallurgical develop-ment, aircraft — all the things we’ve seen since we got here. Mankind must be in the age of scientific develop-ment. That investigator was criminally lax. If it weren’t for the letter of the law, I’d reveal myself to a human being right now.
“All sciences tend to progress in relation to each other; and I don’t believe that a race capable of creating the flying machine we saw two days ago would be lacking in the medical skill to treat the case we have here. We will figure out a means to get this being into the hands of its own people again, and that will solve the problem. We should be able to get away sometime tonight.”