Everything had suddenly gone dead still, and the room was tilting very slowly to a vertiginous angle, while the tensed body of the Rithian—or was it really Captain Wei—collapsed with equal slowness over the body of his victim. Spangler tried languidly to adjust himself to the tilting of the room, but he seemed to be paralyzed. There was no sensation in any part of his body. Then the floor got bigger and bigger, and at last turned into a dazzling mottled display that he watched for a long time before it grayed and turned dark. "What happened?"
That was just the question Spangler wanted answered; he wished they had let him ask it himself. He tried to say something, but another voice cut in ahead of him.
"He went into the room without a suit. The gas got him."
Whom were they talking about? Slowly it dawned on Spangler that it was himself. That was it; that was why everything had been so strange a moment ago—
He opened his eyes. He was lying on the couch in his own private office. Two medical technicians, in pale-green smocks, were standing near the head of the couch. Farther down were Gordon, Miss Timoney, and the squad leader. Pembun was sitting in a chair against the wall.
One of the medics languidly picked up Spangler's wrist and held it for a few seconds, then gently thumbed back one eyelid. "He's all right," he said, turning in Gordon's direction. "No danger at all." He moved away, and the other medic followed him out of the room.
Spangler sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch, and drew several deep breaths. He still felt a little dazed, but his head was clearing. He said to the leader, "Tell me what happened."
The leader had removed his gasproof and was standing bareheaded, in orange tights and high-topped shoes. He had an olive face, with heavy black brows and a stiff brush of graying black hair. He said, "You got a whiff of the gas, Commissioner."
"I know that, man," Spangler said irritably. "Tell me the rest."
"Colonel Cassina attacked us and forced his way into the inner office," the leader said. "We were taken by surprise, but we fired the gas jets and then got inside as fast as we could. When we got inside, we found the Rithian apparently trying to throttle Colonel Cassina. My men and I used the choppers, but, not to excuse ourselves, Commissioner, the Colonel interfered with our aim. The Rithian was killed."
Spangler felt an abrupt wave of nausea, and mastered it with an effort. "Colonel Cassina? How is he?"
"In bad shape, I understand, Commissioner."
"He's in surgery now, sir," Gordon put in. "He's alive, but his throat is crushed."
Spangler stood up a little shakily. "What's been done with the Rithian?"
"I've had the body taken down to the lab, sir," Gordon said. "Dr. Baustian is there now. But they're waiting for your orders before they go ahead."
"All right," said Spangler, "let's get on with it."
He caught a glimpse of Pembun, with a curious expression on his face, trailing along behind the group as they left.
At first the corpse looked like the body of a young Chinese murdered by a meticulously careful ax-fiend: there was a gaping wound straight down from forehead to navel, then a perpendicular cross-cut, and then another gash down each leg.
Then they peeled the human mask away, and underneath lay the Rithian. The worst of it, Spangler thought, was the ochre fur: it was soft-looking, and a lighter color where it was rumpled—like the fur of the teddy bear he remembered from his childhood. But this was an obscene teddy bear, a thing of limp tentacles and dull bulging red eyes, with a squashy bladder at the bottom. It ought to have been stepped on, Spangler thought, and put into the garbage tube and forgotten.
It filled the human shell exactly. The top ring of tentacles had been divided, three on each side, to fit into "Wei's" arms. In the middle of each clump of tentacles, when the lab men pried them apart, was the white skeleton of a human arm; the shoulder joint emerged just under the ring. The tentacles in the second ring had been coiled neatly around the body, out of the way. The rest of the torso, and the leg spaces, had been filled by a monstrous bulging of the Rithian's sac-like abdomen.
Then the dissection started…
Spangler stayed only because he could not think of a suitable excuse to leave; Cassina was still in shock and could not be seen.
Baustian and the other bio men were like children with new toys: first the muscles, and the nerve and blood and lymph systems in the "legs" the Rithian had formed from its shapeless body; then, when they cut open the torso, one bloody lump after another held up, and prodded, and exclaimed over. "Good Lord, look at this pancreas!" or "this liver!" or "this kidney!"
In the end, the resemblance to a teddy bear was nothing at all. The most horrible thing was that the more they cut, the more human the body looked…
Later, he was standing in front of Cassina's door, and Pembun was holding his arm. "Don' tell 'im the Rithch is dead," the little man said urgently. "Tell 'im it was awl a mistake. Let 'im think w'at 'e likes of you. It may be important."
"Why?" Spangler asked vacantly.
Pembun looked at him with that same odd, haunted expression Spangler had noticed before, when they had left his office. He ought to be feeling cocky, Spangler thought vaguely, but he isn't.
"'E's still in danger, Commissioner. 'E's not responsible for 'is own actions. You've got to convince 'im that you weren't after Wei at all, and that Wei's all right, otherwise I believe 'e'll try to kill 'imself."
"I don't understand you, Mr. Pembun," Spangler said. "How do you know the doctors or nurses haven't already told him?"
"I told them not to say anything," Pembun said, unabashed, "and let them think the order came from you."
Spangler's lips tightened. "We'll talk about this later," he said, and palmed the doorplate.
IV
Cassina's eyes were closed. His face was a dead olive-gray except for a slight flush on either cheekbone. He had the stupid, defenseless look of all sleeping invalids.
His head was supported by a hollow in the bolster; a rigid harness covered his neck. His mouth was slightly open under the coarse black mustachios, and a curved suction tube was hooked over his lower teeth.
The tube emitted a low, monotonous, gurgling, which changed abruptly to a dry sucking noise. An attendant stepped forward and joggled the tube with one finger; the gurgling resumed.
As Spangler glanced away from the unconscious man, a medic came forward. He was tall and loose-limbed; his brown eyes gleamed with the brilliance that meant contact lenses. "Commissioner Spangler?"
Spangler nodded.
"I'm Dr. Householder, in charge of this section. You can question this man now, but I want you to avoid exciting him if you can, and don't stay longer than fifteen minutes after the injection. He's got sixteen drugs in him already."
Spangler stepped forward and sat down by the bedside. At Householder's nod, an attendant set the muzzle of a pressure hypodermic against Cassina's bare forearm. She pressed the trigger, then unscrewed the magazine, dropped it into a tray and replaced it with another. In a moment Cassina sighed and opened his eyes.
Another attendant set a metal plate on the bed under Cassina's hand and gently forced a stylus between his fingers. Cables from plate and stylus led back around the foot of the bed to a squat, wheeled machine with a hooded screen.