He had to remind himself that the Sector General staff included several beings whose species were highly intelligent and sensitive while retaining the physical equipment that had enabled them to fight their way to the top of their home planet’s evolutionary tree.
The other two beings belonged to a much smaller species with much less in the way of organic weaponry. They were roughly circular, just over a meter in diameter, and in cross section, a slim oval flattened slightly on the underside. In shape they very much resembled their ship, except that it did not have a long, thin horn or sting projecting aft or a thin, wide slit on the opposite side, which was obviously a mouth. The upper lip of the mouth was wider and thicker than the lower, and on one of the dead beings it was curled over the lower lip, apparently sealing the mouth shut. Both of the beings were covered on their upper and lower surfaces and around the rims by some kind of organic stubble, which varied in thickness from pin size to the width of a small finger. The stubble on the underside was much coarser than that on the upper surface, and it was plain that parts of it were designed for ambulation.
“It is clear what happened here,” said the Captain. “Two members of the species that crew this ship died when the large one broke free because of inadequate restraints, and presumably the survivors Prilicla detected were unable to cope with the situation and released a distress beacon.”
One of the smaller beings, which had sustained multiple incised and punctured wounds, lay like a piece of torn and rumpled carpet under its killer’s hind feet. Its companion, although just as dead, had suffered fewer wounds and had almost made its escape through a low opening in the wall at deck level before being immobilized and crushed by one of its attacker’s forefeet. It had also, before it died, been able to inflict several deep puncture wounds on the larger alien’s underside, and its broken-off horn or sting was still deeply embedded in one of them.
“I agree,” said Conway. “But one thing puzzles me. The blind ones appear to have modified their ship to accommodate the larger life-form. Why would they go to so much trouble to capture such a dangerous specimen? They must need it very badly or consider it extremely valuable for some reason to risk confining it with a blind crew.
“Possibly they have weapons that reduce the risk,” Fletcher said, “longer range, more effective weapons than that horn or sting, which these two omitted to carry for some reason and died because of the omission.”
“What kind of long-range weapon,” asked Conway, “could be developed by a being with only a sense of touch?”
Murchison tried to head off the argument that was impending. “We don’t know for certain that they have only a sense of touch, although they are blind. As for the value of the large life-form to them, it could be a fast-breeding source of food, or its tissues or organs might contain important sources of valuable medication, or the reason maybe a completely alien one. Excuse me.”
She switched on her suit radio. “Naydrad, we have three cadavers to transfer to the lab. Move them in the litter to avoid additional damage to the specimens by decompression.” She turned to Conway and the Captain. “I don’t think the other members of the crew would object to my opening up their friends, especially since the large one has already begun the process.”
Conway nodded. They both knew that the more she was able to discover about the physiology and metabolism of the two dead specimens, the better would be their chances of helping the surviving blind ones.
With Fletcher’s help they extricated the large cadaver from its cage and from the strange assortment of metal rods and bars that were pressing it against the deck. They had to widen the opening it had made in the grill. This required the combined efforts of the three of them and gave some indication of the strength of the being who had forced it apart. When they had the large alien free, its tentacles opened out and practically blocked the corridor as it floated weightless in the confined space.
While they were pushing it towards the airlock, Murchison said, “The deployment of the legs and tentacles is similar to the Hudlar FROB life-form, but that carapace is a thicker ELNT Melfan shell without markings, and it is plainly not herbivorous. Considering the fact that it is warm-blooded and oxygen-breathing and its appendages show no evidence of the ability to manipulate tools or materials, I would tentatively classify it as FSOJ, and probably nonintelligent.”
“Certainly non-intelligent, considering the circumstances,” said Fletcher as they returned to the caged section of corridor. “It was an escaped specimen, ma’am.”
“We medical types,” said Murchison, smiling, “never commit ourselves, especially where a brand-new life-form is concerned. But right now I wouldn’t even try to classify the blind ones.
Since she was the smallest person there, it was Murchison who wriggled carefully through the damaged grill and between the projecting rods and bars. If it had not been for the large alien warping a number of the bars out of true, she would not have been able to reach the blind one at all.
“This,” she said breathlessly as she reached the cadaver, “is a very strange cage.”
Although it was brightly lit, they could not see the other end of the caged section of corridor, because it followed the curvature of the ship, which at this distance from the center was sharp enough to keep them from seeing more than ten meters into it. The corridor walls and ceiling of the section they could see, however, were covered with projecting metal bars and rods. Some of them had sharp tips, others had spatulate ends and a few of them terminated in something that resembled a small metal ball covered in blunt spikes. The metal bars projected from slits in the walls, and the slots were long enough to allow their individual bars a wide angle of travel either up and down or from side to side. The rods protruded from circular holes and collar pieces in the ceiling and were designed only to move in and out.
“It is strange to me, too, ma’am,” said the Captain. “None of the e-t technology I’ve studied gives me any ideas. For one thing, it is a large cage, or should I say a very long cage, if it is continued around the ship. Perhaps it was meant to house more than one specimen, or the one specimen required space in which to exercise. I’m guessing, but I would say that the bars and rods projecting into the corridor formed some kind of restraint whereby the specimen could be immobilized in any part of the caged section for feeding purposes or for physical examination.”
“A pretty good guess, I’d say,” said Conway. “And if there was a malfunction in the mobile restraints, then the metal grill formed a safety backup that couldn’t, on this occasion, withstand the specimen’s attack. But I’m wondering just how far this corridor follows the radius of the ship. Extending this arc to the other side of the vessel places it in the area where Prilicla detected the two survivors. One of those survivors, according to Prilicla, was emoting anger on a very basic, perhaps animal, level while the other being’s emotional radiation was more complex.
“Let’s suppose,” Conway went on, “that there is another large alien at the other end of the corridor cage, maybe even outside the other end of the cage, with a badly injured blind one who wasn’t as successful as its crew-mate here in killing the brute—”