There was a thunderous roar. He clapped his hands to his ears as the air pressure increased explosively. His footing slipped, and he fell into the reeking center section of the trench.
An avalanche of muck descended upon him. Overhead, hundreds of tons of flesh and bone and gristle crashed down imperiously, seeming ready to crush every particle of matter within its compass into further compost.
The jaws were closing.
Dillingham found himself face down in sickening garbage, his ears ringing from the atmospheric compression and his body quivering from the mechanical one. The lantern, miraculously, was undamaged and bright, and his own limbs were sound. He sat up, wiped some of the sludge from face and arms and grabbed for the slippery light.
He was trapped between clenched jaws—inside the cavity.
Frantically he activated the signal. After an interminable period while he waited in mortal fear of suffocation, the ponderous upper jaw lifted. He scrambled out, dripping.
The bag of implements was now a thin layer of color on the surface of the tooth. "Perfect occlusion," he murmured professionally, while shaking in violent reaction to the realization that his fall had narrowly saved him from the same fate.
The ladder was gone. Anxious to remove himself from the dangerous biting surface as quickly as possible, he prepared to jump but saw a gigantic mass of tentacles reaching for his portable drill near the base of the tooth. Each tentacle appeared to be thirty feet or more in length and as strong as a python's tail.
The biting surface no longer seemed so dangerous. Dillingham remained where he was and watched the drill being carried into the darkness of the mouth's center.
In a few more minutes the amphibian vehicle appeared. The Enen driver emerged, chewed a stick, presented it. Dillingham reached for the transcoder and discovered that it was the wrong one. All he had now was the useless Gleep interpreter.
Chagrined, he fiddled with it. At least he could set it to play back whatever the Gleep prince might have said. Perhaps there had been meaning in that roar....
There had been. "OUCH!" the machine exclaimed.
The next few hours were complicated. Dillingham now had to speak to the Enens via the Gleep muckamuck (after the episode in the cavity, he regretted this nomenclature acutely), who had been summoned for a diagnostic conference. This was accomplished by setting up shop in the creature's communications department.
The compartment was actually an offshoot from the Gleep lung, deep inside the body. It was a huge, internal air space with sensitive tentacles bunching from the walls. This was the manner in which the dominant species of this landless planet had developed fast-moving appendages whose manipulation led eventually to tools and intelligence. An entire technology had developed—inside the great bodies.
"So you see," he said, "I have to have an anesthetic that will do the job and canned air to breathe while I'm working, and a power drill that will handle up to an eighteen-inch depth of rock. Also a sledgehammer and a dozen wedges. And a derrick and the following quantities of—" He went on to make a startling list of supplies.
The transcoder sprouted half a dozen tentacles and waved them in a dizzying semaphore. After a moment a group of the wall tentacles waved back. "It shall be accomplished," the muckamuck reply came.
Dillingham wondered what visual signal had projected the "ouch!" back in the patient's mouth. Then it came to him: the tentacles that had absconded with his drill and other transcoder were extensions of the creature's tongue. Naturally they talked.
"One other thing: while you're procuring my equipment, I'd like to see a diagram of the internal structure of your molars."
"Structure?" The tentacles were agitated.
"The pattern of enamel, dentin, and pulp, or whatever passes for it in your system. A schematic drawing would do nicely. Or a sagittal section showing both the nerves and the bony socket. That tooth is still quite sensitive, which means the nerve is still alive. I wouldn't want to damage it unnecessarily."
"We have no diagrams."
Dillingham was shocked. "Don't you know the anatomy of your teeth? How have you repaired them before?"
"We have never had trouble with them before. We have no dentists. That is why we summoned you."
He paced the floor of the chamber, amazed. How was it possible for such intelligent and powerful creatures to remain so ignorant of matters vital to their well-being? Never had trouble before? That cavity had obviously been festering for many years.
Yet he had faced similar ignorance daily during his Earth practice. "I'll be working blind, in that case," he said at last. "You must understand that while I'll naturally do my best, I cannot guarantee to save the tooth."
"We understand," the Gleep muckamuck replied contritely.
Back on the tooth (after a stern warning to Junior to keep those jaws apart no matter how uncomfortable things got), equipped with a face mask, respirator, elbow-length gloves, and hip boots, Dillingham began the hardest labor of his life. It was not intellectually demanding or particularly intricate—just hard. He was vaporizing the festering walls of the cavity with a thirty-pound laser drill, and in half an hour his arms were dead tired.
There was lateral extension of the infection. He had to wedge himself into a rotting, diminishing cavern, wielding the beam at arm's length before him. He had to twist the generator sidewise to penetrate every branching side pocket, all the while frankly terrified lest the beam slip and accidentally touch part of his own body. He was playing with fire—a fiery beam that could slice off his arm and puff it into vapor in less than a careless second.
At least, he thought sweatily, he wasn't going to have to use the sledgehammer here. When he ordered the drill, he had expected a mechanical one similar to those pistons used to break up pavement on Earth. To the Gleep, however, a drill was a laser beam. This was indeed far superior to what he had had in mind. Deadly, yes—but real serendipity.
Backbreaking hours later it was done. Sterile walls of dentin lined the cavity on every side. Yet this was only the beginning.
Dillingham, after a short nap right there in the now aseptic cavity, roused himself to make careful measurements. He had to be certain that every alley was widest at the opening and that none were too sharply twisted. Wherever the measurements were unsatisfactory, he drilled away healthy material until the desired configuration had been achieved. He also adjusted the beam for "polish" and wiped away the rough surfaces.
He signaled the Enen sub and indicated by gestures that it was time for the tank of supercolloid. And resolved that next time he went anywhere, he would bring a trunkful of spare transcoders. He had problems enough without translation difficulties. At least he had been able to make clear that they had to send a scout back to the home planet to pick up the bulk supplies.
Supercolloid was a substance developed by the ingenious Enens in response to his exorbitant specifications of several months before. He had once entertained the notion that if he were slightly unreasonable, they would ship him home. Instead they had met the specifications exactly and increased his assessed value, neatly adding years to his term of captivity. He became more careful after that—but the substance remained a prosthodontist's dream.
Supercolloid was a fluid, stored under pressure, that set rapidly when released. It held its shape indefinitely without measurable distortion, yet was as flexible as rubber. It was ideal for difficult impressions, since it could give way while being withdrawn and spring immediately back to the proper shape. This saved time and reduced error. At 1300° Fahrenheit it melted suddenly into the thin, transparent fluid from which it started. This was its most important property.