“Could the orifice be used for excretion?” asked Darlinski. “Highly doubtful,” said Jennings. “No, I'll make it stronger. Definitely not. I would certainly have found something to indicate it if that were the case. Sorry to give you a problem, boss, but that's the way I read it.”
“A problem? Hell, you've given me a pair of them.” “Yeah?”
“First, I've got a female patient with no discernible sex organs. And second, I've got an eater with no discernible means of excreting waste products.” “Maybe that's what's wrong.” Jennings grinned. “Maybe she ate too much and is due to explode.” “Thanks a lot,” said Darlinski. “Well, I'd better get back down there and see if I can figure out what to do next.”
When he arrived a few minutes later he found the Pnathian gasping weakly for air. Its face, and hence its breathing orifice, was covered with a foul-smelling substance which seemed to be coming from its food-ingesting orifice. Quickly summoning an intern to help him, Darlinski managed to turn the Pnathian on its side and, taking an antiseptic wipe, began cleaning its head off. In a few moments the breathing became normal again, and, instructing the intern to keep a watchful eye on the patient, he took a sample of the substance up to Pathology.
“Well,” said Jennings after some thirty minutes of testing, “we've solved one of your problems. It seems that the same mouth, or orifice, does double duty: it both ingests the food and excretes it. Very inefficient.
In fact, uncommonly so.”
“You're sure it's not vomit?” asked Darlinski. “Absolutely,” said Jennings. “Vomit would still have some partially undigested food left. This stuff is all broken down. The body's taken most of what it needed, and this is what's left.” “We're learning things all the time,” said Darlinski. “I bet if they left the damned thing here for another year or so, I might even figure out what's killing it.” “According to the newstapes,” said Jennings, “you've got considerably less than a year.” “Don't remind me. What are the chances of it dying if I take some X-rays and fluoroscope it?” “I don't think the X-rays will do any harm. Under normal circumstances I'd say that fluoroscoping was out of the question until we knew more about it, but these are hardly normal circumstances, so you might as well go ahead.”
Two hours later Darlinski was looking at a number of X-rays that were laid out before him and cursing furiously.
“Well, boss?” asked Jennings on the intercom. “It can't have any broken bones,” said Darlinski. “The damned old girl doesn't have a bone in her entire body!”
“Learn anything from the fluoroscope?”
“Not a thing. I've seen insects with more complicated digestive systems. The food goes in, is carried to just about every cell in the body, and what remains will be coming out again in a day or so. All that's left is brain damage and how the hell do I know whether it exists or not until I've seen a working model of an undamaged brain?” He loosed another stream of curses. “This stupid creature just doesn't make any sense!”
“Agreed,'’ said Jennings. “You know those scrapings?” “What about them?”
“They're growing. Another week and they'll cover the whole damned slide.” “Could it be a form of cancer?” asked Darlinski. “No way,” came the reply. “No cancer I know of ever acted like this. These scrapings haven't been cultured; by rights, they should be dead and decaying.” “Besides, if there was some kind of skin cancer, I'd have spotted it before now,” agreed Darlinski. He stood up. “This is crazy! The respiratory system is working, the digestive system is working, the circulatory system is working. What the hell can be wrong with it?” “A stroke?” suggested Jennings.
“I doubt it. If there were a blood clot in the brain, something else ought to be hampered too. I figure we
can rule out a heart attack, too; we haven't made the slightest attempt at treatment and yet the condition, whatever it might be in regard to the norm, is completely stable. It seems to me that if anything sudden hit her, she'd either degenerate or start improving. But she doesn't do either.” “If you're looking for some paradoxes,” added Jennings, “you might figure out why everyone keeps calling it a female.”
“I've got enough paradoxes of my own to work on,” said Darlinski. “I don't need any of yours.” “Just trying to be helpful, boss. See you later.” Darlinski went back to the patient, muttering obscenities to himself. It just didn't add up; even a virus, left unattended, would either have killed her or been partially fought off by antibodies by now. Perhaps the weirdest part of the whole insane situation was the fact that the ambassador simply refused to change, either for better or for worse.
Okay, he decided, let's look at it logically. If the Pnathian's condition remained unchanged, it must be because something in her internal or external environment was also unchanged. Since he had established, insofar as was possible, that her internal systems were all functioning normally, and since Jennings had as yet been unable to detect any microbes, bacteria, or viruses that might be harmful, he would operate on the hypothesis that the cause was either a blood clot or tumor in her brain, which he couldn't possibly cure or even find, or else that the problem lay in the external environment. And, if the external environment was the cause of her problems, the most likely place to begin changing that environment was with the atmosphere and the gravitation. He began by changing the pressure within the room to zero gravity, with no visible effect. Then, gradually, he increased it to three gravities. The breathing became slightly more labored, but there was no other reaction, and on a boneless being he didn't feel he could increase the pressure any further. He then placed a respirator over the Pnathian's breathing orifice and lowered the oxygen content to fifteen percent, then twelve percent. When he got it down to eight percent he thought the patient would surely begin to choke, but instead, he detected a noticeable twitching of one eyelid. Encouraged, he dropped it down to a four percent oxygen compound—and all hell broke loose! The Pnathian ambassador began whispering incoherently, and her tentacular appendages started thrashing wildly. Darlinski easily avoided them, strapped the trunk of her body to the table, and settled back to observe her. Her eyes were open, but seemed unable to focus, and her motions, even after ten minutes, were so disjointed as to convince him she would never in a dozen lifetimes learn how to bring food to her mouth, let alone pilot a spaceship. An idea began dawning somewhere in the back of his mind, but first he had to check out a few facts. His first act was to call Jennings.
“Tell me,” he asked the pathologist, “exactly what would happen to a human, used to breathing a nineteen percent oxygen compound, if you doubled the oxygen content on him?” “He'd probably laugh his fool head off,” said Jennings promptly.
“I know,” said Darlinski. “But is there any possibility that he might pass out instead?”
“I doubt it. Why?”
“What if you quadrupled it—got it up to seventy-six percent, or even a little bit higher?” “It's been done many times in emergency cases.” “Does it ever knock them out?”