Spin was added to the pummeling which the SRTT was already undergoing with the pressors-not a simple spin, but a wild, rolling, pitching movement which made Conway’s stomach feel queasy just by looking at it, and the flares dived and swooped around it like insane moons around their primary. Quite a few of the men had lost their first enthusiasm, and Prilicla swayed and shook on its six pipe-stem legs, in the grip of an emotional gale which threatened to blow it away.
It had been wrong to bring Prilicla in on this, Conway told himself angrily; no empath should have to go through this sort of hell by proxy. He had made a mistake from the very first, because the whole idea was cruel and sadistic and wrong. He was worse than a monster.
High in the center of the room the twisting, spinning blur that was the younger SRTT began to emit a high-pitched and terrified gobbling noise.
A crashing bedlam erupted from the wall speakers; shouts, cries, breaking noises and the sounds of running feet over-laying that of something slower and infinitely heavier. They could hear O’Mara’s voice shouting out some sort of explanation to somebody at the top of his lungs, then an unidentified voice yelled at them, “For Pete’s sake stop it down there! Buster’s papa has woke up and is wrecking the joint …
Quickly but gently they checked the spinning SRTT and lowered it to the floor, then they waited tensely while the shouting and crashing being relayed to them from Observation Ward Three reached a crescendo and began gradually to die down. Around the room men stood motionless watching each other, or the whimpering being on the floor, or the wall speakers, waiting. And then it came.
The sound was similar to the alien gobbling which had been relayed through the annunciators some hours previously, but without the accompanying roar of static, and because everyone had their Translators switched on the words also came through as English.
It was the elder SRTT, incurable no longer because it was physically whole again, speaking both reassuringly and chidingly to its erring offspring. In effect it was saying that junior had been a bad boy, that he must cease forthwith running around and getting himself and everyone else into a state, and that nothing else unpleasant would happen to him if he did as he was told by the beings now surrounding him. The sooner it did these things, the elder SRTT ended, the sooner they could both go home.
Mentally, the runaway had taken a terrible beating, Conway knew. Maybe it had taken too much. Tense with anxiety he watched it — still in a shape that was neither fish, flesh or fowl — begin humping its way across the floor. When it began gently and submissively to butt one of the watching Monitors in the knees, the cheer that went up very nearly gave it a relapse.
“When Prilicla here gave me the clue to what was troubling the elder SRTT, I was sure that the cure would have to be drastic,” Conway said to the Diagnosticians and Senior Physicians ranged around and behind O’Mara’s desk.
The fact that he was seated in such august company was a sure sign of the approval in which he was held, but despite that he still felt nervous as he went on. “Its regression toward the — to it — fetal state — complete dissolution into individual and unthinking cells floating in the primeval ocean — was far advanced, perhaps too far judging by its physical state. Major O’Mara had already tried various shock treatments which it, with its fantastically adaptable cell structure, was able to negate or ignore. My idea was to use the close physical and emotional bond which I discovered existed between the SRTT adult and its last-born offspring, and get at it that way.”
Conway paused, his eyes drifting sideways briefly to take in the shambles around them. Observation Ward Three looked as though a bomb had hit it, and Conway knew that there had been a rather hectic few minutes here between the time the elder SRTT had come out of its catatonic state and explanations had been given it. He cleared his throat and went on:
“So we trapped the young one in the DBLF recreation room and tried to frighten it as much as possible, piping the sounds it made up here to the parent. It worked. The elder SRTT could not lie doing nothing while its latest and most loved offspring was apparently in frightful danger, and parental concern and affection overcame and destroyed the psychosis and forced it back to present time and reality. It was able to pacify the young one, and so all concerned were left happy.”
“A nice piece of deductive reasoning on your part, Doctor,” O’Mara said warmly. “You are to be commended.”
At that moment the intercom interrupted him. It was Murchison reporting that the three AUGLs were showing the first signs of stiffening up, and would he come at once. Conway requested an AUGL tape for Prilicla and himself, and explained the urgency of the matter. While they were taking them the Diagnosticians and Senior Physicians began to leave. A little disappointedly Conway thought that Murchison’s call had spoiled what might have been his greatest moment.
“Don’t worry about it, Doctor,” O’Mara said cheerfully, reading his mind again. “If that call had come five minutes later your head would have been too swollen to take a physiology tape …
Two days later Conway had his first and only disagreement with Dr. Prilicla. He insisted that without the aid of Prilicla’s empathic faculty — an incredibly accurate and useful diagnostic tool — and Murchison’s vigilance, the cure of all three AUGLs would not have been possible. The GLNO stated that, much as it was against its nature to oppose his superior’s wishes, on this occasion Dr. Conway was completely mistaken. Murchison said that she was glad that she had been able to help, and could she please have some leave?
Conway said yes, then continued the argument with Prilicla, even though he knew he had no hope of winning it.
Conway honestly knew that he would not have been able to save the infant AUGLs without the little empath’s help — he might not have saved any of them, in fact. But he was the Boss, and when a Boss and his assistants accomplish something the credit invariably goes to the Boss.
The argument, if that was the proper word for such an essentially friendly disagreement, raged for days. Things were going well in the Nursery and they hadn’t anything of a serious nature to think about. They were not aware of the wreck which was then on its way to the hospital, or of the survivor it contained.
Nor did Conway know that within the next two weeks the whole Staff of the hospital would be despising him.
Chapter 5
OUT-PATIENT
I
The Monitor Corps cruiser Sheldon flicked into normal space some I five hundred miles from Sector Twelve General Hospital, the wreck
which was its reason for coming held gently against the hull within the field of its hyperdrive generators. At this distance the vast, brilliantly lit structure which floated in interstellar space at the galactic rim was only a dim blur of light, but that was because the Monitor Captain had had a close decision to make. Buried somewhere inside the wreck which he had brought in was a survivor urgently in need of medical attention. But like any good policeman his actions were constrained by possible effects on innocent bystanders-in this case the Staff and patients of the Galaxy’s largest multi-environment hospital.
Hurriedly contacting Reception he explained the situation, and received their reassurances that the matter would be taken care of at once. Now that the welfare of the survivor was in competent hands, the Captain decided that he could return with a clear conscience to his examination of the wreck, which just might blow up in his face at any moment.