In the center of the yellow eye was a square pupil. But the pupil didn’t contract at all in response to being exposed to light. Either the eye worked differently—and the square pupil certainly suggested it might—or the alien was very deeply unconscious.
“Is it safe to move it?” asked Cardinal.
Raji considered. “I don’t know—the head wound worries me. If it’s got anything like a human spinal cord, it might end up paralyzed if we moved it improperly.” He paused. “What sort of scanning equipment have you got?”
Cardinal opened her medical kit. Inside was a device that looked like a flashlight with a large LCD screen mounted at the end opposite the lens. “Standard class-three Deepseer,” she said.
“Let’s give it a try,” said Raji.
Cardinal ran the scanner over the body. Raji stood next to her, looking over her shoulder. The woman pointed to the image. “That dark stuff is bone—or, at least, something as dense as bone,” she said. “The skeleton is very complex. We’ve got around 200 bones, but this thing must have twice that number. And see that? The material where the bones join is darker— meaning it’s denser—than the actual bones; I bet these beasties never get arthritis.”
“What about organs?”
Cardinal touched a control on her device, and then waved the scanner some more. “That’s probably one there. See the outline? And—wait a sec. Yup, see there’s another one over here, on the other side that’s a mirror image of the first one. Bilateral symmetry.”
Raji nodded.
“All of the organs seem to be paired,” said Cardinal, as she continued to move the scanner over the body. “That’s better than what we’ve got, of course, assuming they can get by with just one in a pinch. See that one there, inflating and deflating? That must be one of the lungs—you can see the tube that leads up the arm to the breathing hole.”
“If all the organs are paired,” asked Raji, “does it have two hearts?”
Cardinal frowned, and continued to scan. “I don’t see anything that looks like a heart,” she said. “Nothing that’s pumping or beating, or…”
Raji quickly checked the respiratory hole that wasn’t covered by the oxygen mask. “It is still breathing,” he said, with relief. “Its blood must be circulating somehow.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have any blood,” said Bancroft, pointing at the dry head wound.
“No,” said Raji. “I looked at its eyes. I could see blood vessels on their surface—and if you’ve got blood, you’ve got to make it circulate somehow; otherwise, how do you get the oxygen taken in by the lungs to the various parts of the body?”
“Maybe we should take a blood sample,” said Bancroft. “Cardy’s scanner can magnify it.”
“All right,” said Raji.
Bancroft got a syringe out of the medical kit. He felt the alien’s hide, and soon found what looked like a distended blood vessel. He pushed the needle in, and pulled the plunger back. The glass cylinder filled with a liquid more orange than red. He then moved the syringe over to the scanner, and put a drop of the alien blood into a testing compartment.
Cardinal operated the scanner controls. An image of alien blood cells appeared on her LCD screen.
“Goodness,” she said.
“Incredible,” said Raji.
Tina jockeyed for position so that she, too, could see the display. “What?” she said. “What is it?”
“Well, the blood cells are much more elaborate than human blood cells. Our red cells don’t even have nuclei, but these ones clearly do—see the dark, peanut-shaped spot there? But they also have cilia—see those hair-like extensions?”
“And that means?” asked Tina.
“It means the blood cells are self-propelled,” said Cardinal. “They swim in the blood vessels, instead of being carried along by the current; that’s why the creature has no heart. And look at all the different shapes and sizes—there’s much more variety here than what’s found in our blood.”
“Can you analyze the chemical makeup of the blood?” asked Raji.
Cardinal pushed some buttons on the side of her scanner. The LCD changed to an alphanumeric readout.
“Well,” said Cardinal, “just like our blood, the major constituent of the alien’s plasma is water. It’s a lot saltier than our plasma, though.”
“Human blood plasma is a very close match for the chemical composition of Earth’s oceans,” said Raji to Tina. “Our component cells are still basically aquatic lifeforms—it’s just that we carry a miniature ocean around inside us. The alien must come from a world with more salt in its seas.”
“There are lots of protein molecules,” said Cardinal, “although they’re using some amino acids that we don’t. And-—my goodness, that’s a complex molecule.”
“What?”
“That one there,” she said, pointing to a chemical formula being displayed on her scanner’s screen. “It looks like—incredible.”
“What?” asked Tina, sounding rather frustrated at being the only one with no medical or biological training.
“It’s a neurotransmitter,” said Raji. “At least, I think it is, judging by its structure. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals that transmit nerve impulses.”
“There’s lots of it in the blood,” said Cardinal, pointing at a figure.
“Can you show me some blood while it’s still in the body?” asked Raji.
Cardinal nodded. She pulled a very fine fibre optic out of the side of her scanner, and inserted it into the same distended blood vessel Bancroft had extracted the sample from earlier.
On the scanner’s screen, blood cells could be seen moving along in unison.
“They’re all going the same way,” said Raji. “Even without a heart to pump them along, they’re all traveling in the same direction.”
“Maybe that’s why there are neurotransmitters in the bloodstream,” said Bancroft. “The blood cells communicate using them, so that they can move in unison.”
“What about the head injury?” asked Tina. “If it’s got all that blood, why isn’t it bleeding?”
Cardinal moved the scanner up to the alien’s small, spherical head. The eyes were still closed. On the LCD screen, the skull was visible beneath the skin, and, beneath the skull, the scanner oudined the organ that was presumably the brain within.
“It’s so tiny,” said Raji.
Bancroft indicated the spaceship around them. “Well, despite that, it’s obviously very advanced intellectually.”
“Let’s have a look at the wound,” said Raji.
Cardinal repositioned the scanner.
“There seem to be valves in the broken blood vessels that have closed off,” she said.
Raji turned to Tina. “We’ve got valves in our veins, to keep blood from flowing backwards. It looks like this creature has valves in both its veins and its arteries.” He paused, then turned to Cardinal. “I still don’t know if we can or should move the alien.”
“Well, the oxygen bottle is almost empty,” said Bancroft. “Who knows if it was doing it any good, anyway, but—”
“Oh, God,” said Tina. She’d still been holding her hand near one of the respiratory orifices. “It’s stopped breathing!”
“We could try artificial respiration,” said Bancroft.
“You mean blowing into its hands?” said Tina incredulously.
“Sure,” said Bancroft. “It might work.” He lifted one of the arms, but, as he did so, orange liquid began to spill from the breathing hole.
“Yuck!” said Tina.
Raji pulled back, too. The head wound had started to bleed as well.
“It’s bleeding from the mouths, too,” said Cardinal, looking at the medial limbs.
“We can’t let it die,” said Raji. “Do something!”