The patient remained motionless as before.
Prilicla said, “There is no indication that it heard you, Doctor.”
“But if it’s conscious …” Conway began, and ended the sentence with a helpless shrug.
He began assembling his instruments again and with Prilicla’s help examined the EPLH again, paying special attention to the organs of sight and hearing. But there was no physical or emotional reaction while the examination was in progress, despite the flashing lights and a considerable amount of ungentle probing. Conway could see no evidence of physical malfunction in any of the sensory organs, yet the patient remained completely unaware of all outside stimulus. Physically it was unconscious, insensible to everything going on around it, except that Prilicla insisted that it wasn’t.
What a crazy, mixed-up demi-god, thought Conway. Trust O’Mara to send him the weirdies. Aloud he said, “The only explanation I can see for this peculiar state of affairs is that the mind you are receiving has severed or blocked off contact with all its sensory equipment. The patient’s condition is not the cause of this, therefore the trouble must have a psychological basis. I’d say the beastie is urgently in need of psychiatric assistance.
“However,” he ended, “the head-shrinkers can operate more effectively on a patient who is physically well, so I think we should concentrate on clearing up this skin condition first …
A specific had been developed at the hospital against epithelioma of the type affecting the patient, and Pathology had already stated that it was suited to the EPLH’s metabolism and would produce no harmful side-effects. It took only a few minutes for Conway to measure out a test dosage and inject subcutaneously. Prilicla moved up beside him quickly to see the effect. This, they both knew, was one of the rare, rapid-action miracles of medicine-its effect would be apparent in a matter of seconds rather than hours or days.
Ten minutes later nothing at all had happened.
“A tough guy,” said Conway, and injected the maximum safe dose.
Almost at once the skin in the area darkened and lost its dry, cracked look. The dark area widened perceptibly as they watched, and one of the tentacles twitched slightly.
“What’s its mind doing?” said Conway.
“Much the same as before,” Prilicla replied, “but with mounting anxiety apparent since the last injection. I detect feelings of a mind trying to make a decision … of making a decision …
Prilicla began to tremble violently, a clear sign that the emotional radiation of the patient had intensified. Conway had his mouth open to put a question when a sharp, tearing sound dragged his attention back to the patient. The EPLH was heaving and throwing itself against its restraining harness. Two of the anchoring straps had parted and it had worked a tentacle free. The one with the club.
Conway ducked frantically, and avoided having his head knocked off by a fraction of an inch-he felt that ultimate in blunt instruments actually touch his hair. But the Lieutenant was not so lucky. At almost the end of its swing the bony mace thudded into his shoulder, throwing him across the tiny ward so hard that he almost bounced off the wall. Prilicla, with whom cowardice was a prime survival characteristic, was already clinging with its sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, which was the only safe spot in the room.
From his position flat on the floor Conway heard other straps go and saw two more tentacles begin feeling about. He knew that in a few minutes the patient would be completely free of the harness and able to move about the room at will. He scrambled quickly to his knees, crouched, then dived for the berserk EPLH. As he hung on tightly with his arms around its body just below the roots of the tentacles Conway was nearly deafened by a series of barking roars coming from the speaking orifice beside his ear. The noise translated as “Help me! Help me!” Simultaneously he saw the tentacle with the great, bony bludgeon at its tip swing downward. There was a crash and a three inch hollow appeared on the floor at the point where he had been lying a few seconds previously.
Tackling the patient the way he had done might have seemed foolhardy, but Conway had been trying to keep his head in more ways than one. Clinging tightly to the EPLH’s body below the level of those madly swinging tentacles, Conway knew, was the next safest place in the room.
Then he saw the Lieutenant …
The Lieutenant had his back to the wall, half lying and half sitting up. One arm hung loosely at his side and in the other hand he held his gun, steadying it between his knees, and one eye was closed in a diabolical wink while the other sighted along the barrel. Conway shouted desperately for him to wait, but the noise from the patient drowned him out. At every instant Conway expected the flash and shock of exploding bullets. He felt paralyzed with fear, he couldn’t even let go.
Then suddenly it was all over. The patient slumped onto its side, twitched and became motionless. Holstering his unfired weapon the Lieutenant struggled to his feet. Conway extricated himself and Prilicla came down off the ceiling.
Awkwardly, Conway said, “Uh, I suppose you couldn’t shoot with me hanging on there?”
The Lieutenant shook his head. “I’m a good shot, Doctor, I could have hit it and missed you all right. But it kept shouting ‘Help me’ all the time. That sort of thing cramps a man’s style.
CHAPTER 3
It was some twenty minutes later, after Prilicla had sent the Lieutenant away to have a cracked humerus set and Conway and the GLNO were fitting the patient with a much stronger harness, that they noticed the absence of the darker patch of skin. The patient’s condition was now exactly the same as it had been before undergoing treatment. Apparently the hefty shot which Conway had administered had had only a temporary effect, and that was decidedly peculiar. It was in fact downright impossible.
From the moment Prilicla’s empathetic faculty had been brought to bear on the case Conway had been sure that the root of the trouble was psychological. He also knew that a severely warped mind could do tremendous damage to the body which housed it. But this damage was on a purely physical level and its method of repair — the treatment developed and proved time and time again by Pathology — was a hard, physical fact also. And no mind, regardless of its power or degree of malfunction, should be able to ignore, to completely negate, a physical fact. The Universe had, after all, certain fixed laws.
So far as Conway could see there were only two possible explanations. Either the rules were being ignored because the Being who had made them had also the right to ignore them or somehow, someone — or some combination of circumstances or misread data-was pulling a fast one. Conway infinitely preferred the second theory because the first one was altogether too shattering to consider seriously. He desperately wanted to go on thinking of his patient with a small P …
Nevertheless, when he left the ward Conway paid a visit to the office of Captain Bryson, the Monitor Corps Chaplain, and consulted that officer at some length in a semi-professional capacity-Conway believed in carrying plenty of insurance. His next call was on Colonel Skempton, the officer in charge of Supply, Maintenance and Communications at the Hospital. There he requested complete copies of the patient’s log-not just the sections relevant to the murder-together with any other background data available to be sent to his room. Then he went to the AUGL theater to demonstrate operative techniques on submarine life-forms, and before dinner he was able to work in two hours in the Pathology department during which he discovered quite a lot about his patient’s immortality.
When he returned to his room there was a pile of typescript on his desk that was nearly two inches thick. Conway groaned, thinking of his six-hour recreation period and how he was going to spend it. The thought obtruded of how he would have liked to spend it, bringing with it a vivid picture of the very efficient and impossibly beautiful Nurse Murchison whom he had been dating regularly of late. But Murchison was currently with the FGLI Maternity Section and their free periods would not coincide for another two weeks.