by James White
“How about me?”
“For you, dear, almost anything. ’Bye.”
Conway racked the handset and said to Prilicla, “Something gained entrance to that ship. Harrison suffered the same type of mild hallucination or mental confusion that the OR staff experienced. But I keep thinking about that hole in the outer skin—a disembodied intelligence shouldn’t have to make a hole to get in. And those rocks hitting the stern. Suppose this was only a side-effect of the major, nonmaterial influence—a disturbance analogous to the poltergeist phenomena. Where does that leave us?”
Prilicla didn’t know.
“I’ll probably regret it,” said Conway, “but I think I’ll call O’Mara …”
But it was the Chief Psychologist who did all the talking at first. Mannon had just left his office after having told O’Mara that the Hudlar patient’s condition had deteriorated suddenly, necessitating a second operation not later than noon tomorrow. The Senior Physician, it had been obvious, held no hopes for the patient’s survival, but had said that what little chance it did have would be fractionally increased if they operated quickly.
O’Mara ended, “This doesn’t give you much time to prove your theory, Conway. Now, what did you want to say to me?”
The news about Mannon had put Conway badly off his stride, so that he was woefully aware that his report on the Meatball incident and his ideas regarding it sounded weak and, what was worse where O’Mara was concerned, incoherent. The psychologist had little patience with people who did not think clearly and say exactly what they meant.
“ … And the whole affair is so peculiar,” he concluded awkwardly, “that I’m almost convinced now that the Meatball business has nothing to do with Mannon’s trouble, except that …”
“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “You’re talking in circles, dithering! You must realize that if two peculiar events occur with only a small separation in time then the probability is high that they have a common cause. I don’t mind too much if your theory is downright ridiculous—at least you arrived at it by a tortuous form of logic—but I do mind you ceasing to think at all. Being wrong, Doctor, is infinitely preferable to being stupid!”
For a few seconds Conway breathed heavily through his nose, trying to control his anger enough to reply. But O’Mara saved him the trouble by breaking the connection.
“He was not very polite to you, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “Toward the end he sounded quite bad-tempered. This is a significant improvement over his feelings for you this morning …”
Conway laughed in spite of himself. He said, “One of these days you will forget to say the right thing, Doctor, and everyone in the hospital will drop dead!”
The galling part of the whole affair was that they did not know what exactly they were looking for, and now their time for finding it had been cut in half. All they could do was to continue gathering information and hope that something would emerge from it. But even the questions sounded nonsensical—variations of “Have you done or omitted to do something during the past few days which might lead you to suspect that something was influencing your mind?” They were loosely worded, silly, almost meaningless questions, but they went on asking them until Prilicla’s pencil-thin legs were rubbery with fatigue—the empath’s stamina was proportional to its strength, which was practically nonexistent—and it had to retire. Doggedly Conway went on asking them, feeling more tired, angrier and more stupid with every hour which passed.
Deliberately he refrained from contacting Mannon again—the Doctor at that time would, if anything, be a demoralizing influence. He called Skempton to ask if Descartes’ medical officer had made a report, and was sworn at horribly because it was the middle of the Colonel’s night. But he did find out that the Chief Psychologist had called seeking the same information, saying that he preferred his facts to come from the official report rather than through an emotionally involved Doctor with a disembodied ax to grind. Then the totally unexpected happened in that Conway’s sources of information went suddenly dry on him.
Apparently O‘Mara was bringing in certain operating room staff for their periodic testing before their psych tests were due, and most of them had been people who had been very helpful about admitting their mistakes to Conway. It was not suggested in so many words that Conway had broken confidence and blabbed to O’Mara, but at the same time nobody would talk about anything.
Conway felt weary and discouraged and stupid, but mostly weary. It was too near breakfast time, however, to go to bed.
After his rounds Conway had an early lunch with Mannon and Prilicla, then accompanied the doctor to O’Mara’s office while the empath left for the Hudlar theater to monitor the emotional radiation of the staff during their preparations. The Chief Psychologist looked a little tired, which was unusual, and rather grumpy, which was usually a good sign.
“Are you assisting Senior Physician Mannon in this operation, Doctor?”
“No, sir, observing,” Conway replied. “But from inside the theater. If anything funny is going on—I mean, the Hudlar tape might confuse me and I want to be as alert as possible—”
“Alert, he says.” O’Mara’s tone was scathing. “You look asleep on your feet.” To Mannon he said, “You will be relieved to know that I, too, am beginning to suspect something funny is going on, and this time I’ll be observing from the observation blister. And now if you’ll lie on the couch, Mannon, I’ll give you the Hudlar tape myself …”
Mannon sat on the edge of the low couch. His knees were nearly level with his chin and he had half-folded his arms across his chest so that his posture was almost a fetal position, sitting up. When he spoke his tone was pleading, desperate. He said, “Look. I’ve worked with empaths and telepaths before. Empaths receive but do not project emotion, and telepaths can only communicate with other telepaths of their own species—they’ve tried occasionally, but all they did was give me a slight mental itch. But that day in the theater I was in complete mental control of myself—I am absolutely sure of this! Yet you all keep trying to tell me that something unsubstantial, invisible and undetectable influenced my judgment. It would be much simpler if you admitted that this thing you’re looking for is nonexistent as well, but you’re all too damned—”
“Excuse me,” said O’Mara, pushing Mannon backward and lowering the massive helmet into position. He spent a few minutes positioning the electrodes, then switched on. Mannon’s eyes began to glaze as the memories and experience of one of the greatest Hudlar physicians who had ever lived flooded into his brain.
Just before he lost consciousness completely he muttered, “My trouble is that no matter what I say or do, you believe only the best about me …”
Two hours later they were in the theater. Mannon wore a heavy operating suit and Conway a lighter type which relied only on its gravity neutralizers for protection. The G-plates under the floor were set for a pull of five gravities, the Hudlar normal, but the pressure was only a fraction higher than the Earth norm—Hudlars were not unduly bothered by low pressure and could, in fact, work quite without protection in the vacuum of space. But if something went disastrously wrong and the patient needed full, home-planet pressure, Conway would have to leave in a hurry. Conway had a direct line to Prilicla and O’Mara in the observation blister and another, and completely separate, channel linking him with Mannon and the operating staff.
O’Mara’s voice crackled suddenly in his ear-piece. “Prilicla is getting emotional echoes, Doctor. Also the radiation indicative of a minor error having been made—minor level anxiety and confusion …”
“Yehudi is here,” said Conway softly.
“What?”
“The little man who isn’t there,” Conway replied, and went on, misquoting slightly, “The little man upon the stair. He isn’t there again today, Oh, gee I wish he’d go away …”
O’Mara grunted, then said, “Despite what I told Mannon in my office there is still no real proof that anything untoward is happening. My remarks t
hen were designed to help both Doctor and patient by bolstering Mannon’s weakening self-confidence—something which they failed to do. So it would be better for Mannon and yourself if your little man came in and introduced himself.”
The patient was brought in at that moment and transferred to the table. Mannon’s hands, projecting from the heavy arms of the suit, were encased only in thin, transparent plastic, but should full Hudlar pressure become necessary he could snap on heavy gauntlets within a few seconds. But to open a Hudlar at all in these conditions was to cause an immediate decompression, so that the subsequent procedures had to be done quickly.
Physiological classification FROB, the Hudlar was a low, squat, immensely powerful being somewhat reminiscent of an armadillo with a tegument like flexible armor plate. Inside and out the Hudlars were tough—so much so that Hudlar medical science was a almost complete stranger to surgery. If a patient could not be cured by medication very often it could not be cured at all, because surgery on that planet was impracticable if not downright impossible. But in Sector General, where pressure and gravity of any desired combination could be produced at a few minutes notice, Mannon and a few others had been nibbling at the edges of the hitherto impossible.
Conway watched him make a triangular incision in the incredibly tough tegument and clamp back the flap. Immediately a bright yellow, inverted cone of mist flicked into being above the operative field—a fine spray of blood under pressure escaping from the severed capillaries. A nurse quickly interposed a sheet of plastic between the opening and Mannon’s visor while another positioned a mirror which gave him an indirect view of the operative field. In four and a half minutes he had controlled the bleeding. He should have done it in two.
Mannon seemed to be reading Conway’s mind, because he said, “The first time was faster than this—I was thinking two or three moves ahead, you know how it is. But I found I was making incisions now that I shouldn’t have made until several seconds later. If it had happened once it would have been bad enough, but five times … ! I had to withdraw before I killed the patient there and then.
“And now,” he added in a voice thick with self-loathing, “I’m trying to be careful and the result will be the same.”
Conway remained silent.
“Such a piddling little growth, too,” Mannon went on. “So near the surface and a natural for the first attempt at Hudlar surgery. Simply cut away the growth, encase the three severed blood vessels in the area with plastic tubing, and the patient’s blood pressure and our special clamps should make a perfect seal until the veins regenerate in a few months. But this … ! Have you ever seen such a botched-up mess … !”
More than half of the growth, a grayish, spongy mass which seemed to be more than half vegetable, remained in position. Five major blood vessels in the area had been severed—two of necessity, the rest by “accident”—and encased in tubing. But these lengths of artificial vein were too short or insecurely clamped—or perhaps the movement of the heart had pulled one of the vessels partially out of its tube. The only thing which had saved the patient’s life had been Mannon’s insistence that it was not to be allowed to regain consciousness since the first operation. The slightest physical effort could have pulled one of those vessels free of its tubing and caused a massive internal hemorrhage and, with the tremendous pulse rate and pressure of the Hudlar species, death within a few minutes.
On O’Mara’s channel Conway said harshly, “Any echoes? Anything at all?”
“Nothing,” said O’Mara.
“This is ridiculous!” Conway burst out. “If there is an intelligence, disembodied or otherwise, it should possess the attributes—curiosity, the ability to use tools, and so on. Now this hospital is a large and interesting place, with no barriers we know of to the movements of the entity we are trying to find. Why then had it stayed in one place? Why didn’t it go prowling around Descartes? What makes it stay in this area? Is it frightened, or stupid, or disembodied even?
“There is little likelihood of finding a complex technology on Meatball,” Conway went on quickly, “but a good chance of them being well advanced in the philosophical sciences. If something physical boarded Descartes, there is a definite lower limit to the mass of an intelligent being …”
“If you want to ask questions of anyone, Doctor,” O’Mara said quietly, “I will throw a little of my weight behind them. But there isn’t much time.”
Conway thought for a moment, then said, “Thank you, sir. I’d like you to get Murchison for me. She’s in—”
“At a time like this,” said O’Mara in a dangerous voice, “he wants to call his …”
“She’s with Harrison at the moment,” said Conway. “I want to establish a physical connection between the Lieutenant and this theater, even though he has never been within fifty levels of the place. Would you ask her to ask him …”
It was a long, involved, many-sided question, designed to tell him how a small, intelligent life-form had reached this area without detection. It was also a stupid question because any intelligence which affected the minds of Earth-humans and e-ts alike could not have remained undetected with an empath like Prilicla around. Which left him back where he started with a nonmaterial something which refused, or was incapable of, moving beyond the environs of the theater.
“Harrison says he had lots of delusions during the trip back,” O’Mara’s voice sounded suddenly. “He says the ship’s doctor said this was normal considering all the dope he had in him. He also says he was completely out when he arrived here and doesn’t know how or where he came in. And now I suppose we contact Reception, Doctor. I’m patching you in, just in case I ask the wrong questions …”
Seconds later a slow, flat, translated voice which could have belonged to anything said, “Lieutenant Harrison was not processed in the usual way. Being a corpsman whose medical background was known in detail he was admitted to Service Lock Fifteen into the charge of Major Edwards …”
Edwards was not available, but his office promised O’Mara that they would have him in a few minutes.
All at once Conway felt like giving up. Lock Fifteen was too far away—a difficult, complicated journey involving three major changes of environment. For their hypothetical invader, who was also a stranger to the hospital, to find its way to this theater would have necessitated it taking mental control of someone and being carried. But if that was the case Prilicla would have detected its presence. Prilicla could detect anything which thought—from the smallest insect to the slow emanations of a mind deeply and totally unconscious. No living thing could shut its mind down completely and still be alive.
Which meant that the invader might not be alive!
A few feet distant Mannon had signaled for a nurse to stand by the pressure cock. A sudden return to Hudlar normal pressure would diminish the violence of any bleeding which might occur, but it would also make it impossible for Mannon to operate without heavy gloves. Not only that, the pressure increase would cause the operative field to subside within the opening, where movement transmitted from the nearby heart would make delicate work impossible. At present, despite the danger of a wrong incision, the complex of blood vessels was distended, separate and relatively motionless.
Suddenly it happened. Bright yellow blood spurted out, so violently that it hit Mannon’s visor with an audible slap. Driven by the patient’s enormous blood pressure and pulse rate the severed vein whipped about like a miniature unheld hose-pipe. Mannon got to it, lost it, tried again. The spurting became a thin, wavering spray and stopped. The nurse at the pressure cock relaxed visibly while the one at Mannon’s side cleaned his visor.
Mannon moved back slightly while the field was sucked clear. Through the visor his eyes glittered oddly in the sweating white mask of his face. Time was important now. Hudlars were tough, but there were limits—they could not stand decompression indefinitely. There would be a gradual movement of body fluid toward the opening in the tegument, a strain on vital organs in the vicinity
and an even greater increase in blood pressure. To be successful the operation could not last for much more than thirty minutes and more than half the time had gone merely in opening up the seat of the trouble. Even if the growth was removed, its removal entailed damage to underlying blood vessels which had to be repaired with great care before Mannon withdrew.
They all knew that speed was essential, but to Conway it seemed suddenly as if he was watching a film which was steadily being speeded up. Mannon’s hands were moving faster than Conway had ever seen them move before. And faster still …
“I don’t like this,” said O’Mara harshly. “It looks like he’s regained his confidence, but more likely that he’s ceased caring—about himself, that is. He still cares about the patient, obviously, even though he knows it hasn’t much chance. And the tragic thing about it is that it never did have much chance, Thornnastor tells me. If it hadn’t been for your hypothetical friend’s interference Mannon wouldn’t have worried too much about losing this patient—it would have been one of his very few failures. When he made that first slip it wrecked his self-confidence and now he’s—”
“Something made him slip,” said Conway firmly.
“You’ve tried convincing him of that, with what result?” the psychologist snapped back. He went on, “Prilicla is seriously agitated and its shakes are getting worse by the minute. But Mannon is, or was, a pretty stable type—I don’t think he’ll crack until after the operation. Though with these serious, dedicated types whose profession is their whole life it’s hard to say what might happen.”
“Edwards here,” said a new voice. “What is it?”
“Go ahead, Conway,” said the psychologist. “You ask the questions. Right now I’ve other things on my mind.”
The spongy growth had been lifted clear, but a great many small blood vessels had been severed to accomplish this and the job of repairing them would be much more difficult than anything which had gone before. Insinuating the severed ends into the tubing, far enough so that they would not simply squirm out again when circulation was restored, was a difficult, repetitious, nerve-wracking procedure.
