Ambulance Ship

III

To reach the dining hall reserved for warm-bodied oxygen breathers they had to travel through two levels, none of which required protective suits, and a network of corridors crowded with entities which flapped, crawled, undulated and occasionally walked past them. They were met at the entrance by Prilicla who was carrying a folder of green path reports.

As they entered the last Earth-human table was being taken by a bunch of crab-like Melfans and a Tralthan-Melfans could adapt themselves to the low stools and the Tralthans did everything including sleep on their six elephantine feet. Prilicla spotted an empty table in the Kelgian area and flew across to claim it before the party of Corps maintenancemen could get there. Luckily it was beyond the range of their emotional radiation.

Conway began eagerly leafing through the reports once he saw that the Lieutenant was being shown by Murchison how to balance on the edge of a Kelgian chair within reach of the food he had ordered. But for once Brenner’s attention was not on the shapely pathologist. He was staring at Prilicla, his eyebrows almost lost in his hairline.

“Cinrusskins prefer to eat while hovering-they say it aids the digestion,” explained Murchison, and added, “The slipstream helps cool the soup, too.”

Prilicla maintained a stable hover while they concentrated on refuelling, breaking off only to pass around the reports. Finally Conway, feeling pleasantly distended, turned to the Cinrusskin.

“I don’t know how you managed it,” he said warmly. “When I want a fast report from Thornnastor the most he will let me do is just two places in the queue.”

Prilicla trembled at the compliment as it replied “I insisted, quite truthfully, that our patient was at the point of death.”

“But not,” said Murchison dryly, “that it has been in that condition for a very long time.”

“You’re sure of that?” asked Conway.

“I am now,” she answered seriously, tapping one of the reports as she spoke. “The indications are that the large punctured wound was inflicted by a meteorite collision some time after the disease, that is the barnacles and coating material were in position. The coating which flowed into and across the wound, effectively sealed it.

“As well,” she continued, “these tests show that a very complex chemical form of suspended animation-not just hypothermia was used and that it was applied organ by organ, almost cell by cell, by micro-injections of the required specifics. In a way you could think of it as if the creature had been embalmed before it was quite dead in an effort to prolong its life.”

“What about the missing legs or claws?” said Conway, “and the evidence of charring under the coating in the areas behind the wings? And the pieces of what seems to be a different kind of barnacle in those areas?”

“It is possible,” Murchison replied, “that the disease initially affected the being’s legs or claws, perhaps during its equivalent of nesting. The removal of the limbs and the evidence of charring you mention might have been early and unsuccessful attempts at curing the patient’s condition. Remember that virtually all of the creature’s body wastes were eliminated before the coating was applied. That is standard procedure before hibernation, anesthesia or major surgery.

The silence which followed was broken by the Lieutenant, who said, “Excuse me, I’m getting lost. This disease or growth, what exactly do we know about it?”

They knew that the outward symptoms of the disease were the barnacle-like growths, Murchison told him, which covered the patient’s tegument so completely that it could have been a suit of chain mail. It was still open to argument whether the barnacles were skin conditions which had sprouted rootlets or a subcutaneous condition with a barnacle-like eruption on the surface, but in either event they were held by a thick pencil of fine rootlets extending and subdividing to an unknown depth within the patient. They penetrated not only the subcutaneous tissue and underlying musculature, but practically all of the vital organs and central nervous systems. And the rootlets were hungry. There could be no doubt from the condition of the tissue underlying the barnacles that this was a severely wasting disease which was far advanced.

“It seems to me that you should have been called in earlier,” said Brenner, “and that the patient was sealed up just before it was due to die.”

Conway nodded and said, “But it isn’t hopeless. Some of our e-ts practice micro-surgery techniques which would enable them to excise the rootlets, even the ones which are tangled up in the nerve bundles. It is a very slow procedure, however, and there is the danger that when we revive the patient the disease will also be revived and that it might progress faster than the micro-surgeon. I think the answer is to learn as much as we possibly can about the disease before we do anything else.”

When they returned to the patient there was a message waiting from O’Mara to say that Torrance had left with the promise of preliminary reports on the two solar systems nearest to the find within three days. During those three days Conway expected to devise procedures which would remove the coating and barnacles from the patient, arrest the disease and initiate curative surgery so that the scoutship’s reports would be needed only to prepare proper accommodation for the patient’s convalescence.

During those three days, however, they got precisely nowhere.

The material which encased barnacles and patient alike could be drilled and chipped away with great difficulty and an enormous waste of time-the process resembled that of chipping out a fossil without inflicting damage, and this particular fossil was fifty feet long and over eighty from tip to tip of its partially folded wings. When Conway insisted that Pathology produce a faster method of stripping the patient he was told that the coating was a complex organic, that the specifics they had devised for dissolving it would produce large quantities of toxic gases-toxic to the patient as well as the attending physicians-and that the shell material of the barnacles would be instantly dissolved by this solvent and that it would not be good for the patient’s skin and underlying tissue, either. They went back to drilling and chipping.

Murchison, who was continually withdrawing micro-specimens from the areas affected by the rootlets, was informative but unhelpful.

“I’m not suggesting that you should abandon this one,” she said sympathetically, “but you should start thinking about it. In addition to the widespread tissue wastage, there is evidence of structural damage to the wing muscles-damage which may well have been selfinflicted-and I think the heart has ruptured. This will mean major surgical repairs as well as—”

“This muscle and heart damage,” said Conway sharply. “Could it have been caused by the patient trying to get out of its casing?” “It is possible but not likely,” she replied in a voice which reminded him that he was not talking to a junior intern and that past and present relationships could change with very little notice. “That coating is hard, but it is relatively very thin and the leverage of the patient’s wings is considerable. I would say that the heart and muscle damage occurred before the patient was encased.”

“I’m sorry if began Conway.

“There is also the fact,” she went on coldly, “that the barnacles are clustered thickly about the patient’s head and along the spine. Even with our tissue and nerve regeneration techniques, the patient may never be able to think or move itself even if we are successful in returning it to a technically living state.”

“I hadn’t realized,” said Conway dully, “that it was as serious as that. But there must be something we can do He tried to pull his face muscles into a smile. “… if only to preserve Brenner’s illusions about the miracle-workers of Sector General.”

Brenner had been looking from one to the other, obviously wondering whether this was a spirited professional discussion or the beginning of some kind of family fight. But the Lieutenant was tactful as well as observant. He said, “I would have given up a long time ago.

Before either of them could reply the communicator chimed and Chief of Pathology Thornnastor was framed in the screen.

“My department,” said the Tralthan, “has worked long and diligently to discover a method of removing the coating material by chemical means, but in vain. The material is, however, affected by intense heat. At high temperatures the surface crumbles, the ashy deposit can be scraped or blown away and heat again applied. The process can be continued safely until the coating is very thin, after which it could be removed in large sections without harm to the patient.”

Conway obtained the temperature and thickness figures, thanked Thornnastor and then used the communicator to call the maintenance section for cutting torches and operators. He had not forgotten Murchison’s doubts regarding the advisability of attempting a cure, but he had to go on trying. He did not know that the great, diseased bird would end as a winged vegetable, and he would not know until they knew everything possible about the disease which was affecting it.

Because the heat treatment was untried they began near the tail, where the vital organs were deeply buried and where the area had already been disturbed, presumably by the efforts of their medical predecessors.

After only half an hour’s continuous burning they had their first stroke of luck in three days. They discovered a barnacle which was embedded upside down in the patient-its bundle of rootlets fanned out to link up with the other barnacles, but a few of them curved down and past the rim of its shell to enter the patient. The surface rootlet network was clearly visible as the flame of the torch burned the rootlet material into a fine, incandescent web. One of the briefly incandescent rootlets pointed towards a barnacle which was larger and differently shaped.

Patiently they painted both objects and their immediate surroundings with the cutting torches, brushing away the crumbling layers of coating until it was wafer thin. They cracked it, carefully peeled back the remains of the coating and lifted away two perfect specimens.

“They are dead,” asked Conway, “not just dormant?”

“They are dead,” said Prilicla.

“And the patient?”

“Life is still present, friend Conway, but the radiation is extremely weak, and diffuse.”

Conway studied the area bared by the removal of the two specimens. Beneath the first was a small, deep hollow which followed the contours of the reversed shell. The underlying tissues showed a high degree of compression, and the few rootlets in evidence were much too weak and fine to have held the barnacle so tightly against the patient. Something or somebody had pressed the barnacle into position with considerable force.

The second, and different, specimen had been held only by the coating, apparently-it did not possess rootlets. But it did possess wings folded into long slits in its carapace and so, on closer inspection, did the first type.

Prilicla alighted beside them, trembling slightly and erratically in the fashion which denoted excitement. It said, “You will have noticed that these are two entirely different species, friend Conway. Both are large, winged insects of the type which require a lowgravity planet with a thick air envelope-not unlike Cinruss. It is possible that the first type is a predator parasite and that the second is a natural enemy, introduced by a third party in an attempt to cure the patient.”

Conway nodded. “It would explain why type one turned on to its back when approached by type two …

“I hope,” said Murchison apologetically, “that your theory is flexible enough to accept another datum.” She had been scraping persistently at a piece of coating which was still adhering to a smaller slit in the barnacle. “The coating material was not applied by a third party, it is a body secretion of type one.

“If you don’t mind,” she added, “I’ll take both of these beasties to Pathology for a long, close look.”

For several minutes after she left nobody spoke. Prilicla began to tremble again and, judging by the expression of Brenner’s face, it was at something the officer was feeling. It was the Lieutenant who broke the silence.

“If the parasites are responsible for the coating,” he said sickly, “then there was no earlier attempt to cure the patient. Our heavygravity patient was probably attacked on the light-gravity planet of the flying barnacles, they sank in their rootlets or tendrils, paralyzed its muscles and nervous system and encased it in a … a shell of slowly feeding maggots when it wasn’t even dead—”

“A little more clinical detachment, Lieutenant,” said Conway sharply. “You’re bothering Prilicla. And while something like that may have happened, there are still a few awkward facts which don’t fit. That depression under the inverted barnacle still bothers me.”

“Maybe it sat on one of them,” said Brenner angrily, his feeling of revulsion temporarily overcoming his manners. “And I can understand why its friends dumped the patient into space-there was nothing else they could do.”

He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry, Doctor. But is there anything else that you can do?”

“There is something,” said Conway grimly, “that we can try …