Birthright

there for six hours.”

“Just tell me what's going on,” said Hammett. “Seems this joker's buddies back on Pnath are claiming we've either kidnapped or killed it. I gather it was here on a peacemaking mission—a very private little war the powers-that-be didn't see fit to tell us about—and evidently they think we're doing them dirt. According to the media, a tiny skirmish is about to become a full-fledged war unless we can convince the Pnathians, or Pnaths, or whatever they call themselves, that we're acting in good faith.” “Have any of those geniuses down at Central thought to ask for a Pnathian medic?” asked Darlinski. “Yep. But the Pnathians think we've killed or brainwashed this one and they won't send any others until it's returned whole and healthy.”

“Beautiful,” said Darlinski. “What if the damned thing dies on me?” “Well,” chuckled the pathologist, “I guess the Navy can always use another bedpan scrubber. Ta-ta.” The intercom switched off.

Hammett waited until Darlinski's stream of curses had left him momentarily breathless, then walked over to the Pnathian ambassador.

“I didn't realize it was going to turn into this kind of incident,” he said. “Let's get back to work.” “What do you mean, ‘Let's?'” snapped Darlinski. “You wouldn't know a tumor from a wart. Go on back to your goddamned office and worry about how to pay for next week's heating bill.” He turned back to the patient, and Hammett, shrugging, left and closed the door very carefully behind him.

Darlinski took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at the notes he had scribbled down during the past few hours. They weren't much. The Pnathian breathed an oxygen-nitrogen compound, but there was no way of telling whether a dose of forty percent oxygen would revive it or kill it; ditto for a ninety percent nitrogen dose. Its skin was extremely fine-textured, but he didn't dare take a sample, or even a scraping; for all he knew, the Pnathians, or at least this particular one, were chronic hemophiliacs. And for that reason he couldn't take a sample of the being's blood, either. Nor could he even make a guess about the gravity of the Pnathian's home world. It had three legs, allowing it a tripodal stance, which implied a heavier gravity; but the structure seemed much more fragile than a heavier gravity would allow. And, of course, he didn't dare X-ray it for fear of a fatal, or at least terribly adverse, reaction.

There were no hands or arms as such, but instead a trio of tubular appendages, all extremely flexible, not quite tentacles but far from hands. He tried to figure out what function they served, but couldn't. Obviously, the race was intelligent, and had developed the machinery of space travel and war, but when he tried to imagine the control panel of one of their ships, his mind came up blank. As for the head, it extended on a long thin stalk of a neck and contained not one but four orifices that might or might not have been mouths. They were arranged perpendicular to the ground, and the third