Birthright

“I did learn that it's a female, and her name is ... well, it's not really pronounceable, but the closest human

analog is Leonora. And no, she's not pregnant.” “They told you that?”

“Not in so many words, but I gather that she's only recently reached childbearing age.” “Then why in the name of pluperfect hell is she their sole ambassador to a race they're at war with?” demanded Darlinski.

“How should I know?” said Hammett. “We've got Psychology working on it, but they've got even less to go on than you do.”

“I hope you don't expect me to feel sorry for Psychology.” “Nope. Muff this one and you can spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for you and me.” “Very funny,” growled Darlinski.

“No,” corrected Hammett. “Very serious. I'd rather have you kill her by accident than have her just lie there and die for lack of treatment. I don't care if you begin by ripping her heart out with your bare hands, but you've got to do something. Is there anybody I can send to assist you?” Darlinski roared a negative and cut the intercom off. Then he walked back to the Pnathian and examined her again, armed with the knowledge that she was a female. This implied some bodily cavity that would be absent in a male, but as he went over her, inch by inch, he concluded that the only orifices on her entire body were the four pseudo-mouths on her head. One was obviously for breathing, which meant that of the remaining trio, one was for ingestion, one for sexual congress, and one was of undetermined properties. And, for the life of him, he still couldn't figure out which was which. He glanced at a clock, and realized that he'd been on his feet for more than twenty hours and would shortly be in a state of near-collapse. That meant he had to get something down to Pathology that they could analyze while he slept. He ordered a pair of nurses into the room and prepared to take small skin scrapings from each of the patient's tentacular appendages, another scraping from the trunk of the body, and smears from each of the three nonbreathing orifices. Careful as he was, he noticed that on the last scraping, a small amount of pinkish fluid began oozing out. It had to be blood, and he immediately placed it on a slide and sat back to see whether or not the bleeding would stop by itself. It did, almost immediately, and he instructed one of the nurses to take everything down to the Path lab.

“Get me a report within six hours, hunt me up a room, see that it has a hot shower, and have someone bring me some breakfast and a stimulant in five hours.” So stating, he waited until he'd been assigned some nearby sleeping quarters, and, with a sigh, put them to good if brief use.

He awoke feeling no better rested, and within a matter of minutes was standing next to Jennings of Pathology as they took turns viewing slides in the latter's lab. “Not that having very few red corpuscles proves a damned thing,” Jennings was saying. “It could, of