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It took only a few minutes to piece together what had hap-pened. Two of the
hammock's supports had broken due to the lateral shock when the ship had
fallen they had been designed to withstand vertical G forces, not horizontal
ones and the hammock had swung downward throwing its occupant against the
suddenly horizontal wall. There was an area of subcuta-neous bleeding where
the
DCMH's head had struck, but no sign of a fracture. The blow had not been
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fatal, but it had been enough to render the being unconscious or dazed until
the highly
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Sector%20General.txt lethal vapor from the damaged reservoir had invaded its
lungs. This one had been doubly unlucky, Conway thought as he carefully drew
it the rest of the way from its hammock and extended his examination. There
was one wound, the usual one, at the base of its spine. Conway's scalp
prickled at the thought that the attacker had been inside the dormitory and
had struck even at a victim in its hammock.
What sort of creature was it? Small rather than large, he thought. Vicious.
And fast. He looked quickly around the dormitory, then returned his attention
to the cadaver.
"That's unusuaJ," he said aloud. "This one has what seems to be a small
quantity of partially digested food in its stomach." "You think that's
unusual."
Murchison said in a baffled tone. "The sample containers from the storage deck
contain food. Liquid, a powdery solid, and some fibrous material, but all
high-grade nutrient suited to the metabolisms of all three life-forms. What
was the excuse for cannibalism? And why
OC-w I v-ti vji_iNi_nr\i_
ivi the blazes was everybody starving? The whole deck is packed with food!"
"Are you sure ?" began Conway, when he was cut off by a voice in his phones
which was so distorted that he could not tell who was speaking.
"What is that thing?"
"Captain?" he said doubtfully.
"Yes, Doctor." The voice was still distorted, but recogniz-able.
"You you've found the criminal?"
"No, Doctor," Fletcher replied harshly. "Another victim. Definitely another
victim "
"It's moving, sir!" Dodds voice broke in.
"Doctor," the Captain went on, "can you come at once. You too, ma'am."
Fletcher was crouched inside the entrance of what had to be the ship's Control
Deck, using the cutting torch on the tangle of wreckage which almost filled
the space between the ceiling and floor. The place was a shambles, Conway saw
by the light coming through the open hatch above them and the few strips of
emergency lighting which were still operating. Practically all of the
ceiling-mounted equipment had torn free in the fall; ruptured piping and
twisted, jagged-edged supporting brackets projected into the space above the
control couches on the deck opposite.
The control couches had been solidly mounted and had remained in position, but
they were empty, their restraining webbing hanging loose except for one. This
was a very large, deep cupola around which the other couches were closely
grouped, and it was occupied.
Conway began to climb toward it, but the foothold he had been using gave way
suddenly and a stub of broken-off piping dug him painfully in the side
without, fortunately, rupturing his suit.
"Careful, damn it!" Fletcher snapped. "We don't need an-other casualty."
"Don't bite my head off, Captain," Conway said, then laughed nervously at his
unfortunate choice of words.
He cringed inwardly as he climbed toward the central cupola in the wake of the
Captain, thinking that the crew on duty and those in the
Dormitory Deck had had to find a way through this mess, and in great haste
because of the toxic vapor flooding through the ship. They were much smaller
than Earth-humans, of course, but even so they must have been badly cut by
that tangle of metal. In fact, they had been badly cut, with the exceptions of
the
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DCMH in the dormitory and the new life-form above them, neither of whom had
attempted to escape.
"Careful, Doctor," the Captain said.
An idea which had been taking shape at the back of his mind dissolved.
Irritably, Conway said, "What can it do except look at me and twitch its
stumps?"
The casualty hung sideways in its webbing against the lower lip of the cupola,
a great fleshy, elongated pear shape perhaps four times the mass of an adult
human. The narrow end ter-minated in a large, bulbous head mounted on a walrus
neck which was arched downward so that the two big, widely spaced eyes could
regard the rescuers. Conway could count seven of the feebly twitching stumps
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Sector%20General.txt projecting through gaps in the webbing, and there were
probably others he could not see.
He braced himself against a control console which had re-mained in place and
took out his scanner, but delayed beginning the examination until Murchison,
who had just arrived, could climb up beside him. Then he said firmly, "We will
have to remain with this casualty overnight, Captain. Please instruct
Lieutenant
Haslam to evacuate all the other casualties on the next trip, and to bring
down the litter stripped of nonessential life-support equipment so that it
will accommodate this new casualty. We also need extra air tanks for ourselves
and oxygen for die casualty, heaters, lifting gear, and webbing, and any-thing
else you think we need."
For a long moment the Captain was silent, then he said, "You heard the Doctor,
Haslam."
Fletcher did not speak to them while they were examining the new casualty
other than to warn them when a piece of loose wreckage was about to fall. The
Captain did not have to be told that a wide path would have to be cleared
between the big control cupola and the open hatch if the litter was to be
guided in and out again carrying the large alien. It was likely to be a long,
difficult job lasting most of the coming night, made more
SCO I Utt difficult by ensuring that none of the debris struck Murchison,
Conway, or their patient. But the two medics were much too engrossed in their
examination to worry about the falling debris.
"I won't attempt to classify this life-form," Conway said nearly an hour later
when he was summing up their findings for Doctor Prilicla. "There are, or
were, ten limbs distributed laterally, of varying thicknesses judging by the
stumps.
The sole exception is the one on the underside which is thicker than any of
the others. The purpose of these missing limbs, the number and type of
manipulatory and ambulatory appendages, is unknown.
"The brain is large and well developed," he want on, looking aside at
Murchison for corroboration, "with a small, separate lobe with a high mineral
content in the cell structure suggesting one of the V classifications "
"A wide-range telepath?" Prilicla broke in excitedly.
"I'd say not," Conway replied. "Telepathy limited to its own species, perhaps,
or possibly simple empathy. This is borne out by the-fact that its ears are
well developed and the mouth, although very small and toothless, has shown
itself capable of modulating sounds. A being who talks and listens cannot be a
wide-range telepath, since the telepathic faculty is supplemented by a spoken
language. But the being did not display agitation on seeing us, which could
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