Futures Past (4 page)

  
"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 (he 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 that was embedded upside down in the patient —its bundle of rootlets fanned out to link up with 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 toward a barnacle that 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 that 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 that 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 that 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 low-gravity 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 that 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 sad sickly, "then there was no earlier attempt to cure the patient. Our heavy-gravity 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. ..."

  
Four ACCORDING to Prilicla their patient was, just barely, alive, and now that the barnacles were known to be the attacking organisms and not just surface eruptions, they and their coating must be removed as quickly as possible. Removal of the tendrils would require more delicate and time-consuming work, but the surface condition would respond to heat and, with the barnacles removed, the patient just might recover enough to be able to help Conway to help it. Pathology had already suggested methods for restarting its paralyzed life processes.

  
He would need at least fifty cutting torches operating simultaneously with high-pressure air hoses to blow the ash away. They would begin burning on the head, neck, breast and wing-muscle areas, freeing the patient of barnacle control of the brain, lungs and heart. If the heart was in a terminal condition emergency surgery would be necessary to bypass it—Murchison had already mapped out the arterial and venous processes in the area. And in case the patient twitched or began napping its wings, they would need the protection of heavy-duty suits.

  
But no—Prilicla, who would be monitoring the emotional radiation during the op, would need maximum protection. The others would have to dodge until it could be immobilized with pressors. If emergency surgery was necessary, heavy-duty suits were too cumbersome, anyway. As well, the communicator would have to be moved to a side compartment in case it was damaged, because the adjoining levels would have to be alerted and various specialist staff would have to be standing by.

  
While he gave the necessary orders Conway moved briskly but unhurriedly and his tone was quiet and confident. But all the time he had a vague but persistent feeling that he was saying and doing and, most of all, thinking all the wrong things.

  
O'Mara did not approve of his proposed line of treatment but, apart from asking whether Conway intended curing or barbecuing the patient, he did not interfere. He added that there was still no report from Torrance.

  
Finally they were ready to go. The maintenance technicians with cutting torches and air lines hissing—but directed away from the patient—were positioned around the head, neck and leading edges of the wings. Behind them waited the specialist and medical technicians with stimulants, a general purpose heart-lung machine and the bright, sterile tools of their trade. The doors to the side compartments were dogged open in case the patient revived too suddenly and they had to take cover. There was no logical reason for waiting any longer.

  
Conway gave the signal to begin only seconds before his communicator chimed and Murchison, looking disheveled and very cross, filled the screen.

  
"There has been a slight accident, an explosion," she said. "Our type two flew across the lab, damaged some test equipment and scared hell out of—"

  
"But it was dead," protested Conway. "They were both dead—Prilicla said so."

  
"It still is," said Murchison, "and it didn't fly exactly— it shot away from us. I'm not yet sure of the mechanics of the process, but apparently the thing produces gases in its intestinal tract which react explosively together, propelling it forward. Used in conjunction with its wings this would help it to escape fast-moving natural enemies like the barnacle. The gases must still have been present when I began work.

  
"There is a similar species, much smaller," she went on, "which is native to Earth. We studied the more exotic types of Earth fauna in preparation for the e-t courses. It was called a bombardier beetle and it-—"

  
"Doctor Conway!"

  
He swung away from the screen and ran into the main compartment. He did not need to be an empath to know that something was seriously wrong.

  
The team leader of the maintenance men was waving frantically and Prilicla, encased in its protective globe and supported by gravity milliners, was drifting above the man's head and trembling.

  
"Increasing awareness, friend Conway," reported the empath. "Suggesting rapidly returning consciousness. Feelings of fear and confusion."

  
Some of the confusion, thought Conway,
 
belongs to me. ... The maintenance man simply pointed.

  
Instead of the hard coating he had expected to see there was a black, oily, semi-liquid that flowed and rippled and dripped slowly on to the floor plating. As he watched the area where the flame was being applied, the stuff rolled away from one of the barnacles, which twitched and unfolded its wings. The wings flapped, slowly at first, and it began pulling free of the patient, drawing its long tendrils out of the bird until it was completely detached and it went blundering into the air.

  
"Kill the torches," said Conway urgently, "but cool it with the air hose. Try to harden that black stuff."

  
But the thick, black liquid would not harden. Once initiated by the heat the softening process was self-sustaining. The patient's neck, no longer, supported by solid material, slumped heavily on to the deck followed a few seconds later by the massive wings. The black pool around the patient widened and more and more of the barnacles struggled free to blunder about the compartment on wide, membraneous wings, trailing their tendrils behind them like long, fine plumes.

  
"Back everybody! Take cover, quickly!"

  
Their patient lay motionless and almost certainly dead, but there was nothing that Conway could do. Neither the maintenance men nor the medical technicians were protected against those fine, harmless-looking tendrils of the barnacles—only Prilicla in its transparent globe was safe there, and now there seemed to be hundreds of the things filling the air. He knew that he should feel badly about the patient, but somehow he did not. Was it simply delayed reaction or was there another reason?