Read Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations Online

Authors: James White

Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (57 page)

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
8.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Here the sea predators, large and small, tore at each other and at the periphery of the great land beasts, stirring the thick, turgid ocean into yellow foam streaked and stained with red. It was in an area like this, where Conway had judged the strata beast’s need for protection had been greatest, that he had found the leech-like SRJHs and where, as soon as he could possibly manage it, he must look for another.
But this time he would have lots of willing and specialized help.
Every day there was a message from O’Mara, different only in the mounting impatience evident between the lines. Prilicla and the Chief Psychologist were having no success with the Drambon doctor and had come to the conclusion that it used one of the exotic visiotactile languages which were virtually impossible to reproduce without a detailed sight-touch vocabulary.
 
 
The first expedition to the coast was in the nature of a rehearsal—at least, it started out that way. Camsaug and Surreshun took the lead, wobbling and wheeling along the uneven sea bed like a pair of great organic doughnuts. They were flanked by two crab-like Melfans who were easily capable of scuttling along twice as fast as the Drambons could roll, while a thirty-foot scaled and tentacled Chalder swam ponderously above them ready to discourage local predators with its teeth, claws and great bony club of a tail—although in Conway’s opinion one look from any one of its four
extensible eyes would be enough to discourage anything with the slightest will to live.
Conway, Edwards, and Garoth traveled in one of the Corps’s surface cruisers, a vehicle capable not only of moving over any conceivable topography but of going over, through or under the sea as well as being able to hover for a limited period in the air. They kept just far enough in the rear to keep everyone else in sight.
They were headed toward a dead section of coast, a deep strip of the strata beast which Surreshun’s people had killed to give themselves more protected rolling space. They had accomplished this by lobbing a series of very dirty atomic bombs ten miles inland and then waiting while the living coastline stopped killing and eating and drinking, and the coastline predators lost interest in the dead meat and left.
Fallout did not concern the rollers because the prevailing wind blew inland. But Conway had deliberately selected a spot which was only a few miles from a stretch of coast which was still very much alive, so that with any luck their first examination might turn out to be something more than an autopsy.
With the departure of the predators the sea’s plant life had moved in. On Drambo the division between plant and animal life was rarely sharp and all animals were omnivorous. They had to travel along the coast for nearly a mile before finding a mouth that was not either closed too tightly or too badly overgrown to allow entry, but the time was not wasted because Camsaug and Surreshun were able to point out large numbers of dangerous plants that even the heavily armored e-ts should avoid whenever possible.
The practice of extraterrestrial medicine was greatly simplified by the fact that the illnesses and infections of one species were not transmittable to another. But this did not mean that poisons or other toxic material secreted by e-t animals and plants could not kill, and on the Drambon sea bed the vegetation was particularly vicious. Several varieties were covered with poisoned spines and one acted as if it had delusions of being a vegetable octopus.
The first usable mouth looked like an enormous cavern. When they followed the rollers inside the vehicle’s spotlights showed pallid vegetation waving and wriggling slowly to the limit of vision. Surreshun and Camsaug were rolling out unsteady figure-eights on the densely overgrown floor and apologizing for the fact that they could not take the party any farther without risking being stopped.
“We understand,” said Conway, “and thank you.”
As they moved deeper into the enormous mouth the vegetation became sparse and more pallid, revealing large areas of the creature’s tissue. It looked coarse and fibrous and much more like vegetable rather than animal material, even allowing for the fact that it had died several years earlier. The roof began suddenly to press down on them and the forward lights showed the first serious barrier, a tangle of long, tusk-like teeth so thick that they looked like the edge of a petrified forest.
One of the Melfans was the first to report. It said, “I cannot be absolutely sure until Pathology checks my specimens, Doctor Conway, but the indications are that the creature’s teeth are vegetable rather than animal osseous material. They grow thickly on both the upper and lower surfaces of the mouth and to the limit of our visibility. The roots grow transversely so that the teeth are free to bend forward and backward under steady pressure. In the normal position they are angled sharply toward the outer orifice and act as a killing barrier to large predators rather than as a means of grinding them into small pieces.
“From the position and condition of several large cadavers in the area,” the Melfan went on, “I would say that the creature’s ingestion system is very simple. Sea water containing food animals of all sizes is drawn into a stomach or prestomach. Small animals slip through the teeth while large ones impale themselves, whereupon the inward current and the struggles of the animal concerned cause the teeth to bend inward and release it. I assume that the small animals are no problem but that the big ones could do serious damage to the stomach before the digestive system neutralizes them, so they have to be dead before they reach the stomach.”
Conway directed the spotlight toward the area containing the Melfan and saw it wave one of its mandibles. He said, “That sounds reasonable, Doctor. It wouldn’t surprise me if the digestive processes are very slow indeed—in fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the creature is more vegetable than animal. An organism of normal flesh, blood, bone and muscle of this size would be too heavy to move at all. But it moves, and does everything else, very slowly …” He broke off and narrowed the beam for maximum penetration, then went on, “You had better get aboard so we can burn a way through those teeth.”
“No need, Doctor,” said the Melfan. “The teeth have decayed and are quite soft and brittle. You can simply drive through them and we will follow.”
Edwards allowed the cruiser to sink to the floor, then moved it forward at a comfortable scuttling pace for Melfans. Hundreds of the long, discolored plant teeth snapped and toppled slowly through the cloudy water before they were suddenly in the clear.
“If the teeth are a specialized form of plant life,” said Conway thoughtfully, “they occupied a very sharply defined area, which suggests that someone is responsible for planting them.”
Grunting assent, Edwards checked to see that everyone had come through the tunnel they had just made, then he said, “The channel is widening and deepening again, and I can see another presumably specialized form of plant life. Big, isn’t it? There’s another. They’re all over the place.”
“This is far enough,” said Conway. “We don’t want to lose sight of the way out.”
Edwards shook his head. “I can see openings on both sides just like this one. If the place is a stomach, and it looks big enough, there are several inlets.”
Angry suddenly, Conway said, “We know that there are hundreds of these mouths in this dead section alone and the number of stomachs is anybody’s guess—great, flat, hollow caverns miles across if that radar isn’t telling fluorescent lies. We aren’t even
nibbling
at the problem!”
Edwards made a sympathetic noise and pointed ahead. “They look like stalactites that have gone soft in the middle. I wouldn’t mind taking a closer look.”
Even the Hudlar went out to have a closer look at the great, sharply curved pillars which supported the roof. Using their portable analyzers they were able to establish that the pillars were a part of the strata beast’s musculature and not, as they had earlier thought, another form of plant life—although the surface of all the muscular supports in the area were covered with something resembling outsize seaweed. The blisters were nearly three feet across and looked about ready to burst. A Melfan taking a specimen of the underlying muscle accidentally touched one and it did burst, triggering off about twenty others in the vicinity. They released a thick, milky liquid which spread rapidly and dissolved in the surrounding water.
The Melfan made untranslatable noises and scuttled backward.
“What’s wrong?” said Conway sharply. “Is it poisonous?”
“No, Doctor. There is a strong acid content but it is not immediately
harmful. If you were a water breather you would say that it stinks. But look at the effect on the muscle.”
The great pillar of muscle rooted firmly to both floor and roof was quivering, its sharp curve beginning to straighten out.
“Yes,” said Conway briskly, “this supports our theory about the creature’s method of ingestion. But now I think we should return to
Descartes
—this area may not be as dead as we thought.”
Specialized teeth plants served as a filter and killing barrier to food drawn into the creature’s stomach. Other symbiotic plants growing on the muscle pillars released a secretion which caused them to stiffen, expand the stomach, and draw in large quantities of food-bearing water. Presumably the secretion also served to dissolve the food, digest it for assimilation through the stomach wall or by other specialized plants—they had taken enough specimens for Thornnastor to be able to work out the digestive mechanism in detail. When the power of the digestive secretion had been diluted by the food entering the stomach their effect on the muscles diminished, allowing the pillars to partially collapse again and expel undigested material.
Blisters were beginning to rupture off the other pillars now. By itself that did not mean that the beast was alive, only that a dead muscle could still respond to the proper stimulus. But the cavern roof was being pushed up and water was flowing in again.
“I agree, Doctor,” said Edwards, “let’s get out of here. But could we leave by a different mouth—we might learn something from a stretch of new scenery.”
“Yes,” said Conway, with the uncomfortable feeling that he should have said no. If dead muscles could twitch, what other forms of involuntary activity were possible to the gigantic carcass? He added, “You drive, but keep the cargo hatch and personnel lock open—I’ll stay outside with the e-ts …”
A few minutes later Conway was hanging onto a handy projection as the vehicle followed the e-ts into a different mouth opening. He hoped it was a mouth and not a connection with something deeper inside the beast, because Edwards reported that it was curving toward a live area of coast. But before the lowering temperature of his feet could affect his speech centers enough for him to order them back the way they had come, there was an interruption.
“Major Edwards, stop the cruiser, please,” said one of the Melfans. “Doctor Conway, down here. I think I have found a dead … colleague.”
It was a Drambon SRJH, no longer transparent but milky and shriveled with a long, incised wound traversing its body, drifting and bumping along the floor.
“Thornnastor will be pleased with you, friend,” said Conway enthusiastically. “And so will O’Mara and Prilicla. Let’s get it aboard with the other specimens. Oh, I’m not a water breather, but …”
“It doesn’t,” the Melfan replied to the unspoken question. “I’d say that it was too recently dead to be offensive.”
The Chalder came sweeping back, its tentacles gripped the dead SRJH and transferred it to the refrigerated specimen compartment, then it returned to its position. A few seconds later one flat, toneless, translated word rasped in their receivers.
“Company.”
Edwards directed all his lights ahead to show a fighting, squirming menagerie practically filling the throat ahead. Conway identified two kinds of large sea predators who had obviously been able to batter a way through the brittle teeth, several smaller ones, about ten SRJHs and a few large-headed, tentacled fish that he had never seen before. It was impossible to tell at first which were fighting which or even if it mattered to the beings concerned.
Edwards dropped the vehicle to the floor. “Back inside! Quickly!”
Half-running, half-swimming toward the vehicle, Conway envied the underwater mobility of the Melfans so much that it hurt. He overtook the Hudlar who had the jaws of a big predator locked on its carapace. Just above him one of the new life-forms had an SRJH wrapped around it, the Drambon doctor already turning red as it treated its patient in the only way it knew how. There was a deep, reverberating clang as another predator charged the cruiser, smashing two of their four lights.
“Into the cargo hold!” Edwards shouted hoarsely. “We’ve no time to fiddle about with personnel locks!”
“Get off me, you fool,” said the Hudlar with the predator on its back. “I’m inedible.”
“Conway, behind you!”
Two big predators were coming at him along the bottom while the Chalder was shooting in from the flank. Suddenly there was a Drambon doctor undulating rapidly between the leading predator and Conway. It barely touched the beast but the predator went into a muscular spasm so violent that parts of its skeleton popped white through the skin.
So you can
kill as
well as cure, thought Conway gratefully as he tried
to avoid the second predator. The Chalder arrived then and with a swipe of its armored tail cleared the Hudlar’s back while simultaneously its enormous maw opened and crashed shut on the second predator’s neck.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
8.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Allegiance by Trevor Corbett
Wild Boys - Heath by Melissa Foster
Stand Your Ground by William W. Johnstone
The Blue Woods by Nicole Maggi
Baseball's Best Decade by Conklin, Carroll
Unbridled by Beth Williamson
Relentless by Brian Garfield
Diversion 1 - Diversion by Eden Winters
Blood Revealed by Tracy Cooper-Posey