Prostho Plus (3 page)

Something else occurred to him. "Miss Galland!" She sat up sleepily. "Since these creatures don't use sound to talk with, they probably don't associate it with communication at all!"

"Have you stayed up all night, Doctor?" she inquired solicitously, "You must be tired."

"Listen to me! We can plan our escape, and they won't realize what we're doing. If I can distract the guard's attention—"

She came alive. "Now I follow you. We could have telephoned long ago, if... but how can we get him to—"

He explained. They worked it out in detail while he poured thick jel around the wax and vibrated the cup. She slowly opened the windows, then set up a chair in front of one and sat down. One agile flip could tumble her into the back lot—if the guard were off-guard.

The work continued. The guards changed again, and the new one did not realize that the window was open. Dillingham poured melted gold into the inverted hollows of the final mould. The alien's attention was taken up by the sight of the hot metal; he knew that was dangerous.

"Now," Dillingham cried, as he plunged the hot cast into cold water. Steam puffed up, bringing the guard to his feet—and Miss Galland was gone.

Dillingham finished with a flourish. "How's that for a set of castings!" he cried. "Not to mention a slick escape," he added as the guard turned to discover what had happened. "The police will be here within half an hour."

The alien had been tricked, but he was no fool. He wasted no time in a futile chase after the girl. He pointed the prism at Dillingham, fired one warning beam that blasted the wall beside him, and gestured towards the door.

Two blocks away they came to an overgrown lot. Hidden within the thick brush was a shining metal cylinder, large enough to hold several men.

"Now wait a minute!" Dillingham exclaimed as a port swung open. But already he was coming to understand that the clever alien captain had anticipated this situation also, and had come prepared.

The cooling onlays burned his hand. Perhaps the aliens had never intended to let the Earth-dentist go. If they needed help once, why not again, during the long voyage in space? He had demonstrated his proficiency, and by his trick to free Miss Galland he had forfeited any claim to mercy they might have entertained. The captain meant to have his restorations, and the job would be finished even if it had to be done en route to—

The where? The North Nebula?

Dr. Dillingham, Earth's first spacefaring prosthodontist, was about to find out.

The Enen—for Dr. Dillingham preferred the acronym to "North Nebula Humanoid Species"—rushed up and chewed out a message-stick with machine-like dispatch. He handed it to Dillingham and stood by anxiously.

This was an alien world, and he was alone among aliens, but this was his laboratory. He was master, in his restricted fashion, and the Enens treated him with flattering deference. In fact he felt more like king than captive.

He popped the stick into the hopper of the transcoder. "Emergency," the little speaker said. "Only you can handle this, Doctor!"

"You'll have to be more specific, Holmes," he said, and watched the transcoder type this on to another stick. Since the Enens had no spoken language, and he had not learned to decipher their tooth-dents visually, the transcoder was the vital link in communication.

The names he applied to the Enens were facetious. These galactics had no names in their own language, and comprehended his humour in this regard no more than had his patients on distant Earth. But at least they were industrious folk, and very clever at physical science. It was surprising that they were so backward in dentistry.

The Enen read the translation and put it between his teeth for a hurried footnote. It was amazing, Dillingham thought, how effectively they could flex their jaws for minute variations in depth and slant. Compared to this, the human jaw was a clumsy portcullis.

The message went back through the machine. "It's a big toothache that no one can cure. You must come."

"Oh, come now, Watson," Dillingham said, deeply flattered. "I've been training your dentists for several months now, and they're experienced and intelligent specialists. They know their maxillaries from their mandibulars. As a matter of fact, some of them are a good deal more adept now than I, except in the specific area of metallic restorations. Surely—"

But the Enen grabbed the stick before any more could be imprinted by the machine's chattering jaws. "Doctor—this is an
alien.
It's the son of a high muck-a-muck of Gleep." The terms, of course, were the ones he had programmed to indicate any ruling dignitary of any other planet. He wondered whether he would be well advised to substitute more serious designations before someone caught on. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would see about it. "You, Doctor, are our only practising exodontist."

Ah—now it was coming clear. He was a dentist from a far planet, ergo he must know all about off-world dentition. The Enen's naďve faith was touching. Well, if this were a job they could not handle, he could at least take a look at it. The "alien" could hardly have stranger dentition than the Enens had themselves, and success might represent a handsome credit towards his eventual freedom. It would certainly be more challenging than drilling his afternoon class in Applications of Supercolloid.

"I'm pretty busy with that new group of trainees..." he said. This was merely a dodge to elicit more information, since the Enens tended to omit important details. Their notions of importance differed here and there from his own.

"The muck-a-muck has offered fifty pounds of frumpstiggle for this one service," the Enen replied.

Dillingham whistled, and the transcoder dutifully printed the translation. Frumpstiggle was neither money nor merchandise. He had never been able to pin down exactly what it was, but for convenience he thought of it as worth its exact weight in gold: $35 per ounce, $560 per pound. The Enens did not employ money as such, but their avid barter for frumpstiggle seemed roughly equivalent. His commission on fifty pounds would amount to a handsome dividend, and would bring his return to Earth that much closer.

"Very well, Holmes. Bring in the patient."

The Enen became agitated. "The high muck-a-muck's family can't leave the planet. You must go to Gleep."

He had half expected something of this sort. The Enens gallivanted from planet to planet and system to system with dismaying nonchalance. Dillingham had not yet become accustomed to the several ways in which they far excelled Earth technology, nor to the abrupt manner of their transactions. True, he owed his presence here to an oral injury of one of their space captains, who had simply walked into the nearest dental office for service, liked what he found, and brought the dentist home. But there was a difference between knowing and
accepting.

Dillingham was in effect the property of the Enens—he who had dreamed only of conventional retirement in Florida. He was no intrepid spaceman, no seeker of fortune, and would never have chosen such unsettling galactic intercourse. But now that the choice had been made for him—

"I'll pack my bag," he said.

Gleep turned out to be a water world. The ship splashed down beside a floating way station, and they were transferred to a tank-like amphibian vehicle. It rolled into the tossing ocean and paddled along somewhat below the surface.

Dillingham had read somewhere that intelligent life could not evolve in water, because of the inhibiting effect of the liquid medium upon the motion of specialized appendages. Certainly the fish of Earth had never amounted to much.

How could primitive swimmers hope to engage in interstellar commerce?

Evidently that particular theory was erroneous, elsewhere in the galaxy. Still, he wondered just how the Gleeps had circumvented the rapid-motion barrier. Did they live in domes under the ocean?

He hoped the patient would not prove to be too alien. Presumably it had teeth—but that might be the least of the problems. Fortunately he could draw on whatever knowledge the Enens had, and he had also made sure to bring along a second transcoder keyed to Gleep. It was awkward to carry two machines, but too much could be lost in retranslation if he had to get the Gleep complaints relayed through the Enens.

A monstrous fish-shape loomed beyond the porthole. The thing spied the sub, advanced, and oped a cavernous maw. "Look out!" Dillingham yelled.

The Enen glanced indifferently at the message-stick and chomped a casual reply. "Everything is in order, Doctor."

"But a leviathan is about to engulf us!"

"Naturally. That's a Gleep."

Dillingham stared out, stunned. No wonder the citizens couldn't leave the planet! It was a matter of physics, not social convention.

The vessel was already inside the colossal mouth, and the jaws were closing. "You—you mean this is the patient?" But he already had his answer. Damn those little details the Enens forgot to mention. A whale!

The mouth was shut now and the headlight of the sub revealed encompassing mountains of flexing flesh. The treads touched land—probably the tongue—and took hold. A minute's climb brought them into a great domed air chamber.

They halted beside what reminded him of the white cliffs of Dover. The hatch sprang open and the Enens piled out.

None of them seemed concerned about the possibility that the creature might involuntarily swallow, so Dillingham put that notion as far from his mind as he was able.

"This is the tooth," the Enen's message said. The driver consulted a map and pointed to a solid marble boulder.

Dillingham contemplated it with awe. The tooth stood about twelve feet high, counting only the distance it projected from the spongy gingival tissue. Much more would be below, of course.

"I see," he said, able to think of nothing more pertinent at the moment. He looked at the bag in his hand, that contained an assortment of needle-pointed probes, several ounces of instant amalgam, and sundry additional staples. In the sub was a portable drill with a heavy-duty needle attachment that could excavate a cavity a full inch deep.

Well, they
had
described it as a "big" toothache. He just hadn't been alert.

The Enens brought forth a light extensible ladder and leaned it against the tooth. They set his drill and transcoders beside it. "Summon us when you're finished," their parting message said.

Dillingham felt automatically for the electronic signal in his pocket. If he lost that, he might
never
get out of here! By the time he was satisfied, the amphibian was gone.

He was alone in the mouth of a monster.

Well, he'd been in awkward situations before. He tried once again to close his mind to the horrors that lurked about him and ascended the ladder, holding his lantern aloft.

The occlusal surface was about ten feet in diameter. It was slightly concave and worn smooth. In the centre was a dark trench about two feet wide and over a yard long. This was obviously the source of the irritation. He walked over to it and looked down. A putrid stench sent him gasping back. Yes—this was the cavity! It seemed to range from a foot in depth at the edges to four feet in the centre.

"That," he observed aloud, "is a case of dental caries for the record book." The English/Enen transcoder printed a stick. He turned it off, irritated.

Unfortunately, he had no record book. All he possessed was a useless bag of implements and a smarting nose. But there was nothing for it but to explore the magnitude of the decay. It probably extended literally within the pulp, so that the total infected area was considerably larger than that visible from above. What showed here was merely a vertical fissure, newly formed. He would have to check directly.

He forced himself to breath regularly, though his stomach danced in protest. He stepped down into the cavity.

The muck was ankle-deep and the miasma overpowering. He summoned the sick dregs of his willpower and squatted to poke into the bottom with one finger. Under the slime, the surface was like packed earth. He was probably still inches from the material of the living tooth; these were merely layers of crushed and spoiling food.

He recalled long-ago jokes about eating apple-compote, pronouncing the word with an internal S. Compost. It was not a joke any more.

He located a dryer area and scuffed it with one shoe. Some dark flakes turned up, but nothing significant. He wound up and drove his toe into the wall as hard as he could.

There was a thunderous roar. He clapped his hands to his ears as the air pressure increased explosively. His foot slipped and he fell into the reeking centre-section of the trench.

An avalanche of muck descended on him. Above, hundreds of tons of flesh and bone and gristle crashed down imperiously, seemingly ready to crush every particle of matter within its compass into further compost.

The jaws were closing.

Dillingham found himself face down in sickening garbage, his ears ringing from the atmospheric compression and his body quivering from the mechanical one. The lantern, miraculously, was undamaged and bright, and his limbs were sound. He sat up, brushed some of the sludge from face and arms, and grabbed for the slippery light.

He was trapped between clenched jaws—inside the cavity.

Frantically he activated the signal. After an interminable period that he endured in mortal fear of suffocation, the ponderous upper jaw lifted. He scrambled out, dripping.

The bag of implements was now a thin layer of colour on the surface of the tooth. "Perfect occlusal," he murmured professionally, while shaking in reaction to the realization that his fall had narrowly saved him from a similar fate.

The ladder was gone. Anxious to remove himself from the dangerous biting surface as quickly as possible, he prepared to jump—and saw a gigantic mass of tentacles reaching for his portable drill near the base of the tooth. Each tentacle appeared to be thirty feet long, and as strong and sinuous as a python's tail.

The biting surface no longer seemed like such a bad place. Dillingham remained where he was and watched the drill being carried into the darkness of the mouth's centre.