Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (29 page)

A few seconds later Chen was on his way back to the
Rhabwar
, having confirmed Conway’s description of his symptoms. Fletcher asked helplessly, “What is happening, Doctor?”

“I should have been expecting it,” Conway replied, “but it has been a long time since I had the experience. And I should have remembered that beings who, through physical damage or evolution, have been deprived of vital sensory equipment are compensated for the loss. I think—no, I know. We are experiencing telepathy.”

The Captain shook his head firmly. “You’re wrong, Doctor,” he said. “There are a few telephathic races in the Federation, but they tend to be philosophically rather than technologically inclined, so we don’t meet them very often. But even I know that their ability to communicate telepathically is confined to members of their own species. Their organic transmitter and receivers are tuned to that one frequency, and other species, even other telepathic species, cannot pick up the signals.”

“Correct,” said Conway. “Generally speaking, telepaths communicate only with other telepaths. But there have been a few rare exceptions recorded where non-telepaths have received their thoughts for a few seconds’ or minutes’ duration only, and more often than not the experimenters suffered great discomfort without making contact at all. The reason for their partial success is, according to the e-t neurologists, that many species have a latent telepathic faculty that became atrophied when they developed normal sensory equipment. But when my single, very brief experience took place I had been working closely with a very strong telepath on the same problem, seeing the same images, discussing the same symptoms and sharing the same feelings about our patient for days on end. We must have established a temporary bridge, and for a few minutes the telepath’s thoughts and feelings were able to cross it.”

Prilicla was shaking violently. “If the sentient survivor is trying to establish telepathic contact with us, friend Conway, it is trying very hard. It is feeling extreme desperation.”

“I can understand that,” said the Captain, “with a rapidly improving FSOJ nearby. Now what do we do, Doctor?”

Conway tried to make his aching head produce an answer before the surviving blind one suffered the same fate as its crew-mates. “If we could think hard about something we have in common with it. We could try thinking about the blind ones”—he waved his hand at the dissecting tables—“except that we might not have enough mental control to think of them whole and alive. If we thought about them as dissected specimens, however briefly, it would not be reassuring to the survivor. So look at and think about the FSOJ. As an experimental animal the blind one should not be bothered by seeing, feeling, experiencing or whatever, it in small pieces.

“I would like you all to concentrate on thinking about the FSOJ,” he went on, looking at each of them in turn. “Concentrate hard, and at the same time try to project the feeling that you want to help. There may be some discomfort but no harmful after effects. Now think, think,
hard…!
”

They stared at the partially dismembered FSOJ in silence, and thought. Prilicla began trembling violently and Naydrad’s fur was doing strange things indeed as it reflected the Kelgian’s feelings. Murchison’s face turned white and her lips were pressed together, and the Captain was sweating.

“Some discomfort, he said,” Fletcher muttered.

“Discomfort to a medic,” said Murchison, briefly unclenching her teeth, “can mean anything from the pain of a sprained ankle to being boiled in oil, Captain.”

“Stop talking,” Conway snapped. “Concentrate.”

His head felt as if it could no longer contain his aching brain and there was a raging itch growing inside his skull, a sensation he had felt just once before in his life. Conway glanced quickly at Fletcher as the Captain gave an agonized grunt and started poking at his ear with a finger. And suddenly there was contact. It was a weak, unspoken message that came from nowhere, but it was there in their minds as silent words that formed both a statement and a question.

“You are thinking of my Protector…”

They all looked at each other, all obviously wondering if each had heard, felt, experienced the same words. The Captain let out his breath in an explosive sigh of relief, and said, “A…a Protector?”

“With those natural weapons,” Murchison said, gesturing to
wards the FSOJ’s horn-tipped tentacles and bony armor, “it certainly has the right equipment for the job.”

“I don’t understand why the blind ones need protectors,” Naydrad said, “when they are technically advanced enough to build starships.”

“They may have natural enemies on the home planet,” began the Captain, “which they are incapable of controlling—”

“Later, later,” Conway said sharply, breaking up what promised to become an interesting but time-wasting debate. “We can discuss this later when we have more data. Right now we must return to the ship. This must be extreme range for mind contact with non-telepaths like us, so we must get as close to it as possible. And this time we’ll go for a rescue…”

With the exception of the Captain, the non-medical personnel remained with the ambulance ship. It was not thought that Haslam, Chen or Dodds could help very much unless or until they were required to burn a way into the other ship. Three extra minds that were not completely informed regarding the situation might, by their confused thinking, make it more difficult for the surviving telepath to communicate with the others, who, Conway thought dryly, were only slightly less confused than the crew-members.

Prilicla once again stationed itself near the hull to monitor emotional radiation in case the telepathy did not work. Fletcher carried a heavy-duty cutter intended, if necessary, to depressurize the ship rapidly and eliminate the Protector, and Naydrad had positioned itself with the pressure litter outside the airlock. In spite of their belief that the blind one could take decompression with much less danger than the FSOJ, Conway and Murchison would return with it inside the pressure litter should it require medical attention.

Their aching heads continued to feel as if someone were performing radical neurosurgery without benefit of an anesthetic. Since the few seconds of communication on the ambulance ship there had been nothing in their minds but their own thoughts and the maddening, itching headache, and there was no change as Murchison, Fletcher and Conway entered the lock chamber. As soon as they opened the inner seal, the noise of the corridor cage mechanisms thudding and screeching like an alien percussion section did nothing to improve their headaches.

“This time, try to think about the blind ones,” said Conway as they moved inboard along the straight section of corridor. “Think about helping them. Try to ask who and what they are, because we need to know as much as possible about them if we are to help the survivor.”

Even as he was speaking Conway felt that something was badly wrong, and he had an increasingly strong feeling that something terrible would happen if he did not stop and think carefully. But the raging, itching headache was making it difficult to think at all.

My Protector
, the telepath on the ship had called the FSOJ.
You are thinking of my Protector
. He was missing something. But what?

“Friend Conway,” Prilicla said suddenly. “Both survivors are moving along the corridor cage towards you. They are moving quickly.”

They looked along the caged section with its screeching and clattering forest of waving metal bludgeons. The Captain unlimbered his cutter. “Prilicla, can you tell if the FSOJ is chasing the blind one?”

“I’m sorry, friend Fletcher,” the empath replied. “They are close together. One being is radiating anger and pain, the other extreme anxiety, frustration and the emotional radiation associated with intense concentration.”

“This is ridiculous!” Fletcher shouted above the suddenly increasing noise of the corridor mechanisms. “We have to kill the FSOJ if we’re to rescue the blind one. I’m going to open the corridor to space—”

“No, wait!” said Conway urgently. “We haven’t thought this through. We know nothing about the FSOJs, the Protectors. Think. Concentrate together. Ask, What are the Protectors? Who do they protect and why? What makes them so valuable to the blind ones? It answered once and it may answer again. Think hard!”

At that moment the FSOJ appeared round the curve of the corridor, moving rapidly in spite of the metal rods and clubs jabbing and battering at its body. The four horn-tipped tentacles whipped back and forth, pounding at the attacking metal bars and pistons and warping them out of shape, even tearing one of them out of its mounting. The noise was indescribable. The FSOJ was not quite running the course, Conway thought grimly as he saw the wounds
overlaying the older scars on its body tegument and the distended underbelly, but it was moving fast, considering its condition. He felt a hand shaking his arm.

“Doctor, ma’am, are you both deaf?” Fletcher was shouting at them. “Get back to the airlock!”

“In a moment, Captain,” said Murchison, shaking off Fletcher’s hand and training her recorder on the advancing FSOJ. “I want to get this on tape. These aren’t the surroundings I would choose in which to deliver my offspring, but then I suppose this one wasn’t given any choice… Look out!”

The FSOJ had reached the section of corridor that had been partially cleared of the projecting metal by Fletcher’s cutter. With nothing to stop it the being hurled itself through the damaged grill and was suddenly on them, floundering weightlessly now that the corridor mechanisms were no longer beating it against the floor, and spinning helplessly whenever a slashing tentacle struck the wall plating.

Conway flattened himself against the deck with his wrist and boot magnets and began crawling backwards in the direction of the airlock. Murchison was already doing the same, but the Captain was still on his feet. He was retreating slowly and waving his cutter, which he had turned up to maximum intensity, in front of him like a fiery sword. One of the FSOJ’s tentacles was badly charred, but the being did not appear to be handicapped in any way. Suddenly Fletcher gave a loud grunt as one of the FSOJ’s tentacles hit him on the leg, knocking him away from magnetic contact with the deck and sending him cartwheeling helplessly.

Instinctively Conway gripped an arm as it came whirling past him, steadied the Captain, then pushed him towards the lock where Murchison was waiting to help him inside. A few minutes later they were all in the lock chamber and as safe as it was possible to be within a few meters of a rampaging FSOJ.

But it was a weakening FSOJ…

As they watched it through the partly open inner seal, the Captain checked the actuator of his cutter and aimed it towards the outer seal. His voice was slurred with pain. “That damned thing broke my leg, I think. But now we can hold the inner seal open, cut a hole through the outer one, and depressurize the ship fast.
That’ll fix the brute. But where’s the other survivor? Where is the blind one?”

Slowly and deliberately, Conway covered the orifice of Fletcher’s cutter with the palm of his hand. “There is no blind one. The ship’s crew are dead.”

Murchison and the Captain were staring at him as if he had suddenly become a mentally disturbed patient instead of the doctor. But there was no time for explanations. Slowly, and thinking hard about the words as he spoke them, he said, “We made contact with it once at long range. Now it is close to us and we must try again. There is so little time left to this being—”

The entity Conway is correct
, came a soundless voice inside their heads.
I have very little time
.

“We mustn’t waste it,” said Conway urgently. He looked appealingly at Murchison and the Captain. “I think I know some of the answers, but we have to know more if we are to be able to help it. Think hard. What are the blind ones? Who and what are the Protectors? Why are they so valuable…?”

Suddenly, they
knew
.

It was not the slow, steady trickle of data that comes through the medium of the spoken word, but a great, clear river of information that filled their minds with everything that was known about the species from its prehistory to the present time.

The Blind Ones…

They had begun as small, sightless, flat worms, burrowing in the primal ooze of their world, scavenging for the most part, but often paralyzing larger life-forms with their sting and ingesting them piecemeal. As they grew in size and number their food requirements increased. They became blind hunters whose sense of touch was specialized to the point where they did not need any other sensory channel.

Specialized touch sensors enabled them to feel the movements of their prey on the surface and to identify its characteristic vibrations so that they could lie in wait for it just below ground until it came within reach of their sting. Other sensors were able to feel out and identify tracks on the surface. This enabled them to follow their prey over long distances to its lair and either burrow underground
and sting it from below, or attack it while the sound vibrations it was making told them it was asleep. They could not, of course, achieve much against a sighted and conscious opponent on the surface, and very often they became the prey rather than the hunters, so their hunting strategy was concentrated on variations of the ambush tactic.

On the surface they “built” tracks and other markings of small animals, and these attracted larger beasts of prey into their traps. But the surface animals were steadily becoming larger and much too strong to be seriously affected by a single Blind One’s sting. They were forced to cooperate in setting up these ambushes, and cooperation in more ambitious food-gathering projects led in turn to contact on a widening scale, the formation of subsurface food stores and communities, towns, cities and interlinking systems of communication. They already “talked” to one another and educated their young by touch. Methods were even devised for augmenting and feeling vibrations over long distances.

The Blind Ones were capable of feeling vibrations in the ground and in the atmosphere, and eventually, with the use of amplifiers and transformers, they could “feel” light. They discovered fire and the wheel and the use of radio frequencies by transforming them into touch, and soon large areas of their planet were covered with radio beacons, which enabled them to undertake long journeys using mechanical transport. While they were aware of the advantages of powered flight, and a large number of Blind Ones had died experimenting with it, they preferred to stay in touch with the surface because they were, after all, completely unable to see.