Alien Emergencies - James White [141]
“Fair enough,” said Conway. He looked at O’Mara, whose face was showing the indications of a suddenly elevated blood pressure, and went on, “You had the right idea at the beginning, but everyone was too busy to talk to you. It should have occurred to me, too, if the GLNO tape and concern for Prilicla hadn’t confused me by—”
“Omit the flattery and excuses, Conway,” O’Mara broke in, “and get on with it.”
Conway was helping Murchison and Naydrad lift the EGCL into the litter while Edanelt and the other nurse checked the siting of the biosensors. Without looking up he went on, “Whenever we encounter a new intelligent species the first thing we are supposed to ask ourselves is how it got that way. Only the dominant life-form on a planet has the opportunity, the security and leisure, to develop a civilization capable of interstellar travel.”
At first Conway had not been able to see how the EGCL’s people had risen to dominance on their world, how they had fought their way to the top of their evolutionary tree. They had no physical weapons of offense, and their snaillike apron of muscle which furnished locomotion was incapable of moving them fast enough to avoid natural enemies. Their carapace was a defense of sorts in that it protected vital organs, but that osseous shell was mounted high on the body, making it top-heavy and an easy prey for any predator who had only to topple it over to get at the soft underside. Its manipulatory appendages were flexible and dexterous, but too short and lightly muscled to be a deterrent. On their home world the EGCLs should have been one of nature’s losers. They were not, however, and there had to be a reason.
It had come to him slowly, Conway went on, while he was moving through the chlorine and light-gravity sections. In every ward there had been cases of patients with known and properly diagnosed ailments displaying, or at least complaining about, atypical symptoms. The demand for painkilling medication had been unprecedented. Conditions which should have caused a minor degree of discomfort were, it seemed, inflicting severe pain. He had been aware of some of this pain himself, but had put that down to a combination of his imagination and the effect of the Cinrusskin tape.
He had already considered and discarded the idea that the trouble was psychosomatic because the condition was too widespread, but then he thought about it again.
During their return from the disaster site with the sole surviving EGCL, everyone had felt understandably low about the mission’s lack of success and because Prilicla was giving cause for concern. But in retrospect there was something wrong, unprofessional, about their reactions. They were feeling things too strongly, overreacting, developing in their own fashions the same kind of hypersensitivity which had affected Prilicla and which had affected the patients and staff on the Illensan and the Nallajim levels. Conway had felt it himself; the vague stomach pains, the discomfort in hands and fingers, the overexcitability in circumstances which did not warrant it. But the effect had diminished with distance, because when he visited O’Mara’s office for the GLNO tape and later for the erasure, he had felt normal and unworried except for the usual degree of concern over a current case, accentuated in this instance because the patient was Prilicla.
The EGCL was receiving the best possible attention from Thornnastor and Edanelt, so it was not on his mind to any large extent. Conway had been sure of that.
“But then I began to think about its injuries,” Conway went on, “and the way I had felt on the ship and within three levels of the EGCL operation. In the hospital while I had the GLNO tape riding me, I was an empath without empathy. But I seemed to be feeling things—emotions, pains, conditions which did not belong to me. I thought that, because of fatigue and the stress of that time, I was generating