Alien Emergencies - James White [161]
They took the cadaver from Fletcher and, holding it above their heads, fitted it into one of the control couches designed for it. The big alien did not react and they tried it in a second, then a third couch. This time the patient’s stub tentacles began to twitch and one of them made contact with the DCMH. It maintained the contact for several seconds then slowly withdrew and the big entity became still again.
Conway gave a long sigh, then said, “It fits, it all fits. Prilicla, keep your patients on oxygen and IV fluids. I don’t think they will return to full consciousness until they have food as well, but the hospital can synthesize that when we get back.” To Murchison he said, “All we need now is an analysis of the stomach contents of that cadaver. But don’t do the dissection here, do it in the corridor. It would probably, well, upset the Captain.”
“Not me,” Fletcher said, who was already at work with his cutting torch. “I won’t even look.”
Murchison laughed and pointed to the patient hanging above them. She said, “He was talking about the other Captain, Captain.”
Before Fletcher could reply, Haslam announced that he would be landing in fifteen minutes.
“Better stay with the patient while I help the Captain load the lander,” Conway told Murchison. “Radiate feelings of reassurance at it; that’s all we can do right now. If we all left it might think it was being abandoned.”
“You intend leaving her here alone?” Fletcher said harshly.
“Yes, but there is no danger—” Conway began, when the voice of Dodds interrupted him.
“There is nothing moving within a twenty-mile radius of the wreck, sir,” he said reassuringly, “except thorn patches.”
Fletcher said very little while they were helping Haslam move the casualties from the outcropping into the lander and while they were pushing the litter with its load of spare equipment to the wreck. It was unlike the Captain, who usually spoke his mind no matter who or what was bothering him, to behave this way. But Conway’s mind was too busy with other things to have time to probe.
“I was thinking,” Conway said when they reached the open cargo hatch, “that according to Dodds the thorn patches are attracted to food and warmth. We are going to create a lot of warmth inside the wreck, and there is a storage deck filled with food containers as well. Suppose we move as much food as we can from the wreck and scatter it in front of the thorn clumps—that might make them lose interest in the wreck for a while.”
“I hope so,” Fletcher said.
The lander took off in a small, self-created sandstorm as Conway was dragging the first containers of food toward the edge of the nearest thorn patch, which was about four hundred meters astern of the wreck. They had agreed that Fletcher would move the containers from the storage deck to the ground outside the hatch, and Conway would scatter them along the front of the advancing thorns. He had wanted to use the litter with its greater capacity and gravity neutralizers, but Naydrad had stated in its forthright fashion that the Doctor was unused to controlling the vehicle and if the gravity settings were wrong or a part of the load fell off, the litter would disappear skyward or blow weightlessly away.
Conway was forced to do it the hard way.
“Make this the last one, Doctor,” the Captain said as he was coming in from his eighth round trip. “The wind is rising.”
The shadow of the wreck had lengthened steadily as he worked and the sky had deepened in color. The suit’s sensors showed a marked drop in the outside temperature, but Conway had been generating so much body heat himself that he had not noticed it. He threw the containers as far in front and to each side of him as he could, opening some of them to make sure that the thorns would know that the unopened containers