Alien Emergencies - James White [245]
The large object centering the screen lacked the symmetry and structural repetition of a vegetable—it looked like a sheet of paper which had been crushed and twisted into a loose ball. But if that idea was correct, the predator must have pulled itself into that shape. Conway shivered in spite of himself.
That Gogleskan venom was potent stuff.
To Wainright, he said quickly, “How does this sound? The FOKT fossils were those beings who did not survive the initial attack of the creature, and some of them are linked, indicating that they were part of a larger group. This FOKT group-entity attacked or defended itself against the predator with its stings, all of them. The quantity of venom injected must have sent the beastie into multiple muscular spasm, and it must have literally tied itself into a knot as it died. Can you get your computer to unravel that knot?”
Wainright nodded, and soon the twisted, convoluted shape at the center of the screen was surrounded by a fainter image of itself which was slowly unfolding. This had to be the answer for that weird shape, Conway thought, because nothing else made sense. Occasionally he asked for expanded views of the enormous fossil’s skeletal structure, and each one supported his theory. But the Lieutenant was forced to reduce the size several times as the ghostly, unfolding image overran the edges of the screen.
“It’s beginning to look like a bird,” Wainright said. “Parts of the wing are very fragile. In fact, it seems to be all wing.”
“That’s because the fossil remains are of the skeleton and skin only,” Conway replied. “There must have been almost total wastage of muscle and soft tissue which was attached to that bone structure. In the areas where you are indicating the wing… Now you’ve got me thinking of it as a bird… The wing thickness should be increased by a factor of five or six. But with that bone structure the wing could not have been rigid. I’d say that it undulated rapidly rather than flapping, and propelled the beastie forward at great speed. And that lateral split in the wing inboard leading edges is interesting. It reminds me of the engine intakes of the old jet aircraft, except that these intakes have teeth…”
He broke off because Khone was jabbing hesitantly at the back of his hand with the hypo. For the first time Conway understood what a patient had to go through at the hands of a trainee medical technician.
“The jointing at the base of the wings,” he went on when the Gogleskan had found the proper vein, “suggests that the mouths on the wing leading edges opened and closed as it swam, eating everything that got in its way and passing the food through two alimentary canals to the stomach housed in that cylindrical bulge along the center line. The tegument was thicker along the leading edges, and probably sting-proof, and the stomach was probably capable of dealing with the FOKT venom even though it is lethal when injected through softer areas of tegument into the bloodstream.
“The only defense the FOKTs could offer was to link up and present themselves as a solid wall in its path,” he continued excitedly. “Quite a few of them would die before the group entity folded around the predator and stung it to death. The incomplete fossil remains indicate that. But I hate to think of what it must have been like for the group-members as a whole while they were mentally linked to their dying friends…”
He cringed inwardly as he thought of how they all must have suffered, and died, every time one of their group did so. And they would have done so many times if the predator’s attacks were a regular occurrence. What was worse, prior to an attack they all knew what was ahead of them through the minds of previous survivors—all the fear and pain and multiple dying by proxy.
At last he understood the severity of the racial psychosis which gripped the whole Gogleskan species. As individuals they feared and hated a joining, or any close physical or mental contact or cooperation which might lead to the possibility of a linkup. Subconsciously to join was to suffer remembered pain,