Alien Emergencies - James White [246]
The main trouble was that the defense mechanism was so hypersensitive, even after the elapsed millennia since it was needed, that it could be triggered by an imagined or potential threat as well as an actual one.
Khone had finally completed withdrawing the blood sample. The back of Conway’s hand felt like a pincushion, but he said highly complimentary things about the FOKT healer’s first off-planet surgical procedure, and meant every word of them. While the other was carefully transferring the contents of the syringe into a sterile phial, he returned his attention to the screen.
The creature was completely unfolded now, and the Lieutenant had reduced the image again so that it would fit within the limits of the screen. Wainright had also added all the available data and theory on coloration, probable method of locomotion, and the wing-synchronized mouth and teeth movements. It moved slowly in the center of the big screen, a vast, dark gray, dreadful shape more than eighty meters across, undulating and flapping ponderously like an enormous, Earthly stingray, sucking in, tearing apart, and eating everything in its path.
This was the Gogleskan nightmare from their prehistoric past, and the figures of the reconstructed FOKT fossils were tiny blobs of color near the lower edge of the screen.
“Wainright!” Conway said urgently. “Kill that picture!…”
But he was too late. Khone, its work completed, had turned to look at the screen—and was confronted with the three-dimensional picture of a moving and seemingly living creature which up until then had inhabited only its subconscious. In the confined space of the compartment its distress call was deafening.
Conway cursed his own stupidity as the panic-stricken Gogleskan stumbled about the floor within a few feet of his litter. Khone had shown little interest in the display when it had been a collection of fine lines, since it lacked the experience to appreciate the threedimensional reality which they represented. But the Lieutenant’s final picture was much too realistic for any Gogleskan to view and remain wholly sane.
He saw the FOKTs dumpy body come toward him, then lurch past. Its multicolor hair was standing on end and twitching, its four stings were fully extended, dropletes of venom oozing from the tips, but the sound coming from its membranes seemed fractionally less deafening. Conway lay rigid, not even swiveling his eyes as the being moved away and then came back again.
The reduction in the volume of its distress call made it obvious that Khone was fighting its conditioning and Conway had to help it in the only way possible, by remaining absolutely motionless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Gogleskan stop, one of its stings only inches away from the side of his face and the stiff, bristling hair touching his coveralls. He could feel its breath puffing gently across his forehead and smell the faint, peppermint smell which seemed to be its body odor. Khone was trembling, whether with fear at the Lieutenant’s display or in indecision over whether or not to attack, Conway did not know.
If he stayed absolutely still, he told himself desperately, he should not represent a threat. If he moved, however, he knew with a dreadful certainty that the Gogleskan would sting him, instinctively, without thinking. But there was another aspect of the FOKT behavior pattern which he had forgotten.
They blindly attacked enemies, but any being who was not a threat and had managed to remain in such close physical proximity as Conway had done had to be a friend.
At times like this, friends linked up.
Conway was suddenly aware of the stiff bristles scratching against his clothing and trying to weave themselves