Futures Past Read Free Page B

was being taken by a bunch of crab-like Melfans and a Tralthan— Melfans could adapt themselves to the low stools and the Tralthans did everything including sleep on their six elephantine feet. Prilicla spotted an empty table in the Kelgian area and flew across to claim it before the party of Corps maintenance men could get there. Luckily it was beyond the range of their emotional radiation.
       Conway began eagerly leafing through the reports once he saw that the Lieutenant was being shown by Murchison how to balance on the edge of a Kelgian chair within reach of the food he had ordered. But for once Brenner's attention was not on the shapely pathologist. He was staring at Prilicla, his eyebrows almost lost in his hair-line.
       "Cinrusskins prefer to eat while hovering—they say it aids the digestion," explained Murchison, and added, "The slipstream helps cool the soup, too."
       Prilicla maintained a stable hover while they concentrated on refueling, breaking off only to pass around the reports. Finally Conway, feeling pleasantly distended, turned to the Cinrusskin.
       "I don't know how you managed it," he said warmly. "When 2 want a fast report from Thornnastor the most he will let me do is jump two places in the line."
       Prilicla trembled at the compliment as it replied, "I insisted, quite truthfully, that our patient was at the point of death."
       "But not," said Murchison dryly, "that it has been in that condition for a very long time." "You're sure of that?" asked Conway. "I am now," she answered seriously, tapping one of the reports as she spoke. "The indications are that the large puncture wound was inflicted by a meteorite collision some time after the disease, that is the barnacles and coating material were in position. The coating, which flowed into and across the wound, effectively sealed it.
       "As well," she continued, "these tests show that a very complex chemical form of suspended animation—not just hypothermia—was used and that it was applied organ by organ, almost cell by cell, by micro-injections of the required specifics. In a way you could think of it as if the creature had been embalmed before it was quite dead in an effort to prolong its life."
       "What about the missing legs or claws?" said Conway, "and the evidence of charring under the coating in the areas behind the wings? And the pieces of what seems to be a different kind of barnacle in those areas?"
       "It is possible," Murchison replied, "that the disease initially affected the being's legs or claws, perhaps during its equivalent of nesting. The removal of the limbs and the evidence of charring you mention might have been early and unsuccessful attempts at curing the patient's condition. Remember that virtually all of the creature's body wastes were eliminated before the coating was applied. That is standard procedure before hibernation, anesthesia or major surgery."
       The silence which followed was broken by the lieutenant, who said, "Excuse me, I'm getting lost. This disease or growth, what exactly do we know about it?"
       "They knew that the outward symptoms of the disease were the barnacle-like growths," Murchison told him, "which covered the patient's tegument so completely that It could have been a suit of chain mail. It was still open to argument whether the barnacles were skin conditions which had sprouted rootlets or a subcutaneous condition with a barnacle-like eruption on the surface, but in either event they were held by a thick pencil's width of fine rootlets extending and subdividing to an unknown depth within the patient. They penetrated not only the subcutaneous (issue and underlying musculature, but practically all of the vital organs and central nervous system. And the rootlets were hungry. There could be no doubt from the condition of the tissue underlying the barnacles that this was n severely wasting disease which was far advanced."
       "It seems to me that you should have been called