Norton, Andre - Anthology (25 page)

 
          
 
"Animals!"
The four doctors uttered the words simultaneously. They looked at each other,
momentarily baffled and indecisive about this new and unexpected exigency.

 
          
 
Edwards made his mind up first. "Davey,
hold the fort; we won't be gone long. The rest of us will go up to the dome and
get a look at these beasties."

 
          
 
They hurriedly made their way to the
observation dome at the top of the ship, adding Kelly to their number as they
passed down the corridors. They entered the observation room, with Tom closing
the airtight door carefully. The hull plates were open, and the sunlight
streamed in warmly. It took but a moment to raise the air pressure in the room
and to inflate the elastic, transparent bubble-like dome. There were enough
observation chairs for all of them, so the four of them were quickly elevated
to the top of the dome. They each had a pair of binoculars and eagerly scanned
the surrounding terrain.

 
          
 
"Do you see anything?"

 
          
 
"No, that vegetation is too dense."

           
 
And it was dense. When they first landed on
this little plateau, it was quite barren; but now, since the terrific storm of
a few days ago, the vegetation had sprung up unbelievably fast. The ground as
far as they could see was a lush green. The leaves of the various plants danced
adagio in the gentle breeze. It was almost as if they could see them grow, they
seemed so full of fresh, new life. Some of the plants, which had leaves like a
giant dandelion and a shoot like a huge asparagus stalk, were now shoulder
high. It was from a clump of these that the first-seen Minotauran emerged.

 
          
 
"Look!! Look!! There's one . . . no, two
... of them now!" The navy man's keen eyes had spotted them first.
"Holy dying Dinah!
Aren't they a couple of
beauties?"

 
          
 
Picture a four-legged animal with a body the
same size as a St. Bernard dog, with disproportionately short, bowed legs like
a dachshund. Give him a hairless, wrinkled gray-green skin, and a long,
graceful neck like a camel, emerging from powerful shoulders. Put a head with
long jaws on that neck; large yellow eyes, no external ears and a placid expression
for features. And finally, on the anterior surface of the long neck, imagine a
rugose, lobulated mass of flesh reminiscent of the wattles of a turkey. There
you will have, at first glance, the dominant inhabitant of the planet Minotaur.

 
          
 
"Wow—I wonder if they're as peaceful as
they look. Look at those jaws! Mandel, you're our biologist—d'you
think
they're carnivorous?"

 
          
 
"No, Bob, I wouldn't say so," Irv
answered, judiciously. "On Earth most of the carnivores, with the
exception of the dog family, tend to be short jawed. Your long-jaws, like the
horse and cow, are usually vegetarians."

 
          
 
As if to confirm this observation, one of the
Minotaurans sat down on his haunches, reached up with his forelimbs and began
pulling leaves off the plant and stuffing them in his capacious mouth. He sat
there, quietly and contemplatively, giving himself over to the joys of
mastication.

 
          
 
"Look at the color changes in that gadget
on his neck! What do you suppose that's for?" asked Schultz.

 
          
 
And the colors were changing; various shades
of red were playing over the surface. A broad, horizontal band of scarlet,
followed by a light pink, would travel down the length of the colored area.
This would be replaced by a vermilion, which would seem to pulsate, gently, alternately
deepening and lightening in shade.

 
          
 
"Hm-m-m," said Mandel, slowly.
"That's a puzzler. In most animals a colored organ is usually a sex
character. The comb and wattles of the rooster and the crest of those Venusian
marsupials are examples. But those are pretty static—they change with the
season and
don't flicker
like a sign-painter's
nightmare. Look . . .
look
there!"

 
          
 
The seated animal had turned to face the other
one, who had come up on it from behind. And now the colors did start to appear.
Bands of purple, splotches of green, tremulous irregular areas of yellow
tumbled across and up and down the necks of those weird beasts for several
seconds. Then, with one accord, the two animals faced the ship and began
walking slowly toward it.

 
          
 
"It looks like they've just realized
there's something strange here and are coming over to investigate us,"
remarked Kelly. "They don't seem to be particularly afraid."

 
          
 
"That's right," retorted Edwards,
"and they don't seem to be awfully curious either. Placid sort of brutes,
aren't they?"

 
          
 
"Do you think we ought to go out and meet
them?" asked Schultz. "Should we roll out the red plush carpet and
invite them in for tea?"

 
          
 
"That might not be a bad idea,"
answered Bob. "We might at least try to find out if they're intelligent or
not. Just because they look like the zoo doesn't mean that they can't be smart
people. After all, you don't have to be anthropomorphic to be
intelligent."

 
          
 
Bob thought for a few seconds. "
Schultz,
would you and Mandel be willing to go out and see
what you can do to find out something about them? We can have a couple of the
boys with rocket guns all ready to let them have it, if they make any hostile
moves."

 
          
 
The internist and the psychiatrist looked at
each other, as if trying to read the other's mind. There was no thought of
criticizing Edwards for not offering to go out with them; it was tacitly
understood that in most cases, his job as synthe-sist involved letting others
collect data for him. Bob was always ready to run any risk necessary in the
line of duty. He wasn't shirking in this case; he was functioning as he should.

 
          
 
Schultz was the first to speak. "My
mother told me never to volunteer for anything, but the way you put it—might
just as well.
O.K. with you, Irv?"

 
          
 
The little psychiatrist shrugged.
"Why not?
They can't be any worse than navy officers or
surgeons."

 
          
 
Zip—down went the observation chairs, and the
men dashed out as soon as pressure could be equalized and the door opened.
Their precipitous dash toward the air lock was halted by Livingston, whom they
met in the corridor.

 
          
 
"Bob," he asked, "could you
take a look at Slawson? The blood has just about all run in, and he doesn't
seem to be getting any results at all. His color hasn't improved, and he's
still pretty dyspneic in spite of the oxygen."

 
          
 
Edwards hesitated. He didn't want to forego
the interesting experience of observing the inhabitants of Minotaur in their
first contact with humans. On the other hand, he'd probably never see a blue
man again—and if Slawson didn't soon make a change for the better, he wouldn't
be seeing this blue man for long.

           
 
"O.K., Jack, I'll be right with you. Tom,
will you make arrangements to have the boys covered? And you'd better carry a
respirator around your neck; I don't think it'll be necessary to wear it unless
you have the irresistible urge to sniff a posy."

 
          
 
"O.K., Bobbie," said Schultz.
"If we make out all right with these critters, we'll try to line up a date
for you, too. It wouldn't be any worse than some of those dogs I've seen you
out with." And he fled down the corridor before Bob could think of a
retort.

 
          
 
When Edwards entered the sick bay with the
surgeon at his heels, he was greatly perturbed. Livingston had understated the
seriousness of the patient's condition. A glance at the gauge on the oxygen
tank showed that the gas was flowing as fast as possible—and yet Slawson was
breathing in deep, shuddering, laboring gasps. His skin was still blue, of
course—but underlying that color was the dusky bluish-purple that means
insufficient oxygenation of the blood.

 
          
 
Bob picked up the stethoscope, which
lay
on the nearby table, and set the tips in his ears. He
placed the bell on Slawson's chest, glanced down at his watch, and counted for
fifteen seconds. "About 140," he reported. "I can barely count
it; heart sounds are rather muffled, too."

 
          
 
He slipped the stethoscope around to the bases
of the lungs and listened intently for a few seconds. "He's getting some
moist rales in the bases, too. Did you give him any atropine?"

 
          
 
"No," answered Jack, "I thought
I'd wait until you saw him. Oh my—if only he had something simple like a
rupture of the middle meningeal artery, I'd know what to do. But this beats
me."

 
          
 
"You're not the only one," retorted
Bob, absently. "Well, it looks as if we'll just have to fall back on the
old-fashioned approach. It's funny, but when we get stuck on a baffler like
this, we have to use the methods of five or six hundred years ago."

 
          
 
Bob sat down on a bunk and stroked his chin.
"Eliminate, sedate, and put the part at rest," he mused. "He
doesn't need sedation—he's practically knocked out now. And how can we put the
blood at rest—that's just foolish. And so, to eliminate—Jack, how did he act
when the blood started to run in?"

 
          
 
"It seemed to do him some good for about
the first five minutes. His respiration slowed down, and I thought his color
lightened up a little. But then he went right back to where he is now."

 
          
 
"Hm-m-m."
A
few moments of silence supervened, while Edwards pulled at his lower lip.
"Jack, how does this sound as a working hypothesis? Slawson inhaled pollen
from a flower. The pollen is a complex protein, which is partially broken down
in the body. It breaks down into two parts, one of which causes the blue
coloration, the other which causes the methemoglobinemia."

 
          
 
"D'you think it's a true
methemoglobinemia?" interrupted the surgeon.

 
          
 
"It doesn't make too much
difference," answered Edwards. "We know that there's a stable
hemoglobin compound formed, and the red blood cells aren't carrying oxygen.
Soooo—we take out the blood that isn't working and replace it with some that
will. How does that sound to you?"

 
          
 
Livingston.
considered
the matter for a few moments. "What can we lose? He can't last this way
much longer. How much blood do you think we ought to give him?"

 
          
 
"Let's make it five liters to start with.
I'm sure we have that much in the blood bank. You get set up to cut down on a
vein, and we'll bleed him while the transfusion is running in the other
arm."

 
          
 
Just then the intercom in the hallwav outside
the sick bay piped up. "Testing—Mandel testing."

 
          
 
Bob cocked an ear at the sound. "Tom must
have turned the intercom on so we could all hear what the greeting committee
has to say. Good idea. Well, I'll go up and get the blood while you get going
on the phlebotomy."

 
          
 
As Bob walked into the lab, he found Thomas
and his assistants still working on their analysis of the mysterious blue
blood. It wasn't with undivided attention, however; you could see that all of
them were also extremely interested in the intercom.