9: THE MEDICS

...So while it took Man countless eons to develop his medical science to the point where almost all human diseases could be diagnosed and treated with some degree of certainty that a cure would be effected, he was forced to cover the same ground a thousand times over in an infinitesimal portion of the time when contact with other races was made. And, as if this weren't enough of a problem for those medics who boldly strode toward these new and incredibly varied horizons, there was always in the background Man's precarious position in the political schemata of the galaxy...

—Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement

(No mention of the Medics can be found inOrigin and History of the Sentient Races .)

“What'swrong with it?” snapped a haggard Darlinski. “Hell, I don't even know what keeps the damned thing alive!”

“I'm not paying you enough for you to turn prima donna on me,” said Hammett harshly. “Keep making tests until you find out what's affecting him.”

“First,” said Darlinski, “you've got to prove to me that it's a him. Second, you're not paying me enough to do very damned much of anything. And third—”

“Cure him and you've got a raise,” said Hammett quickly, with more than a touch of irritation.

“I don't want a goddamned bloody raise!” yelled Darlinski. “I want a healthy specimen of whatever this is so I can see what the hell the difference is!”

“He's all we've got.”

“Didn't it have any friends or subordinates?” demanded Darlinski.

“For the twelfth time, no,” said Hammett.

“Then, for the thirteenth time, what in blue blazes is a planetary ambassador doing without even a single subordinate around?”

“I keep telling you, I don't know. All I know is he screamed once, collapsed, and couldn't be immediately revived, so they brought him here.”

“Of course they couldn't revive it. Hell, if they slapped its face they might have broken every bone in what seems to pass for its head. And for all I know, it'd melt if anyone threw cold water on it.”

A light on an intercom unit flashed, and Darlinski pressed a button.

“Pathology here, boss,” said a laconic voice. “Got anything for us to work on yet?”

Darlinski uttered a few choice but unprintable words into the speaker.

“Don't get sore, boss. All you got to do is figure out what makes it tick.”

“I know,” snarled Darlinski. “The fat bastard that runs this shop just promised me a raise if I get it right.”

“Boy, am I impressed,” said the voice. “The fat bastard that runs the planet just promised us a war if you get it wrong. Have fun.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Hammett, walking over to the intercom.

“Haven't you seen a newstape?” said the voice from Pathology. “Hell, you've had the damned thing up there for six hours.”

“Just tell me what's going on,” said Hammett.

“Seems this joker's buddies back on Pnath are claiming we've either kidnapped or killed it. I gather it was here on a peacemaking mission—a very private little war the powers-that-be didn't see fit to tell us about—and evidently they think we're doing them dirt. According to the media, a tiny skirmish is about to become a full-fledged war unless we can convince the Pnathians, or Pnaths, or whatever they call themselves, that we're acting in good faith.”

“Have any of those geniuses down at Central thought to ask for a Pnathian medic?” asked Darlinski.

“Yep. But the Pnathians think we've killed or brainwashed this one and they won't send any others until it's returned whole and healthy.”

“Beautiful,” said Darlinski. “What if the damned thing dies on me?”

“Well,” chuckled the pathologist, “I guess the Navy can always use another bedpan scrubber. Ta-ta.”

The intercom switched off.

Hammett waited until Darlinski's stream of curses had left him momentarily breathless, then walked over to the Pnathian ambassador.

“I didn't realize it was going to turn into this kind of incident,” he said. “Let's get back to work.”

“What do you mean, ‘Let's?'” snapped Darlinski. “You wouldn't know a tumor from a wart. Go on back to your goddamned office and worry about how to pay for next week's heating bill.”

He turned back to the patient, and Hammett, shrugging, left and closed the door very carefully behind him.

Darlinski took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at the notes he had scribbled down during the past few hours. They weren't much. The Pnathian breathed an oxygen-nitrogen compound, but there was no way of telling whether a dose of forty percent oxygen would revive it or kill it; ditto for a ninety percent nitrogen dose. Its skin was extremely fine-textured, but he didn't dare take a sample, or even a scraping; for all he knew, the Pnathians, or at least this particular one, were chronic hemophiliacs. And for that reason he couldn't take a sample of the being's blood, either.

Nor could he even make a guess about the gravity of the Pnathian's home world. It had three legs, allowing it a tripodal stance, which implied a heavier gravity; but the structure seemed much more fragile than a heavier gravity would allow. And, of course, he didn't dare X-ray it for fear of a fatal, or at least terribly adverse, reaction.

There were no hands or arms as such, but instead a trio of tubular appendages, all extremely flexible, not quite tentacles but far from hands. He tried to figure out what function they served, but couldn't. Obviously, the race was intelligent, and had developed the machinery of space travel and war, but when he tried to imagine the control panel of one of their ships, his mind came up blank.

As for the head, it extended on a long thin stalk of a neck and contained not one but four orifices that might or might not have been mouths. They were arranged perpendicular to the ground, and the third orifice was the only one that fogged the crystal of his watch. However, he had never come across any being that required four mouths, nor did it seem likely that the remaining orifices could all be breathing apparatus, unless the being had the equivalent of three stuffed noses. Theycould be ears, but it seemed unlikely; in every species he had ever examined, human and nonhuman, sapient and nonsapient, the ears were set much farther apart for greater efficiency. Urethra and anus? Possibly; but, if so, which was which, and how could he differentiate them from the mouth? He grinned at the thought of some alien physician pouring the equivalent of hot chicken broth into his rectum, then frowned as he realized that it would only be funnyafter he cured the patient.

Or, he admitted honestly to himself,if he cured it.

The Pnathian had two eyes. The lids were over them, but he had lifted them and seen that they were quite dull, with the pupils reacting only very slightly to light stimuli. Just above the eyes was the cranium, an oblong structure stuck atop the rest of the face at a 45-degree angle, almost like a baby whose head was terribly misshapen due to a difficult birth.

Its pulse was almost twice that of his own, but that could simply be because of the gravitational difference. Or it could be a sign of impending death. Or...

Darlinski cursed once again, stepped back, and stared at the Pnathian. He felt terribly oppressed. Hell, oxygen-breathers weren't even his specialty. But Jacobson was on vacation somewhere on Deluros VIII, so they'd pulled the boy genius out of the chlorine ward, pointed him in the direction of the Pnathian, patted him on the head, and said Go.

The question, of course, was: Go where?

Hammett broke his concentration, such as it was, by calling on the intercom.

“Any ideas yet?”

“All of ‘em pertain to what I'm going to do to you once I get this patient out of my hair,” said Darlinski disgustedly.

“I hope we're both still here long enough for you to have a chance,” said Hammett. “I've been checking up on the story, and it's true. The government's bought us a little more time, but if we haven't got our ambassador on its feet and ready to exonerate us in a few days, that's it.”

“I don't suppose anyone has yet thought to get me any useful information from a Pnathian medic?” said Darlinski.

“Yes and no,” said Hammett.

“And just what in blazes is that supposed to mean?”

“Yes, they thought to ask, and no, nobody got you anything. You don't understand the political situation. I can hardly believe it myself. I don't know if this race is composed of nothing but paranoids or what, but they won't send anyone here or even feed us any information about their physiology until they know their ambassador is all right.”

“Thereby making sure that it's never going to be all right,” said Darlinski grimly.

“I did learn that it's a female, and her name is ... well, it's not really pronounceable, but the closest human analog is Leonora. And no, she's not pregnant.”

“They told you that?”

“Not in so many words, but I gather that she's only recently reached childbearing age.”

“Then why in the name of pluperfect hell is she their sole ambassador to a race they're at war with?” demanded Darlinski.

“How should I know?” said Hammett. “We've got Psychology working on it, but they've got even less to go on than you do.”

“I hope you don't expect me to feel sorry for Psychology.”

“Nope. Muff this one and you can spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for you and me.”

“Very funny,” growled Darlinski.

“No,” corrected Hammett. “Very serious. I'd rather have you kill her by accident than have her just lie there and die for lack of treatment. I don't care if you begin by ripping her heart out with your bare hands, but you've got to do something. Is there anybody I can send to assist you?”

Darlinski roared a negative and cut the intercom off. Then he walked back to the Pnathian and examined her again, armed with the knowledge that she was a female. This implied some bodily cavity that would be absent in a male, but as he went over her, inch by inch, he concluded that the only orifices on her entire body were the four pseudo-mouths on her head. One was obviously for breathing, which meant that of the remaining trio, one was for ingestion, one for sexual congress, and one was of undetermined properties. And, for the life of him, he still couldn't figure out which was which.

He glanced at a clock, and realized that he'd been on his feet for more than twenty hours and would shortly be in a state of near-collapse. That meant he had to get something down to Pathology that they could analyze while he slept. He ordered a pair of nurses into the room and prepared to take small skin scrapings from each of the patient's tentacular appendages, another scraping from the trunk of the body, and smears from each of the three nonbreathing orifices.

Careful as he was, he noticed that on the last scraping, a small amount of pinkish fluid began oozing out. It had to be blood, and he immediately placed it on a slide and sat back to see whether or not the bleeding would stop by itself. It did, almost immediately, and he instructed one of the nurses to take everything down to the Path lab.

“Get me a report within six hours, hunt me up a room, see that it has a hot shower, and have someone bring me some breakfast and a stimulant in five hours.”

So stating, he waited until he'd been assigned some nearby sleeping quarters, and, with a sigh, put them to good if brief use.

He awoke feeling no better rested, and within a matter of minutes was standing next to Jennings of Pathology as they took turns viewing slides in the latter's lab.

“Not that having very few red corpuscles proves a damned thing,” Jennings was saying. “It could, of course, indicate a serious blood deficiency. On the other hand, maybe the damned beast doesn'tneed red corpuscles. I think, though, that we'd better go under the assumption that this blood count is pretty near normal.”

“Any reason why?” asked Darlinski.

“The best,” Jennings grinned. “If it's not normal, we're out of luck. I've broken down the blood structure, and there's no way we could synthesize red corpuscles of a type this thing wouldn't reject before it died for lack of them. So, pragmatism being what it is, we'll pretend that whatever else is wrong, the blood count's normal.”

Darlinski nodded his head and grunted his assent. “How about the tissues?”

“You mean the scrapings?” asked Jennings. “Well, we might be running into a little more luck there ... or worse luck, depending on your point of view.”

“Suppose you tell me what my point of view is,” said Darlinski warily.

“If your point of view is that of a doctor looking for something to cure, we might have something for you. Here, take a look.”

Darlinski bent low over the powerful microscope and peered through it. A tiny skin sampling was on the slide, and even without resorting to the highest magnification Darlinski was aware of an enormous amount of cellular activity.

“What's happening?” he asked.

“Can't say for sure,” said Jennings. “But by all rights, that ought to be a very dead piece of skin, and it just as obviously is not. For the life of me I can't figure out what's feeding it or supplying it with whatever it needs in the way of blood and oxygen.”

“Speaking of oxygen,” said Darlinski, “what kind of dose can I give her?”

“Based on the blood structure, I'd say she's living in her equivalent of an oxygen tent right now. I wouldn't want to be the guy responsible for giving her a higher dose. It just might burn her lungs out.”

“How about the smears?”

“Now, that's something really interesting,” said Jennings.

“You found something?”

“Nope. I found absolutely nothing.”

“You're an easy guy to interest,” said Darlinski.

“Hold on a second, boss,” said Jennings. “Let me ask you a question first: Who the hell told you that this was a female?”

“Hammett.”

“And who told him?”

“The Pnathians.”

“Yeah? Well, you can't prove it by me.”

“What did the smears show?” asked Darlinski, scratching his head.

“Nothing. Or, rather, nothing even remotely sexual. I've labeled the three smears One through Three. Now, Smear One, taken from the bottommost orifice, showed traces of water, a couple of enzymes, and the residue of two or three other organic liquids. From this, and the fact that they're not broken down, we've got to figure that its sole purpose is the ingestion of liquid nourishment. Smear Two has numerous traces of solids, plus a few decay germs and something which seems to act as a mild preliminary stomach acid. Ergo, that's where the solid nourishment goes. Smear Three is a problem, but I'd be willing to wager that its function is strictly vocal.”

“But, damnit, one of those orifices has to be the equivalent of a vagina!” snapped Darlinski. “They're the only orifices on the whole goddamed body, and the subject is definitely a female.”

“Maybe so, but she doesn't kiss and copulate in the same general area,” said Jennings. “There is absolutely no trace of any sexual hormone, lubricant, or other secretion known to science, and since she's a warm-blooded oxygen-breather, I have to think that her sexual hormones wouldn't be that hard to spot.”

“Could the orifice be used for excretion?” asked Darlinski.

“Highly doubtful,” said Jennings. “No, I'll make it stronger. Definitely not. I would certainly have found something to indicate it if that were the case. Sorry to give you a problem, boss, but that's the way I read it.”

“A problem? Hell, you've given me a pair of them.”

“Yeah?”

“First, I've got a female patient with no discernible sex organs. And second, I've got an eater with no discernible means of excreting waste products.”

“Maybe that's what's wrong.” Jennings grinned. “Maybe she ate too much and is due to explode.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Darlinski. “Well, I'd better get back down there and see if I can figure out what to do next.”

When he arrived a few minutes later he found the Pnathian gasping weakly for air. Its face, and hence its breathing orifice, was covered with a foul-smelling substance which seemed to be coming from its food-ingesting orifice. Quickly summoning an intern to help him, Darlinski managed to turn the Pnathian on its side and, taking an antiseptic wipe, began cleaning its head off. In a few moments the breathing became normal again, and, instructing the intern to keep a watchful eye on the patient, he took a sample of the substance up to Pathology.

“Well,” said Jennings after some thirty minutes of testing, “we've solved one of your problems. It seems that the same mouth, or orifice, does double duty: it both ingests the food and excretes it. Very inefficient. In fact, uncommonly so.”

“You're sure it's not vomit?” asked Darlinski.

“Absolutely,” said Jennings. “Vomit would still have some partially undigested food left. This stuff is all broken down. The body's taken most of what it needed, and this is what's left.”

“We're learning things all the time,” said Darlinski. “I bet if they left the damned thing here for another year or so, I might even figure out what's killing it.”

“According to the newstapes,” said Jennings, “you've got considerably less than a year.”

“Don't remind me. What are the chances of it dying if I take some X-rays and fluoroscope it?”

“I don't think the X-rays will do any harm. Under normal circumstances I'd say that fluoroscoping was out of the question until we knew more about it, but these are hardly normal circumstances, so you might as well go ahead.”

Two hours later Darlinski was looking at a number of X-rays that were laid out before him and cursing furiously.

“Well, boss?” asked Jennings on the intercom.

“It can't have any broken bones,” said Darlinski. “The damned old girl doesn't have a bone in her entire body!”

“Learn anything from the fluoroscope?”

“Not a thing. I've seen insects with more complicated digestive systems. The food goes in, is carried to just about every cell in the body, and what remains will be coming out again in a day or so. All that's left is brain damage and how the hell do I know whether it exists or not until I've seen a working model of an undamaged brain?” He loosed another stream of curses. “This stupid creature just doesn't make any sense!”

“Agreed,'’ said Jennings. “You know those scrapings?”

“What about them?”

“They're growing. Another week and they'll cover the whole damned slide.”

“Could it be a form of cancer?” asked Darlinski.

“No way,” came the reply. “No cancer I know of ever acted like this. These scrapings haven't been cultured; by rights, they should be dead and decaying.”

“Besides, if there was some kind of skin cancer, I'd have spotted it before now,” agreed Darlinski. He stood up. “This is crazy! The respiratory system is working, the digestive system is working, the circulatory system is working. What the hell can be wrong with it?”

“A stroke?” suggested Jennings.

“I doubt it. If there were a blood clot in the brain, something else ought to be hampered too. I figure we can rule out a heart attack, too; we haven't made the slightest attempt at treatment and yet the condition, whatever it might be in regard to the norm, is completely stable. It seems to me that if anything sudden hit her, she'd either degenerate or start improving. But she doesn't do either.”

“If you're looking for some paradoxes,” added Jennings, “you might figure out why everyone keeps calling it a female.”

“I've got enough paradoxes of my own to work on,” said Darlinski. “I don't need any of yours.”

“Just trying to be helpful, boss. See you later.”

Darlinski went back to the patient, muttering obscenities to himself. It just didn't add up; even a virus, left unattended, would either have killed her or been partially fought off by antibodies by now. Perhaps the weirdest part of the whole insane situation was the fact that the ambassador simply refused to change, either for better or for worse.

Okay, he decided, let's look at it logically. If the Pnathian's condition remained unchanged, it must be because something in her internal or external environment was also unchanged. Since he had established, insofar as was possible, that her internal systems were all functioning normally, and since Jennings had as yet been unable to detect any microbes, bacteria, or viruses that might be harmful, he would operate on the hypothesis that the cause was either a blood clot or tumor in her brain, which he couldn't possibly cure or even find, or else that the problem lay in the external environment.

And, if the external environment was the cause of her problems, the most likely place to begin changing that environment was with the atmosphere and the gravitation.

He began by changing the pressure within the room to zero gravity, with no visible effect. Then, gradually, he increased it to three gravities. The breathing became slightly more labored, but there was no other reaction, and on a boneless being he didn't feel he could increase the pressure any further.

He then placed a respirator over the Pnathian's breathing orifice and lowered the oxygen content to fifteen percent, then twelve percent. When he got it down to eight percent he thought the patient would surely begin to choke, but instead, he detected a noticeable twitching of one eyelid.

Encouraged, he dropped it down to a four percent oxygen compound—and all hell broke loose!

The Pnathian ambassador began whispering incoherently, and her tentacular appendages started thrashing wildly. Darlinski easily avoided them, strapped the trunk of her body to the table, and settled back to observe her. Her eyes were open, but seemed unable to focus, and her motions, even after ten minutes, were so disjointed as to convince him she would never in a dozen lifetimes learn how to bring food to her mouth, let alone pilot a spaceship.

An idea began dawning somewhere in the back of his mind, but first he had to check out a few facts. His first act was to call Jennings.

“Tell me,” he asked the pathologist, “exactly what would happen to a human, used to breathing a nineteen percent oxygen compound, if you doubled the oxygen content on him?”

“He'd probably laugh his fool head off,” said Jennings promptly.

“I know,” said Darlinski. “But is there any possibility that he might pass out instead?”

“I doubt it. Why?”

“What if you quadrupled it—got it up to seventy-six percent, or even a little bit higher?”

“It's been done many times in emergency cases.”

“Does it ever knock them out?”

“Once in a while. Rarely, though. What are you getting at?”

“One final question and I'll tell you.”

“Ask away,” said Jennings.

“What if you stuck a man into a ninety percent oxygen atmosphere”

“No problem,” came the quick reply.

“You didn't let me finish,” said Darlinski. “What if you put him there and left him there for a week?”

“It's never been done to my knowledge. It'd probably burn out the brain and the lungs, in that order.... Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that...”

“...That our ambassador breathes a four percent oxygen compound, or less, and that she's been living in our equivalent of a ninety percent oxygen tent since she arrived. At first it was probably invigorating, perhaps even intoxicating. But ultimately it hit her, hard, and she's been in a state of collapse ever since.”

“Then you've solved it!” exclaimed Jennings. “Pretty simple at that, wasn't it?”

“I haven't solved it at all,” said Darlinski. “I'd wager that she hasn't got enough brainpower left to rattle around in a thimble. Totally uncoordinated, eyes can't focus, unaware of surroundings, drooling slightly out of her two ingestion orifices. It's my opinion that right now she ranks considerably lower than a potted plant on whatever scale they use to measure intelligence. She may be cured, but she's as nonfunctional as a rock.”

“If it'll make you feel any better, she was probably like that within an hour of her collapse,” said Jennings.

“Makes me feel great,” said Darlinski, cutting the communication.

The idea was rounding out, but he still had to check with Hammett. He explained the entire situation to him, then waited while Hammett checked with the government.

“Nice job,” said Hammett an hour later, “but the Pnathians aren't buying. First, they think we're lying to them, and second, they think that if we're telling the truth we're responsible for what happened to her. So we came close, but no cigar. The truce ends in two days, time, so if you can't come up with a way to cure a mental vegetable by then...” His voice trailed off.

“Let me ask you one question,” said Darlinski.

“Shoot.”

“How do you know that the ambassador is a woman?”

“The Pnathians—or, to be more accurate, the Pnathian spokesman—told us so.”

“Told you it was a female?”

“Yes.”

“What were the exact words?”

“I'm not quite sure. A general expression of regret that Leonora had just recently reached that point of physical maturity where she could have offspring.”

“Is that an exact, word-for-word translation?”

“Not quite. But it's as close as our translators could come with a race that doesn't speak Galactic.”

“Our heterosexual male and female translators,” said Darlinski.

“What are you getting at?” asked Hammett “Don't ask,” said Darlinski. “Now, let me get one fact straight in my mind: Whether the ambassador lives as a vegetable or dies tomorrow makes no difference in the Pnathians’ stated plans, correct?”

“Correct.”

“All right. I've got a favor to ask of you.”

“I'll do what I can,” said Hammett.

“I want you to cordon off Surgery Room 607 and the adjacent recovery room. Then I want you to set up the capabilities for an atmosphere of three and a half percent oxygen, ninety-five percent nitrogen, and one and a half percent inert elements in both rooms. Standard pressure. And finally, post a guard and see that no one except Jennings is allowed in without my express permission.”

“Give me two hours and it'll be done,” said Hammett. “But—”

“No questions. Oh yes, I'll want one other thing, too. Give me a vat, one cubic yard, of the most highly concentrated nitric acid we have, and place some opaque covering over it.”

“Acid?”

“Right. And don't forget the covering. I'll be down in surgery in two hours.”

True to his word, Hammett had the rooms in order when Darlinski and a nurse wheeled the Pnathian in at the appointed hour. Jennings was waiting for them, a curious expression on his face.

“You know,” he said, “I've been wracking my mind trying to figure out what kind of operation you plan to perform. I keep coming up with the same crazy answer.”

“Far from being a crazy answer,” said Darlinski “I've got a sneaky suspicion it's the only sane one. You can act as my anesthetist.”

“Will you need one?”

“Shortly. Nurse: you, Jennings and I will now don our oxygen masks.” This done, he ordered the atmosphere lowered to three and a half percent oxygen. “Okay, Jennings, set the respirator up to thirty-five percent and knock her out.”

Jennings placed the nozzle over the Pnathian's breathing orifice, and the ambassador lost consciousness almost immediately.

“Is the acid vat here?” asked Darlinski. He looked around until he found it. “All right, nurse. We will now prepare for amputation.”

“What are you amputating, sir?” asked the nurse.

“The head,” said Darlinski.

“I knew it!” said Jennings. “You've got to be out of your mind!'’

“What've we got to lose?” asked Darlinski, unmindful of the nurse's horrified reaction. “Mindless or dead, the war starts; this is the only way to stop it.”

And, so saying, he made an incision midway on the long stalk that passed for a Pnathian neck. His hands moved quickly, expertly, until the neck was all but severed.

“Nurse,” he said, looking up for an instant, “it will doubtless bother you no end, but I don't want this sutured or closed in any way. We will apply a tourniquet for about ninety seconds, but it must then be removed.”

The nurse, pale and horrified, nodded weakly.

“Jennings, you know what to do with the head?'’

“The vat?”

Darlinski nodded. “If I'm right, it's going to be screaming bloody murder anyway, so we'll destroy it as quickly as possible.”

“Wouldn't the incinerator have been more humane?”

“Doubtless. However, I don't relish taking a babbling, decapitated head down five levels and through crowded corridors to the incinerator. Do you?”

“I see your point.” Jennings grinned. He grunted as the head rolled off the Pnathian's body, and, averting his eyes as best he could, he quickly took it to the opaque vat and placed it inside. When he got back to the table he found Darlinski removing the tourniquet. No blood poured forth.

“It probably doesn't need it, despite the absence of its mouth, but let's open up the neck a bit and insert a breathing tube. Then you'd better run up to Pathology and figure out what kind of solution we can give it intravenously until it can eat for itself, though with all that subcutaneous fat I doubt that it'll be necessary.” Jennings left, and Darlinski turned to the nurse. “Until I know the outcome of all this, I'm afraid you're going to be confined to quarters. You are not to discuss this with anyone except Mr. Hammett, Dr. Jennings, or myself. Is that clear?”

The nurse nodded.

“Fine. Stick around a bit longer, until we can hunt up a replacement. And call Hammett and tell him to get his tail down here on the double.”

It took Hammett exactly four minutes to arrive, at which time Darlinski explained the operation to him.

“You see,” he began, “the whole problem was that the ambassador is very definitelynot a female. That threw me for a while, but I couldn't give it my full attention until I figured out what had caused its problem in the first place. But there were so many hints I should have seen it even sooner: the fact that its tissue kept growing, even when it wasn't cultured; the fact that we couldn't find any sexual apparatus; the fact that there were no outlets for spores. So of course, what could it be but an entity that is capable of reproduction by fission, and hence of regeneration? I should have guessed something like that the first day, when only one of my scrapings drew any blood at all, and that coagulated in just two or three seconds.”

“But can it grow a head?” asked Hammett. “After all, you've removed its brain and all its orifices. Even a starfish has to have part of the core remaining to regenerate.”

“I think it will. If not, the body and head would probably have died immediately. Neither did, which is why I destroyed the head: I didn't want that mindless pseudo-cranium growing another body. Also, if I can coin a word, we occasionally tend to Earthomorphize, to give certain Earthly qualities to all forms of non-Earthly life. It seems unlikely to me that any creature could survive with its head severed, but the fact remains that it is indeed surviving. However, the really major problem still remains.”

“And what is that?” asked Hammett.

“The new brain won't know that it's an ambassador, or that we saved its life—so I think we'd better prepare for a little war.”