Major Operation

MAJOR OPERATION

On the whole weird and wonderful planet there were only thirty-seven patients requiring treatment, and they varied widely both in size and in their degree of physical distress. Naturally it was the patient who was in the greatest distress who was being treated first, even though it was also the largest-so large that at their scout ship’s sub orbital velocity of six thousand plus miles per hour it took just over nine minutes to travel from one side of the patient to the other.

“It’s a large problem,” said Conway seriously, “and even altitude doesn’t make it look smaller. Neither does the shortage of skilled help.”

Pathologist Murchison, who was sharing the tiny observation blister with him, sounded cool and a little on the defensive as she replied, “I have been studying all the Drambon material long before and since my arrival two months ago, but I agree that seeing it like this for the first time really does bring the problem home to one. As for the shortage of help, you must realize, Doctor, that you can’t strip the hospital of its staff and facilities for just one patient even if it is the size of a subcontinent — there are thousands of smaller and more easily curable patients with equal demands on us.

“And if you are still suggesting that I, personally, took my time in getting here,” she ended hotly, “I came just as soon as my chief decided that you really did need me, as a pathologist.”

“I’ve been telling Thornnastor for six months that I needed a top pathologist here,” said Conway gently. Murchison looked beautiful when she was angry, but even better when she was not. “I thought everybody in the hospital knew why I wanted you, which is one reason why we are sharing this cramped observation blister, looking at a view we have both seen many times on tape and arguing when we could be enjoying some unprofessional behavior—”

“Pilot here,” said a tinny voice in the blister’s ’speaker. “We are losing height and circling back now and will land about five miles east of the terminator. The reaction of the eye plants to sunrise is worth seeing.”

“Thank you,” said Conway. To Murchison he added, “I had not planned on looking out the window.”

“I had,” she said, punching him with one softly clenched fist on the jaw. “You I can see anytime.”

She pointed suddenly and said, “Someone is drawing yellow triangles on your patient.”

Conway laughed. “I forgot, you haven’t been involved with our communications problems so far. Most of the surface vegetation is light sensitive and, some of us thought, might act as the creature’s eyes. We produce geometrical and other figures by directing a narrow, intense beam of light from orbit into a dark or twilight area and moving it about quickly. The effect is something like that of drawing with a high persistency spot on a vision screen. So far, there has been no detectable reaction.

“Probably,” he went on, “the creature can’t react even if it wanted to, because eyes are sensory receptors and not transmitters. After all, we can’t send messages with our eyes.

“Speak for yourself,” she said.

“Seriously,” Conway said, “I’m beginning to wonder if the strata creature itself is highly intelligent …

They landed shortly afterward and stepped carefully onto the springy ground, crushing several of the vegetable eyes with every few yards of progress. The fact that the patient had countless millions of other eyes did not make them feel any better about the damage inflicted by their feet.

When they were about fifty yards from the ship, she said suddenly, “If these plants are eyes-and it is a natural assumption, since they are sensitive to light-why should it have so many in an area where danger threatens so seldom? Peripheral vision to coordinate the activity of its feeding mouths would be much more useful.”

Conway nodded. They knelt carefully among the plants, their long shadows filled with the yellow of tightly closed leaves. He indicated their tracks from the entry lock of the ship, which were also bright yellow, and moved his arms about so as to partly obscure some of the plants from the light. Leaves partially in shade or suffering even minor damage reacted exactly as those completely cut off from the light. They rolled up tight to display their yellow undersides.

“The roots are thin and go on forever,” he said, excavating gently with his fingers to show a whitish root which narrowed to the diameter of thin string before disappearing from sight. “Even with mining equipment or during exploratories with diggers we haven’t been able to find the other end of one. Have you learned anything new from the internals?”

He covered the exposed root with soil, but kept the palms of both hands pressed lightly against the ground.

Watching him, she said, “Not very much. Light and darkness, as well as causing the leaves to open out or roll up tight, causes electrochemical changes in the sap, which is so heavily loaded with mineral salts that it makes a very good conductor. Electrical pulses produced by these changes could travel very quickly from the plant to the other end of the root. Er, what are you doing, dear, taking its pulse?”

Conway shook his head without speaking, and she went on. “The eye plants are evenly distributed over the patient’s top surface, including those areas containing dense growths of the air-renewal and waste-elimination types, so that a shadow or light stimulus received anywhere on its surface is transmitted quickly-almost instantaneously, in fact-to the central nervous system via this mineral-rich sap. But the thing which bothers me is what possible reason could the creature have for evolving an eyeball several hundred miles across?”

“Close your eyes,” said Conway, smiling. “I’m going to touch you. As accurately as you can, try to tell me where.”

“You’ve been too long in the company of men and e-ts, Doctor,” she began, then broke off, looking thoughtful.

Conway began by touching her lightly on the face, then he rested three fingers on top of her shoulder and went on from there.

“Left cheek about an inch from the left side of my mouth,” she said. “Now you’ve rested your hand on my shoulder. You seem to be rubbing an X onto my left bicep. Now you have a thumb and two, maybe three, fingers at the back of my neck just on the hairline … Are you enjoying this? I am.”

Conway laughed. “I might if it wasn’t for the thought of Lieutenant Harrison watching us and steaming up the pilot’s canopy with his hot little breath. But seriously, you see what I’m getting at, that the eye plants have nothing to do with the creature’s vision but are analogous to pressure-, pain- or temperature-sensitive nerve endings?”

She opened her eyes and nodded. “It’s a good theory, but you don’t look happy about it.”

“I’m not,” said Conway sourly, “and I’d like you to shoot as many holes in it as possible. You see, the complete success of this operation depends on us being able to communicate with the beings who produced the thought-controlled tools. Up until now I had assumed that these beings would be comparable in size to ourselves even if their physiological classification would be completely alien, and that they would possess the usual sensory equipment of sight, hearing, taste, touch and be capable of being reached through any or all of these channels. But now the evidence is piling up in favor of a single intelligent life-form, the strata creature itself, which is naturally deaf, dumb and blind so far as we can see. The problem of communicating even the simplest concepts to it is—”

He broke off, all his attention concentrated on the palm of one hand which was still pressed against the ground, then said urgently, “Run for the ship.”

They were much less careful about stepping on plants on the way back, and as the hatch slammed shut behind them Harrison’s voice rattled at them from the lock communicator.

“Are we expecting company?”

“Yes, but not for a few minutes,” said Conway breathlessly. “How much time do you need to get away, and can we observe the tools’ arrival through something bigger than this airlock port?”

“For an emergency liftoff, two minutes,” said the pilot, “and if you come up to Control you can use the scanners, which check for external damage.

“But what were you doing, Doctor?” Harrison resumed as they entered his control position. “I mean, in my experience the front of the bicep is not considered to be a zone of erotic stimulation.”

When Conway did not answer he looked appealingly at Murchison.

“He was conducting an experiment,” she said quietly, “designed to prove that I cannot see with the nerve endings of my upper arm. When we were interrupted he was proving that I did not have eyes in the back of my neck, either.”

“Ask a silly question …” began Harrison.

“Here they come,” said Conway.

They were three semicircular disks of metal which seemed to flicker into and out of existence on the area of ground covered by the long morning shadow of the scout ship. Harrison stepped up the magnification of his scanners, which showed that the objects did not so much appear and disappear as shrink rhythmically into tiny metal blobs a few inches across, then expand again into flat, circular blades which knifed through the surface. There they lay flat for a few seconds among the shadowed eye plants, then suddenly the discs became shallow inverted bowls. The change was so abrupt that they bounced several yards into the air to land about twenty feet away. The process was repeated every few seconds, with one disc bouncing rapidly toward the distant tip of their shadow, the second zig-zagging to chart its width and the third heading directly for the ship.

“I’ve never seen them act like that before,” said the lieutenant.

“We’ve made a long, thin itch,” said Conway, “and they’ve come to scratch it. Can we stay put for a few minutes?”

Harrison nodded, but said, “Just remember that we’ll still be staying put for two minutes after you change your mind.”

The third disk was still coming at them in five-yard leaps along the center of their shadow. He had never before seen them display such mobility and coordination, even though he knew that they were capable of taking any shape their operators’ thought at them, and that the complexity of the shape and the speed of the change were controlled solely by the speed and clarity of thought of the user’s mind.

“Lieutenant Harrison has a point, Doctor,” said Murchison suddenly. “The early reports say that the tools were used to undercut grounded ships so that they would fall inside the strata creature, presumably for closer examination at its leisure. On those occasions they tried to undercut the object’s shadow, using the shaded eye plants as a guide to size and position. But now, to use your own analogy, they seem to have learned how to tell the itch from the object causing it.”

A loud clang reverberated along the hull, signaling the arrival of the first tool. Immediately the other two turned and headed after the first, and one after the other they bounced high into the air, higher even than the control position, to arch over and crash against the hull. The damage scanners showed them strike, cling for a few seconds while they spread over hull projections like thin, metallic pancakes, then fall away. An instant later they were clanging and clinging against a different section of hull. But a few seconds later they stopped clinging because, just before making contact, they grew needle points which scored bright, deep scratches in the plating.

“They must be blind,” said Conway excitedly. “The tools must be an extension of the creature’s sense of touch, used to augment the information supplied by the plants. They are feeling us for size and shape and consistency.”

“Before they discover that we have a soft center,” said Harrison firmly, “I suggest that we make a tactical withdrawal, or even get the hell out.

Conway nodded. While Harrison played silent tunes on his control panels he explained that the tools were controllable by human minds up to a distance of about twenty feet and that beyond this distance the tool users had control. He told her to think blunt shapes at them as soon as they came into range, any shape so long as it did not have points or cutting edges.

“No, wait,” he said as a better idea struck him. “Think wide and flat at them, with an aerofoil section and some kind of vertical projection for stabilization and guidance. Hold the shape while it is falling and glide it as far away from the ship as possible. With luck it will need three or four jumps to get back.”

Their first attempt was not a success, although the shape which finally stuck the ship was too blunt and convoluted to do serious damage. But they concentrated hard on the next one, holding it to a triangle shape only a fraction of an inch thick and with a wide central fin. Murchison held the overall shape while Conway thought-warped the trailing edges and stabilizer so that it performed a balanced vertical bank just outside the direct-vision panel and headed away from the ship in a long, flat glide.

The glide continued long after it passed beyond their range of influence, banking and wobbling a little, then cutting a short swathe through the eye plants before touching down.

“Doctor, I could kiss you …” she began.

“I know you like playing with girls and model airplanes, Doctor,” Harrison broke in dryly, “but we lift in twenty seconds. Straps.”

“It held that shape right to the end,” Conway said, beginning to worry for some reason. “Could it have been learning from us, experimenting perhaps?”

He stopped. The tool melted, flowed into the inverted bowl shape and bounced high into the air. As it began to fall back it changed into glider configuration, picking up speed as it fell, then leveled out a few feet above the surface and came sweeping toward them. The leading edges of its wings were like razors. Its two companions were also aloft in glider form, slicing the air toward them from the other side of the ship.

“Straps.”

They hit their acceleration couches just as the three fast-gliding tools struck the hull, by accident or design, cutting off two of the external vision pickups. The one which was still operating showed a three-foot gash torn in the thin plating with a glider embedded in the tear, changing shape, stretching and widening it. Probably it was a good thing that they could not see what the other two were doing.

Through the gash in the plating Conway could see brightly colored plumbing and cable runs which were also being pushed apart by the tool. Then that screen went dead as well just as takeoff boost rammed him deep into the couch.

“Doctor, check the stern for stowaways,” said Harrison harshly as the initial acceleration began to taper off. “If you find any, think safe shapes at them-something which won’t scramble anymore of my wiring. Quickly.”

Conway had not realized the full extent of the damage, only that there were more red lights than usual winking from the control board. The pilot’s fingers were moving over his panels with such an intensity of gentleness that the harshness in his voice made it sound as if it was coming from a completely different person.

“The aft pickup,” said Conway reassuringly, “shows all three tools gliding in pursuit of our shadow.

For a time there was silence broken only by the tuneless whistling of air through torn plating and unretracted scanner supports. The surface wobbled past below them and the ship’s motion made Conway feel that it was at sea rather than in the air. Their problem was to maintain height at a very low flying speed, because to increase speed would cause damaged sections of the hull to peel off or heat up due to atmospheric friction, or increase the drag to such an extent that the ship would not fly at all. For a vessel which was classed as a supersonic glider for operations in atmosphere their present low speed was ridiculous. Harrison must be holding onto the sky with his fingernails.

Conway tried hard to forget the lieutenant’s problems by worrying aloud about his own.

“I think this proves conclusively that the strata creatures are our intelligent tool users,” he said. “The high degree of mobility and adaptability shown by the tools makes that very plain. They must be controlled by a diffuse and not very strong field of mental radiation conducted and transmitted by root networks and extending only a short distance above the surface. It is so weak that an average Earth-human or e-t mind can take local control.

“If the tool users were beings of comparable size and mental ability to ourselves,” he went on, trying not to look at the landscape lurching past below them, “they would have to travel under and through the surface material as quickly as the tools were flying over it if they were to maintain control. To burrow at that speed would require them being encased in a self-propelled armor-piercing shell. But this does not explain why they have ignored our attempts at making wide-range contact through remote-control devices, other than by reducing the communication modules to their component pieces …

“If the range of mental influence pervades its whole body,” Murchison broke in, “would that mean that the creature’s brain is also diffuse? Or, if it does have a localized brain, where is it?”

“I favor the idea of a centralized nervous system,” Conway replied, in a safe and naturally well-protected area-probably close to the creature’s underside where there is a plentiful supply of minerals and possibly in a natural hollow in the subsurface rock. Eye plant and similar types of internal root networks which you’ve analyzed tend to become more complex and extensive the closer we go to the subsurface, which could mean that the pressure-sensitive network there is augmented by the electro vegetable system which causes muscular movement as well as the other types whose function and purpose are still unknown to us. Admittedly the nervous system is largely vegetable, but the mineral content of the root systems means that electrochemical reactions generated at any nerve ending will transmit impulses to the brain very quickly, so there is probably only one brain and it could be situated anywhere.”

She shook her head. “In a being the size of a subcontinent, with no detectable skeleton or osseous structure to form a protective casing and whose body, relative to its area, resembles a thin carpet, I think more than one would be needed-one central brain, anyway, plus a number of neural substations. But the thing which really worries me is what do we do if the brain happens to be in or dangerously close to the operative field.”

“One thing we can’t do,” Conway replied grimly, “is delay the op. Your reports make that very clear.”

She had not been wasting time since coming to Drambo and, as a result of her analysis of thousands of specimens taken by test bores, diggers and exploring medics from all areas and levels of its far-flung body, she was able to give an accurate if not completely detailed picture of the creature’s current physiological state.

They already knew that the metabolism of the strata creature was extremely slow and that its muscular reactions were closer to those of a vegetable than an animal. Voluntary and involuntary muscles controlling mobility, ingestion and digestion, circulation of its working fluid and the breaking down of waste products were all governed or initiated by the secretions of the specialized plants. But it was the plants comprising the patient’s nervous system with their extensive root networks which had suffered worst in the roller fallout, because they had allowed the surface radioactivity to penetrate deep inside the strata creature. This had killed many plant species and had also caused the deaths of thousands of internal animal organisms whose purpose it was to control the growth of various forms of specialized vegetation.

There were two distinct types of internal organisms and they took their jobs very seriously. The large-headed farmer fish were responsible for cultivating and protecting benign growth and destroying all others- for such a large creature, the patient’s metabolic balance was remarkably delicate. The second type, which were the being’s equivalent of leucocytes, assisted the farmer fish in plant control and directly if one of the fish became injured or unwell. They were also cursed with the tidy habit of eating or otherwise absorbing dead members of their own or the fish species, so that a very small quantity of radioactive material introduced by the roots of surface plants could be responsible for killing a very large number of leucocytes, one after another.

And so the dead areas which had spread far beyond the regions directly affected by roller fallout were caused by the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant plant life. The process, like decomposition, was irreversible. The urgent surgical removal of the affected areas was the only solution.

But the report had been encouraging in some respects. Minor surgery had already been performed in a number of areas to check on the probable ecological effects of large masses of decomposing animo vegetable material on the sea or adjacent living strata creature, and to devise methods of radioactive decontamination on a large scale. It had been found that the patient would heal, but slowly; that if the incision was widened to a trench one hundred feet across, then the uncontrolled growth in the excised section would not spread to infect the living area, although regular patrols of the incision to make absolutely sure of this were recommended. The decomposition problem was no problem at all-the explosive growth rate continued until the plant life concerned used up the available material and died. On land the residue would subside into a very rich loam and make an ideal site for a self-supporting base if medical observers were needed in the years to come. In the case of material sliding off shelving coastlines into the sea, it simply broke up and drifted to the seabed to form an edible carpet for the rollers.

Certain areas could not be treated surgically, of course, for the same reason that Shylock had to forego his pound of flesh. These were relatively small trouble spots far inland, whose condition was analogous to a severe skin cancer, but limited surgery and incredibly massive doses of medication were beginning to show results.

“But I still don’t understand its hostility toward us,” Murchison said nervously as the ship went into a three-dimensional skid and lost a lot of height. “After all, it can’t possibly know enough about us to hate us like that.”

The ship was passing over a dead area where the eye plants were discolored and lifeless and did not react to their shadow. Conway wondered if the vast creature could feel pain or if there was simply a loss of sensation when parts of it died. In every other life-form he had ever encountered, and he had met some really weird ones at Sector General, survival was pleasure and death brought pain-that was how evolution kept a race from just lying down and dying when the going got tough. So the strata creature almost certainly had felt pain, intense pain over hundreds of square miles, when the rollers had detonated their nuclear weapons. It had felt more than enough pain to drive it mad with hatred.

Conway cringed inwardly at the thought of such vast and unimaginable pain. Several things were becoming very clear to him.

“You’re right,” he said. “They don’t know anything at all about us, but they hate our shadows. This one in particular hates them because the aircraft carrying the sea-rollers’ atomic bombs produced a shadow not unlike ours just before large tracts of the patient’s body were fried and irradiated.”

“We land in four minutes,” said Harrison suddenly. “On the coast, I’m afraid, because this bucket has too many holes in it to float. Descartes has us in sight and will send a copter.

The pilot’s face made Conway fight the urge to laugh. It looked like that of a half made-up clown. Furious concentration had drawn Harrison’s brows into a ridiculous scowl while his lower lip, which he had been chewing steadily since takeoff, was a wide, blood-red bow of good humor.

Conway said, “The tools can’t operate in this area and, except for a little background radiation caused by fallout, there is no danger. You can land safely.”

“Your trust in my professional ability,” said the pilot, “is touching.” From their condition of unlevel flight they curved into a barely controlled, tail-first dive. The surface crept, then rushed up at them. Harrison checked the rush with full emergency thrust. There were metallic tearing noises and the rest of the lights on his board turned red.

“Harrison, pieces of you are dropping off …” began Descartes’ radioman, then they touched down.

For days afterward the observers argued about it, trying to decide whether it had been a landing or a crash. The shock-absorber legs buckled, the stern section took some more of the shock as it tried to telescope amidships and the acceleration couches took the rest-even when the ship toppled, crashed onto its side and a broad, flickering wedge of daylight appeared in the plating a few feet away. The rescue copter was almost on top of them.

“Everybody out,” said Harrison. “The pile shielding has been damaged.”

Looking at the dead and discolored surface around them, Conway thought again of his patient. Angrily, he said, “A little more radiation hereabout won’t make much difference.”

“To your patient, no,” said the lieutenant urgently. “But perhaps selfishly I was thinking of my future offspring. After you.”

During the short trip to the mother ship Conway stared silently out of the port beside him and tried hard not to feel frightened and inadequate. His fear was due to reaction after what could easily have been a fatal crash plus the thought of an even more dangerous trip he would have to make in a few days’ time, and any doctor with a patient who stretched beyond the limits of visibility in all directions could not help feeling small. He was a single microbe trying to cure the body containing it, and suddenly he longed for the normal doctor-patient relationships of his hospital-even though very few of his patients or colleagues could be considered normal.

He wondered if it might not be better to have sent a general to medical school than to give a doctor control of a whole sector sub fleet.

Only six of the Monitor Corps heavies were grounded on Drambo, their landing legs planted firmly in the shallows a few miles off one of the dead sections of coastline. The others filled the morning and evening sky like regimented stars. His medical teams were grouped in and around the grounded ships, which rose out of the thick, soupy sea like gray beehives. The Earth-humans like himself lived on board while the e-ts, none of whom breathed air, were quite happy roughing it on the sea bed.

He had called what he hoped would be the final pre-op meeting in the cargo hold of Descartes, which was filled with Drambon sea water whose content of animal and plant, life had been filtered out so that the beam of the projector would have a sporting chance of fighting its way to the screen attached to the forward bulkheads.

Protocol demanded that the Drambons present opened the proceedings. Watching their spokesman, Surreshun, rolling like a great flaccid doughnut around the clear space in the center of the deck, Conway wondered once again how such a ridiculously vulnerable species had been able to survive and evolve a highly complex, technology-based culture- though it was just possible that an intelligent dinosaur would have had similar thoughts about early man.

Surreshun was followed by Garoth, the Hudlar Senior Physician who was in charge of the patient’s medical treatment. Garoth’s chief concern was with the devising and implementation of artificial feeding in areas where incisions would cut the throat tunnels between the coastal mouths and the inland prestomachs. Again unlike Surreshun, it did not say very much but let the projector do all the talking.

The big screen was filled by a picture of an auxiliary mouth shaft situated about two miles inland of the planned incision line. Every few minutes a copter or small supply ship grounded beside the shaft discharged its load of freshly dead animal life from the coastal shallows and departed while corpsmen with loaders and earth-moving machinery pushed the food over the lip. Possibly the amount and quality of the food was less than that which was drawn in naturally, but when the throat was sealed during the major operation this would be the only way that large areas of the patient could be supplied with food.

Aseptic procedures were impossible in an operation on this scale so that pumping equipment drawing sea water from the coast was drawn through large-diameter plastic piping. It poured in a steady stream- except when tools cut the pipeline-into the food shaft, supplying the strata creature with needed working fluid and at the same time wetting the walls so that leucocytes could be slipped down from time to time to combat the effects of any dangerous plant life which might have been introduced during feeding.

They were seeing a drill, of course, performed at one of the feeding installations a few days earlier, but there were more than fifty auxiliary mouths in a similar state of readiness strung out along the proposed incision line.

Suddenly there was a silvery blur of motion on the ground beside the pump housing and a corpsman hopped a few yards on one foot before falling to the ground. His boot with his other foot still in it lay on its side where he had been standing and the tool, no longer silvery, was already cutting its way beneath the blood-splashed surface.

“Tool attacks are increasing in frequency and strength,” said Garoth in Translated. “They are also displaying considerable initiative. Your idea of clearing an area around the feeding installations of all eye plants so that the tools would have to operate blind, and would have to bounce around feeling for targets, worked only for a short time, Doctor. They devised a new trick, that of sliding along a few inches below the surface, blind, of course, then suddenly extruding a point or a cutting blade and stabbing or swinging with it before retreating under the surface again. If we can’t see them, mental control is impossible, and guarding every working corpsman with another carrying a metal detector has not worked very well so far-it has simply given the tool a better chance of hitting someone.

“And just recently,” Garoth concluded, “there are indications of the tools linking up into five-, six- and in one case ten-unit combinations. The corpsman who reported this died a few seconds later before he was able to finish his report. The condition of his vehicle later supports this theory, however.”

Conway nodded grimly and said, “Thank you, Doctor. But now I’m afraid that you’ll have to withstand air attacks as well. On the way here we taught the patient how gliders work, and it learned fast …” He went onto describe the incident, adding the latest pathological findings and their deductions and theories on the nature of their patient. As a result the meeting quickly became a debate and was degenerating into a bitter argument before he had to pull rank and get his human and e-t doctors back to a state of clinical detachment.

The heads of the Melfan and Chalder teams made their report practically as a duet. Like Garoth they had both been concerned with the no surgical aspects of the patient’s treatment. To a hypothetical observer ignorant of the true scope of their problem this medical treatment could have been mistaken for a very widespread mining operation, agriculture on an even larger scale and mass kidnapping. Both were strongly convinced, and Conway agreed with them, that the wrong way to treat a skin cancer was by amputation of the affected limb.

The amounts of radioactive material deposited by fallout in the central areas were relatively small, and their effects spread fairly slowly into the depths of the patient’s body. But even this condition would be ultimately fatal if something was not done to check it. And, since the areas affected by light fallout were too numerous and occurred in too many inoperable locations, they had skinned off the poisoned surface with earth-moving machinery and pushed it into heaps for later decontamination. The remainder of the treatment involved helping the patient to help itself.

A picture appeared suddenly on the screen of a section of subsurface tunnel under one of the areas affected by fallout. There were dozens of life-forms in the tunnel, most of them farmer fish with stubby arms sprouting from the base of their enlarged heads while the others drifted or undulated toward the observer’s position like great, transparent slugs.

For a living section of the strata creature it looked none too healthy. The farmer fish, whose function was the cultivation and control of internal plant life, moved slowly, bumping into each other and the leucocytes which, normally transparent, were displaying the milky coloration which occurred shortly before death. The radiation sensor readings left no doubt as to what they were dying from.

“These specimens were rescued shortly afterward,” said the Chalder, “and transferred to sick bays in the larger ships and to Sector General. Both fish and leeches respond to the same decontamination and regeneration treatments given to our own people who have been exposed to a radiation overdose. They were then returned to carry on their good work.”

“That being,” the Melfan joined in, “absorbing the radiation from the nearest poisoned plant or fish and getting themselves sick again.”

O’Mara had accused Conway of treating Sector General like some kind of e-t sausage machine, although the hospital was curing everything Drambon that they possibly could, and the Monitor Corps medics had merely looked long-suffering when they weren’t looking extremely busy.

By themselves neither the hospital nor treatment facilities on the capital ships were enough to swing the balance. To really allow the patient to fight these local infections required massive transfusions of the leucocyte life-form from other, and healthier, strata creatures.

When he had first suggested the transfusion idea Conway had been worried in case the patient would reject what were, in effect, another creature’s antibodies. But this had not happened, and the only problems encountered were those of transportation and supply as the first single, carefully selected kidnappings became continual wholesale abduction.

On the screen appeared a sequence showing one of the special commandos withdrawing leucocytes from a small and disgustingly healthy strata creature on the other side of the planet. The entry shaft had been in use for several weeks and the motion of the strata creature had caused it to bend in several places, but it was still usable. The corpsmen dropped from the copters and into the sloping tunnel, running and occasionally ducking to avoid the lifting gear which would later haul their catch to the surface. They wore lightweight suits and carried only nets. The leucocytes were their friends. It was very important for them to remember that.

The leucocytes possessed a highly developed empathic faculty, which allowed them to distinguish the parent body’s friends from its foes simply by monitoring their emotional radiation. Provided the corpsmen kidnappers thought warm, friendly thoughts while they went about their business, they were perfectly safe. But it was hard and often frustrating work, netting and hauling and transferring the massive and inert slugs into the transport copters. Sweating and short-tempered as they frequently were, it was not easy to radiate feelings of friendship and helpfulness toward their charges. Circumstances arose in which a corpsman gave way to a flash of anger or irritation-at an item of his own equipment, perhaps- and for such lapses many of them died.

Rarely did they die singly. At the end of the sequence Conway watched the entire crew of a transport copter taken out within a few minutes, because it had been impossible for one man to think kindly thoughts toward a being who had just killed a crew mate-by injecting a poison which triggered off muscular spasms so violent that the man broke practically every bone in his body-even if his own life did depend on it. There was no protection and no cure. Heavy-duty spacesuits tough enough to resist the needle points of the leeches’ probes would not have allowed enough mobility for the corpsmen to do their job, and the creatures killed just as quickly and thoroughly and unthinkingly as they cured.

“To summarize,” said the Chalder as it blanked the screen, “the transfusion and artificial feeding operations are going well at present, but if casualties continue to mount at this rate the supply will fall dangerously short of the computed demand. I therefore recommend, most strongly, that surgery be commenced immediately.”

“I agree,” added the Melfan. “Assuming that we must proceed without either the consent or cooperation of the patient, we should start immediately.”

“How immediate?” broke in Captain Williamson, speaking for the first time. “It takes time to deploy a whole sector sub fleet over the operative field. My people will need final briefings and, well, I think the Fleet Commander is a little worried about this one. Up to now his operations have been purely military.”

Conway was silent, trying to force himself to the decision he had been avoiding for several weeks. Once he gave the word to start, once he began cutting on this gargantuan scale, he was committed. There would be no chance to withdraw and try again later, there were no specialists that he could fall back on if the going got tough and, worst of all, there was no time for dithering, because already the patient’s condition had been left untreated for far too long.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” said Conway, trying hard to radiate the confidence and reassurance which he did not feel. “So far as your people are concerned, this has become a military operation. I know that in the beginning you treated it as a disaster-relief exercise on an unusually large scale, but now it has become indistinguishable from war in your minds, because in war you have to expect casualties and you are certainly getting them. I’m very sorry about that, sir. I never expected such heavy losses and I’m personally very sorry that I taught those tools to glide this morning because that stunt will cost a lot more …

“It couldn’t be helped, Doctor,” Williamson broke in, “and one of our people was bound to think of the same idea some time-they’ve thought of practically everything else. But what I want to know is—”

“How soon is immediately,” said Conway for him. “Well, bearing in mind the fact that the operation will be measured in weeks rather than hours, and provided there are no logistical reasons for holding back, I suggest we start the job at first light on the day after tomorrow.”

Williamson nodded, but hesitated before he spoke. “We can be in position at that time, Doctor, but something else has just come up which may cause you to change your mind about the timing.”

He gestured toward the screen and went on, “I can show you charts and figures, if you like, but it is quicker to tell you the results first. The survey of healthy and less ill strata creatures which you asked our cultural contact people to carry out-your idea being that it might be easier to establish communications with a being who was not in constant pain than otherwise-is now complete. Altogether eighteen hundred and seventy-four sites covering every known strata creature were visited, a tool left unattended on the surface and kept under observation from a distance for periods of up to six hours. Even though the body material was practically identical with that of our patient, including the presence of a somewhat simplified form of eye plant, the results were completely negative. The strata creatures under test made no attempt to control or change the tools in any way, and the small changes which did occur were directly traceable to mental radiation from birds or nonintelligent surface animals. We fed this data to Descartes’ computer and then to the tactical computer on Vespasian. The conclusions left no doubt at all, I’m afraid.

“There is only one intelligent strata creature on Drambo,” Williamson ended grimly, “and it is our patient.”

Conway did not reply at once and the meeting became more and more disorganized. To begin with there were a few useful ideas put up-at least, they sounded good until the Captain shot them down. But then instead of ideas he got senseless arguments and bad temper and suddenly Conway knew why.

They had all been both overworked and overtired when the meeting had started, and that had been five hours ago. The Melfan’s bony underside was sagging to within a few inches of the deck. The Hudlar was probably hungry because the water inside the hold had been cleared of all edible material as had the floor, which would similarly displease the constantly rolling Drambon. Above them the enormous Chalder had been hanging in a cramped position for far too long, and the other Earth humans must have been finding their pressure suits as irksome as Conway was finding his. It was obvious that there would be no more useful contributions from anyone at this meeting, including himself, and it was time to wind it up.

He signaled for silence, then said, “Thank you, everyone. The news that our patient is the planet’s only intelligent strata creature makes it necessary for us to try even harder, if that is possible, to make the forthcoming operation a success. It is not a valid reason for delaying surgery.

“You will all have plenty to occupy you tomorrow,” he ended. “I shall spend the time making one last try at obtaining the consent and cooperation of our patient.”

Modifications had been completed to a pair of the tracked boring machines just three days earlier, making them as foolproof as possible and extending their two-way vision equipment to allow Conway to view and, if necessary, direct the operation from anywhere on or inside the strata creature. It was the communications gear that he checked first.

“I have no intention of becoming a dead hero,” Conway explained, grinning. “If we are in any danger I shall be the first to scream for help.”

Harrison shook his head. “The second.”

“Ladies first,” said Murchison firmly.

They drove inland to a healthy area thickly covered by eye plants and stopped for a full hour, then moved on for an hour and stopped again. They spent the morning and early afternoon moving and stopping with no discernible reaction from the patient. Sometimes they drove around in tight circles in an attempt to attract attention, still without success. Not a single tool appeared. Their ground sensors gave no sign that anything was trying to undercut them. Altogether it was turning out to be an intensely frustrating if physically restful day.

When darkness fell they switched on the digger’s spotlights and played them around and watched thousands of eye plants open and close suddenly to this artificial sunshine, but still the strata creature refused the bait.

“In the beginning the brute must have been curious about us,” said Conway, “and anxious to investigate any strange object or occurrence. Now it is simply frightened and hostile, and there are much better targets elsewhere.”

The digger’s vision screens showed several transfusion and feeding sites under constant tool attack, and too many dark stains on the ground which were not of oil.

“I still think,” said Conway seriously, “that if we could get close to its brain, or even into the area where the tools are produced, we would stand a better chance of communicating directly. If direct communication is impossible we might be able to artificially stimulate certain sections to make it think that large objects had landed on the surface, forcing it to draw off the tools attacking the transfusion installations. Or if we could gain an understanding of its technology that might give us a lever …”

He broke off as Murchison shook her head. She produced a chart comprising thirty or more transparent overlays which showed the patient’s interior layout as accurately as six months’ hard work with insufficient facilities could make it. Her features fell into their lecturing expression, the one which said that she wanted attention but not admiration.

She said, “We have already tried to find the patient’s brain location by backtracking along the nerve paths — that is, the network of rootlets containing metallic salts which are capable of carrying electrochemical impulses. Using test bores taken at random on the top surface and by direct observation from diggers, we found that they link up, not to a central brain, but to a flat layer of similar rootlets lying just above the subsurface. They do not join directly onto this new network, but lie alongside, paralleling it close enough for impulses to be passed across by induction.

“Some of this network is probably responsible for the subsurface muscular contractions which gave the patient mobility before it took over this particular land mass and stopped climbing over and smothering its enemies, and it is natural to assume that the eye plants above and the muscles below has a direct connection since they would give the first warning of another strata creature attempting to slip over this one, and the subsequent muscular reaction would be almost involuntary.

“But there are many other root networks in that layer,” she went on, “whose function we do not know. They are not color coded-they all look exactly the same except for minute variations in thickness. The type which apparently abstracts minerals from the subsurface rock can vary in thickness. So I would advise against artificial stimulation of any kind. You could very easily start a bunch of subsurface muscles to twitching, and the corpsmen up top would have localized earthquakes to contend with as well as everything else.”

“All right,” said Conway irked for no other reason than that her objections were valid. “But I still want to get close to its brain or to the tool-producing area, and if it won’t pull us in we must go looking for it. But we’re running out of time. Where, in your opinion, is the best place to look?”

She was thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Either the brain or the tool-producing area could be in a hollow or small valley in the subsurface where, presumably, the creature absorbs necessary minerals. There is a large, rocky hollow fifteen miles away, just here, which would give the necessary protection from below and from all sides while the mass of the overlaying body would save it from injury from above. But there are dozens of other sites just as good. Oh, yes, there would have to be a constant supply of nutriment and oxygen available, but as this is a quasi vegetable process in the patient with water instead of blood as the working fluid, there should be no problem in supplying a deeply buried brain …

She broke off, her face and jaw stiffening in a successfully stifled yawn. Before she could go on, Conway said, “It’s quite a problem. Why don’t you sleep on it?”

Suddenly she laughed. “I am. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Conway smiled and said, “Seriously, I would like to call a copter to pick you up before we go under. I’ve no idea what to expect if we do find what we’re looking for-we might find ourselves caught in an underground blast furnace or paralyzed by the brain’s mental radiation. I realize that your curiosity is strong and entirely professional, but I would much prefer that you didn’t come. After all, scientific curiosity kills more cats than any other kind.”

“With respect, Doctor,” said Murchison, showing very little of it, “you are talking rubbish. There have been no indications of unusually high temperatures on the subsurface, and we both know that while some e-ts communicate telepathically, they can only do so among their own species. The tools are an entirely different matter, an inert but thought-malleable fabrication which …” She broke off, took a deep breath and ended quietly, “There is another digger just like this one. I’m sure there would also be an officer and gentleman on Descartes willing to trail you in it.”

Harrison sighed loudly and said, “Don’t be antisocial, Doctor. If you can’t beat 'em, let them join you.”

“I’ll drive for a while,” said Conway, treating incipient mutiny in the only way he could in the circumstances, by ignoring it. “I’m hungry, and it’s your turn to dish up.”

“I’ll help you, Lieutenant,” said Murchison.

As Harrison turned over the driving position to Conway and headed for the galley, he muttered, “You know, Doctor, sometimes I enjoy drooling over a hot dish, especially yours.”

It was shortly before midnight that they reached the area of the subsurface depression, nosed over and bored in. Murchison stared through the direct-vision port beside her, occasionally making notes about the tracery of fine roots which ran through the damp, cork-like material which was the flesh of the strata creature. There was no indication of a conventional blood supply, nothing to show that the creature had ever been alive in the animal rather than the vegetable sense.

Suddenly they broke through the roof of a stomach and drifted down between the great vegetable pillars which raised and lowered the roof, drawing food-bearing water from the sea and expelling, many days later, the waste material not already absorbed by specialist plants. The vegetable stalactites stretched away to the limits of the spotlight in all directions, each one covered with the other specialized growths whose secretions caused the pillars to stiffen when the stomach had been empty for too long and relax when it was full. Other caverns, smaller and spaced closer together than the stomachs, simply kept the water flowing in the system without performing any digestive function.

Just before they drifted to the floor Harrison angled the digger into diving position and spun the forward cutters to maximum speed. They struck the stomach floor softly and kept on going. Half an hour later they were thrown forward against their straps. The soft thudding of the cutter blades had risen to an ear-piercing shriek, which died into silence as Harrison switched them off.

“Either we’ve reached the subsurface,” he said dryly, “or this beastie has a very hard heart.

They withdrew a short distance, then flattened their angle of descent so that they could continue tunneling with their tracks rolling over the rocky subsurface and the cutters chewing through material which now had the appearance of heavily compressed and thickly veined cork. When they had gone a few hundred yards Conway signaled the Lieutenant to stop.

“This doesn’t look like the stuff that brains are made of,” Conway said, “but I suppose we should take a closer look.”

They were able to collect a few specimens and to look closely, but not for long. By the time they had sealed their suits and exited through the rear hatch, the tunnel they had made was already sagging dangerously and, where the wet, gritty floor met the tunnel sides, an oily black liquid oozed out and climbed steadily until it was over their ankles. Conway did not want to take too much of the stuff back with them into the digger. From the earlier samples taken by drill they knew that it stank to high heaven.

When they were back inside Murchison lifted one of the specimens. It looked a little like an Earthly onion which had been cut laterally in two. The flat underside was covered by a pad of stubby, worm-like growths and the single stalk divided and subdivided many times before joining the nerve network a short distance above them. She said, “I would say that the plant’s secretions dissolve and absorb minerals and/or chemicals from the subsurface rock and soil and, with the water which filters down here, provides the lubrication which allows the creature to change position if the mineral supply runs out. But there are no signs of unusual or concentrated nerve networks here, nor are there any traces of the scars which tools leave when they cut their way through this material. I’m afraid we’ll have to try again somewhere else.”

Nearly an hour went by before they reached the second hollow and another three took them to the third. Conway had been a little doubtful from the beginning about the third site because it was too close to the periphery, in his opinion, to house a brain. But the possibility had still not been ruled out, on a creature this size, of multiple brains or at least a number of neural substations. She reminded him that the old-time brontosaurus had needed two, and it had been microscopic when compared with their patient.

The third site was also very close to the beginning of the first incision line.

“We could spend the rest of our lives searching hollows and still not find what we’re looking for,” said Conway angrily, “and we haven’t that much time.”

His repeater screens showed the sky lightening far above them, with Monitor heavy cruisers already in position, floodlights being switched off at transfusion and feeding installations and occasionally glimpses of Edwards, who had been transferred to the flagship Vespasian as medical liaison chief for the duration. It was his job to translate Conway’s medical instructions into military maneuvers for the fleet’s executive officers.

“Your test bores,” said Conway suddenly. “I assume they were spaced out at regular intervals and went right down to the subsurface? Was there any indication that the black goo which the patient uses as a lubricant is more prevalent in certain areas than in others? I’m trying to find a section of the creature which is virtually incapable of movement, because—”

“Of course,” said Murchison excitedly, “that is the big factor which makes our intelligent patient different from all the smaller and nonintelligent strata creatures. For better protection the brain, and probably the tool-production centers, would almost certainly have to be in a stationary section. Offhand, I can only remember about a dozen test bores in which lubricant was absent or present in very small quantities, but I can look up the map references for you in a few minutes.”

“You know,” said Conway with feeling, “I still don’t want you here but I’m glad you’ve come.

“Thank you,” she said, then added, “I think.”

Five minutes later she had all the available information. “The subsurface forms a small plain ringed by low mountains in that area. Aerial sensors tell us that it is unusually rich in minerals, but then so is most of the center of this land mass. Our test bores were very widely spaced, so that we could easily have missed picking up brain material, but I’m pretty sure now that it is there.”

Conway nodded, then said, “Harrison, that will be the next stop. But it’s too far to go traveling on or under the surface. Take us topside and arrange for a transport copter to lift us to the spot. And on the way would you mind angling us toward Throat Tunnel Forty-three, as close to the incision line as you can manage, so that I can see how the patient reacts to the early stages of the operation. It is bound to have some natural defense against gross physical injury.

He broke off, his mood swinging suddenly from high excitement to deepest gloom. He said, “Dammit, I wish I had concentrated on the tools from the very beginning, instead of getting sidetracked with the rollers, and then thinking that those overgrown leucocytes were the intelligent tool users. I’ve wasted far too much time.”

“We’re not wasting time now,” said Harrison, and pointed toward his repeater screens.

For better or for worse, major surgery had begun.

The main screen showed a line of heavy cruisers playing ponderous follow-the-leader along the first section of the incision, rattlers probing deep while their pressers held the edges of the wound apart to allow deeper penetration by the next ship in line. Like all of the Emperor class ships they were capable of delivering a wide variety of frightfulness in very accurately metered doses, from putting a few streets full of rioters to sleep to dispensing atomic annihilation on a continental scale. The Monitor Corps rarely allowed any situation to deteriorate to the point where the use of mass destruction weapons became the only solution, but they kept them as a big and potent stick-like most policemen, the Federation’s law-enforcement arm knew that an undrawn baton had better and more long-lasting effects than one that was too busy cracking skulls. But their most effective and versatile close-range weapon-versatile because it served equally well either as a sword or a plowshare-was the rattler.

A development of the artificial gravity system which compensated for the killing accelerations used by Federation spaceships, and of the repulsion screen which gave protection against meteorites or which allowed a vessel with sufficient power reserves to hover above a planetary surface like an old-time dirigible airship, the rattler beam simply pushed and pulled, violently, with a force of up to one hundred Gs, several times a minute.

It was very rarely that the corps were forced to use their rattlers in anger-normally the fire-control officers had to be satisfied with using them to clear and cultivate rough ground for newly established colonies- and for the optimum effect the focus had to be really tight. But even a diffuse beam could be devastating, especially on a small target like a scout ship. Instead of tearing off large sections of hull plating and making metallic mincemeat of the underlying structure, it shook the whole ship until the men inside rattled.

On this operation, however, the focus was very tight and the range known to the last inch.

Visually it was not at all spectacular. Each cruiser had three rattler batteries which could be brought to bear, but they pushed and pulled so rapidly that the surface seemed hardly to be disturbed. Only the relatively gentle tractor beams positioned between the rattlers seemed to be doing anything-they pulled up the narrow wedge of material and shredded vegetation so that the next rattler in line could deepen the incision. It would not be until the incision had penetrated to the subsurface and extended for several miles that the other squadrons still hanging in orbit would come in to widen the cut into what they all hoped would be a trench wide enough to check the spread of vegetable infection from the excised and decomposing dead material.

As a background to the pictures Conway could hear the clipped voices of the ordnance officers reporting in. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all saying the same things in the fewest possible words. At irregular intervals a quiet, unhurried voice would break in, directing, approving, coordinating the overall effort-the voice of God, sometimes known as Fleet Commander Dermod, the ranking Monitor Corps officer of Galactic Sector Twelve and as such the tactical director of more than three thousand major fleet units, supply and communications vessels, support bases, ship production lines and the vast number of beings, Earth-human and otherwise, who manned them.

If the operation came unstuck, Conway certainly would not be able to complain about the quality of the help. He began to feel quietly pleased with the way thing were going.

The feeling lasted for all of ten minutes, during which time the incision line passed through the tunnel-Number Forty-three-which they had just entered. Conway could actually see the inward end of the seal, a thick, corrugated sausage of tough plastic inflated to fifty pounds per square inch which pressed against the tunnel walls. Special arrangements had been needed to guard against loss of working fluid because the strata creature’s healing processes were woefully slow. Its blood was quite literally water and one important quality which water did not have was the ability to coagulate.

Two corpsmen and a Melfan medic were on guard beside the seal. They seemed to be agitated, but there were so many leucocytes moving about the tunnel that he could not see the reason for it. His screens showed the incision line crossing the throat tunnel. A few hundreds of gallons of water between the seal and the incision poured away-considering the size of the patient, it was scarcely a drop. The rattlers and tractors moved on, extending and deepening the cut while the great immaterial presser beams, the invisible stilts which supported the enormous weight of the cruisers, pushed the edges apart until the incision became a widening and deepening ravine. A small charge of chemical explosive brought down the roof of the emptied section of tunnel, reinforcing the plastic seal. Everything seemed to be working exactly as planned, until the immediate attention signal began flashing on his board and Major Edwards’ face filled the screen.

“Conway,” said the Major urgently. “The seal in Tunnel Forty-three is under attack by tools.”

“But that’s impossible,” said Murchison, in the scandalized tones of one who has caught a friend cheating at cards. “The patient has never interfered with our internal operations. There are no eye plants down here to give away our positions, no light to speak of, and the seal isn’t even metal. They never attack plastic material on the surface, just men and machines.”

“And they attack men because we betray our presence by trying to take mental control of them,” Conway said quickly. Then to Edwards, “Major, get those people away from the seal and into the supply shaft. Quickly. I can’t talk to them directly. While they’re doing that tell them to try not to think—”

He broke off as the seal ahead disappeared in a soft white explosion of bubbles which roared toward them along the tunnel roof. He could not see anything outside the digger and inside only Edwards’ face and pictures of ships in line astern formation.

“Doctor, the seal’s gone,” shouted the Major, his eyes sliding to one side. “The debris behind the seal is being washed away. Harrison, dig in!”

But the Lieutenant could not dig in because the bubbles roaring past made it impossible to see. He threw the tracks into reverse, but the current sweeping them along was so strong that the digger was just barely in contact with the floor. He killed the floodlights because reflection from the froth outside the canopy was dazzling them. But there was still a patch of light ahead, growing steadily larger …

“Edwards, cut the rattlers …

A few seconds later they were swept out of the tunnel as part of a cataract which tumbled down an organic cliff into a ravine which seemed to have no bottom. The vehicle did not explode into its component parts nor themselves into strawberry jam, so they knew that Major Edwards had been able to kill the rattler batteries in time. When they crashed to a halt a subjective eternity later, two of the repeater screens died in spectacular implosions and the cataract which had cushioned their fall on the way down began battering at their side, pushing and rolling them along the floor of the incision.

“Anyone hurt?” said Conway.

Murchison eased her safety webbing and winced. “I’m black and blue and … and embossed all over.”

“That,” said Harrison in an obviously uninjured tone, “I would like to see.

Both relieved and irritated, Conway said, “First we should look at the patient.”

The only operable view screen was transmitting a picture taken from one of the copters stationed above the incision. The heavy cruisers had drawn off a short distance to leave the operative field clear for rescue and observation copters, which buzzed and dipped above the wound like great metal flies. Thousands of gallons of water were pouring from the severed throat tunnel every minute, carrying the bodies of leucocytes, farmer fish, incompletely digested food and clumps of vital internal vegetation into and along the ravine. Conway signaled for Edwards.

“We’re safe,” he said before the other could speak, “but this is a mess. Unless we can stop this loss of fluid, the stomach system will collapse and we will have killed instead of cured our patient. Dammit, why doesn’t it have some method of protecting itself against gross physical injury, a nonreturn valve arrangement or some such? I certainly did not expect this to happen …

Conway checked himself, realizing that he was beginning to whine and make excuses instead of issuing instructions. Briskly, he said, “I need expert advice. Have you a specialist in short-range, low-power explosive weapons?”

“Right,” said Edwards. A few seconds later a new voice said, “Ordnance control, Vespasian, Major Holroyd. Can I help you, Doctor?”

I sincerely hope so, thought Conway, while aloud he went onto outline his problem.

They were faced with the emergency situation of a patient bleeding to death on the table. Whether the being concerned was large or small, whether its body fluid was Earth-human blood, the superheated liquid metal used by the TLTUs of Threcald Five or the somewhat impure water which carried food and specialized internal organisms to the far flung extremities of this Drambon strata creature’s body, the result would be the same-steadily reducing blood pressure, increasingly deep shock, spreading muscular paralysis and death.

Normal procedure in these circumstances would be to control the bleeding by tying off the damaged blood vessel and suturing the wound. But this particular vessel was a tunnel with walls no more strong or elastic than the surrounding body material, so they could not be tied or even clamped. As Conway saw it the only method remaining was to plug the ruptured vessel by bringing down the tunnel roof.

“Close-range TR-7s,” said the ordnance officer quickly. “They are aerodynamically clean, so there will be no problem shooting into the flow, and provided there are no sharp bends near the mouth of the tunnel any desired penetration can be achieved by—”

“No,” said Conway firmly. “I’m concerned about the compression effects of a large explosion in the tunnel itself. The shock wave would be transmitted deep into the interior, and a great many farmer fish and leucocytes would die, not to mention large quantities of the fragile internal vegetation. We must seal the tunnel as close to the incision as possible, Major, and confine the damage to that area.

“Armor-piercing B-22s, then,” said Holroyd promptly. “In this material we could get penetrations of fifty yards without any trouble. I suggest a simultaneous launch of three missiles, spaced vertically above the tunnel mouth so that they will bring down enough loose material to block the tunnel even against the pressure of water trying to push it away as it subsides.”

“Now,” said Conway, “you’re talking.”

But Vespasian’s ordnance officer could do more than talk. Within a very few minutes the screen showed the cruiser hovering low over the incision. Conway did not see the missiles launched because he had suddenly remembered to check if their digger had been swept far enough to avoid being buried in the debris, which fortunately it had. His first indication that anything at all had happened was when the flow of water turned suddenly muddy, slowed to a trickle and stopped. A few minutes later great gobs of thick, viscous mud began to ooze over the lip of the tunnel and suddenly a wide area around the mouth began to sag, fall apart and slip like a mass of brown porridge into the ravine.

The tunnel mouth was now six times larger than it had been and the patient continued to bleed with undiminished force.

“Sorry, Doctor,” said Holroyd. “Shall I repeat the dose and try for greater penetration?”

“No, wait.”

Conway tried desperately to think. I knew that he was conducting a surgical operation, but he did not really believe it-both the problem and the patient were too big. If an Earth-human was in the same condition, even if no instruments or medication were available, he would know what to do-check the flow at a pressure point, apply a tourniquet … That was it.

“Holroyd, plant three more in the same position and depth as last time,” he said quickly. “But before you launch them can you arrange your vessel’s presser beams so that as many of them as possible will be focused just above the tunnel opening? Angle them against the face of the incision instead of having them acting vertically, if possible. The idea is to use the weight of your ship to compress and support the material brought down by the missiles.”

“Can do, Doctor.”

It took less than fifteen minutes for Vespasian to rearrange and refocus her invisible feet and launch the missiles, but almost at once the cataract ceased and this time it did not resume. The tunnel opening was gone and in its place there was a great, saucer-shaped depression in the wall of the incision where Vespasian’s starboard pressers were focused. Water still oozed through the compacted seal, but it would hold so long as the cruiser maintained position and leaned her not inconsiderable weight on it. As extra insurance another inflatable seal was already being moved into the supply tunnel.

Suddenly the picture was replaced by that of a lined, young-old face above green-clad shoulders on which there rested a quietly impressive weight of insignia. It was the Fleet Commander himself.

“Doctor Conway. My flagship has engaged in some odd exercises in her time, but never before have we been asked to hold a tourniquet.”

“I’m sorry, sir-it seemed the only way of handling the situation. But right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to have this digger lifted to map reference numbers …

He broke off because Harrison was waving at him. The Lieutenant said softly, “Not this digger. Ask him to have the other one checked out and waiting when they get around to pulling us out.”

Three hours later they were in the second modified and strengthened digger, suspended under a transport copter and approaching the area which, they hoped, contained the strata creature’s brain and/or tool producing facilities. The trip gave them a chance to do some constructive theorizing about their patient.

They were now convinced that it had evolved originally from a mobile vegetable form. It had always been large and omnivorous, and when these life-forms began to live off each other they grew in size and complexity and shrank in numbers. There did not seem to be any way that the strata creature could reproduce itself. It simply continued to live and grow until one of its own kind who was bigger than it was killed it. Their patient was the biggest, oldest, toughest and wisest of its kind. As the sole occupant of its land mass for many thousands of years, there had no longer been the necessity for it to move itself bodily and so it had taken root again.

But this had not been a process of devolution. With no chance of cannibalizing others of its own kind, it devised methods of controlling its growth and of rendering its metabolism more efficient by evolving tools to do the jobs like mining, investigating the subsurface, processing necessary minerals for its nerve network. The original farmer fish were probably a strain which were able to survive, like the legendary Jonah, in its stomach and later grow plant teeth for both the parent creature and the farmer fish to defend themselves against sea predators sucked in by the mouths. How the leucocytes got there was still not clear, but the rollers occasionally ran across a smaller, less highly evolved variety which were probably the leeches’ wild cousins.

“But one point which we must keep in mind when we try to talk to it,” Conway ended seriously, “is that the patient is not only blind, deaf and dumb, it has never had another of its own kind to talk to. Our problem isn’t simply learning a peculiar and difficult e-t language, we have to communicate with something which does not even know the meaning of the word communicate.”

“If you’re trying to raise my morale,” said Murchison dryly, “you aren’t.”

Conway had been staring ahead through the forward canopy, mostly to avoid having to look at the carnage depicted on his repeater screens where the tool attacks were taking an increasingly heavy toll at the feeding and transfusion sites. He said suddenly, “The suspected brain area is far too extensive to be searched quickly but, correct me if I’m wrong, isn’t this also the locality where Descartes made her first touchdown? If that is so then the tools sent to investigate her had a relatively short distance to come, and if it is possible to trace the path of a tool by the scar tissue it leaves in the body material …

“It is,” said Murchison, looking excited. Harrison gave new instructions to the transport copter’s pilot without having to be told and a few minutes later they were down, cutting blades spinning and nosing into their patient’s spongy quasi flesh.

But instead of the large, cylindrical plug cut from the body material they found a flat, reversed conical section which tapered sharply to a narrow, almost hair-thin wound which angled almost at once toward the suspected brain area.

“The ship would have been drawn only a short distance below the surface, obviously,” said Murchison. “Enough to let tools make contact with its total surface while supported by body material, instead of making a fleeting contact after bouncing themselves into the air. But do you notice how the tools, even though they must have been cutting through at top speed, still managed to avoid severing the root network which relays their mental instructions …

“At the present angle of descent,” Harrison cut in, “we are about twenty minutes from the subsurface. Sonar readings indicate the presence of caverns or deep pits.”

Before Conway could reply to either of them, Edwards’ face flicked onto the main screen. “Doctor, seals Thirty-eight through Forty-one have gone. We’re already holding tourniquets at Eighteen, Twenty-six and Forty-three, but—”

“Same procedure,” snapped Conway.

There was a dull clang followed by metallic scraping sounds running the length of the digger. The sounds were repeated with rapidly increasing frequency. Without looking up, Harrison said, “Tools, Doctor. Dozens of them. They can’t build up much impetus coming at us through this spongy stuff and our extra armor should cope. But I’m worried about the antenna housing.”

Before Conway could ask why, Murchison turned from the view port. She said, “I’ve lost the original trail, Doctor-this area is practically solid with tool scar tissue. Traffic must be very heavy around here.”

The secondary screens were showing logistic displays on the deployment of ships, earth-moving machinery, decontamination equipment and movements into and out of the feeding and transfusion areas, and the main screen showed Vespasian no longer in position above Tunnel Forty-three. It was losing height and wheeling around in a ponderous, lateral spin while its pilot was obviously fighting hard to keep it from flipping over onto its back.

One of its four presser installations, Conway saw during the next swing, had been smashed in as if by a gigantic hammer and he knew without being told that this was the one which had been holding closed the ruptured Forty-three. As the ship whirled closer to the ground he wanted to close his eyes, but then he saw that the spin was being checked and that the surface vegetation was being flattened by the three remaining pressers, fanned out at maximum power to support the ship’s weight.

Vespasian landed hard but not catastrophically. Another cruiser moved into position above Forty-three while surface transport and copters raced toward the crash-landed ship to give assistance. They arrived at the same time as a large group of tools which were doing nothing at all to help.

Suddenly Dermod’s head filled the screen.

“Doctor Conway,” said the Fleet Commander in a coldly furious voice, “this is not the first time that I have had a ship converted to scrap around me, but I have never learned to enjoy the experience. The accident was caused by trying to balance virtually the whole of the ship’s weight on one narrowly focused presser beam, with the result that its supporting structure buckled and damn near wrecked the ship.”

His tone warmed a little, but only temporarily, as he went on, “If we are to hold tourniquets over every tunnel, and with tools attacking every seal it looks as if we will have to do just that, I shall either have to withdraw my ships for major structural modifications or use them for an hour or so at a time and check for incipient structural failure after each spell of duty. But this will tie up a much larger number of ships in unproductive activity, and the farther we extend the incision the more tunnels we will have to sit on and the slower the work will go. The operation is fast becoming a logistical impossibility, the casualty figures and material losses are making it indistinguishable from a full-scale battle, and if I thought that the only result would be the satisfaction of your medical curiosity, Doctor, and that of our cultural contact people, I would throw a permanent 'Hold' on it right now. I have the mind of a policeman, not a soldier-the Federation prefers it that way. I don’t glory in this sort of thing …

The digger lurched and for an instant Conway felt a sensation impossible in these surroundings, that of free fall. Then there was a crash as the vehicle struck rocky ground. It landed on its side, rolled over twice and moved forward again, but skidding and slewing to one side. The sound of tools striking the hull was deafening.

Two vertical creases appeared on the Fleet Commander’s forehead. He said, “Having trouble, Doctor?”

The constant banging of tools made it hard to think. Conway nodded and said, “I didn’t expect the seals to be attacked, but now I realize that the patient is simply trying to defend itself where it thinks it is under the heaviest attack. I also realize now that its sense of touch is not restricted to its top surface. You see, it is blind, deaf and dumb but it seems to be able to feel in three dimensions. The eye plants and subsurface root networks allow it to feel areas of local pressure, but vaguely, without detail. To feel the fine details it sends tools, which are extremely sensitive- sensitive enough to feel the airflow over their wings in the glider configuration and reproduce the shape themselves at will. Our patient learns very quickly and that glider I thought at it has cost a lot of lives. I wish—”

“Doctor Conway,” the Fleet Commander broke in harshly. “You are

either trying to make excuses or giving me a very basic lecture with which

I am already familiar. I have time to listen to neither. We are faced with

a surgical and tactical emergency. I require guidance.”

Conway shook his head violently. He had the feeling that he had just said or thought of something important but he did not know what it was. He had to stay with his present train of thought if he expected to drag it out into the light again.

He went on, “The patient sees, experiences everything, by touch. So far our only area of common contact are the tools. They are thought controlled extensions of its sense of touch throughout and for a short distance above the patient’s body. Our own mental radiation and control are more concentrated and of strictly limited range. The situation has been that of two fencers trying to communicate only through the tips of their foils—”

He stopped abruptly because he was talking to an empty screen. All three repeaters glowed with power, but there was neither sound nor vision.

Harrison shouted, “I was afraid of this, Doctor. We strengthened the hull armor but had to cover the antenna housing with a plastic radome to allow two-way communications. The tools have found our weak spot. Now we are deaf, dumb and blind, too-and missing one leg because our port caterpillar tread won’t work.”

The digger had come to rest on a flat shelf of rock in a large cavern which angled steeply into the subsurface. Above and behind them hung a great mass of the creature’s body material from which there was suspended thousands of rootlets which joined and rejoined until they became thick, silvery cables writhing motionlessly across the cavern floor, walls and roof before disappearing into the depths. Each cable had at least one bud sprouting from it, like a leaf of wrinkled tinfoil. The more well developed buds quivered and were trying to take the shapes of the tools which were attacking the digger.

“This is one of the places where it makes the tools,” she said, using a spotlight as pointer, “or should I say grows them-I still can’t decide whether this is an animal or vegetable life-form basically. The nervous system seems to be centered in this area, so it is almost certainly part of the brain as well. And it is sensitive-do you see how carefully the tools avoid those silver cables while they are attacking?”

“We’ll do the same,” said Conway, then to Harrison, “That is, if you can move the digger on one track to that overhanging wall with the cables running along it, without crushing those two on the floor?”

Damage in this sensitive area could have serious effects on their patient.

The Lieutenant nodded and began rocking the digger forward and backward along the shelf until they were tight against the indicated wall. Protected by the sensitive cables above, the cavern floor below and the rocky wall on their starboard side, the tool attack was confined to their unprotected port side. They could once again hear themselves think, but Harrison pointed out firmly but apologetically that they could not climb the slope or dig their way out on one track, that they could not call for help and that they had air for only fourteen hours and then only if they sealed their suits to use their remaining tanked air.

“Let’s do that now,” said Conway briskly, “and move outside. Station yourselves at each end of the digger, under the cables and with your backs to the cavern wall. That way you will have to think off attacks from the front only-any tool trying to cut through the rock behind you will make too much noise to take you by surprise. I also want you far enough from my position amidships so that your mental radiation will not affect the tools which I will be trying to control …

“I know that smug, self-satisfied look,” said Murchison to the Lieutenant as she began sealing her helmet. “Our Doctor has had a sudden rush of brains to the head. I think he intends talking to the patient.”

“What language?” asked Harrison dryly.

“I suppose,” said Conway, smiling to show the confidence which he did not feel, “you could call it three-dimensional Braille.”

Quickly he explained what he hoped to do and a few minutes later they were in position outside the digger. Conway sat with his back to the port track housing a few feet from a water-filled depression in the cavern floor. There was a hole of unknown depth in the center of the depression where a cable or similar ore-extracting plant had eaten its way into the rock. To one side of him a group of seven or eight tools had merged together to encircle and squeeze the vehicle’s hull, and some of the armor was beginning to gape at the seams. Conway thought a break in the metal band and then he rolled it into the depression like a great lump of animated, silvery dough. Then he got down to work.

Conway made no attempt to protect himself against attacking tools. He intended concentrating so hard on one particular shape that anything which came within mental range would, he hoped, lose its dangerous edges or points.

Thought-shaping the creature’s outward aspect was easy. Within a few minutes there was a large, silvery pancake-a small-scale replica of the patient-lying in the center of the pool. But thinking three dimensionally of the mouths and their connecting tunnels and stomachs was not so easy. Even harder was the stage when he began thinking the tiny stomachs into expanding and contracting, sucking the gritty, algae-filled water into his scale model and expelling it again.

It was a crude, oversimplified model. The best he could manage at one time was eight mouths and connecting stomachs, and he was very much afraid that it bore the same relation to the patient that a doll did to a living baby. But then he began to add the creeping motions he had observed in smaller, younger strata creatures, keeping the area around the central depression motionless, however, and hoping that with the pumping motions of the stomachs he was giving the impression of a living organism. The sweat poured off his forehead and into his eyes, but by then it did not matter that he could not see properly, because the sections he was shaping were out of sight anyway. Then he began to think certain areas solid, motionless, dead. He extended these dead, motionless and detail-less areas until gradually the whole model was a solid, lifeless lump.

Then he blinked the sweat out of his eyes and started all over again, and then again, and suddenly the others were standing beside him.

“They aren’t attacking us anymore,” said Harrison quietly, “and before they change their minds I am going to try fixing that damaged track. At least, there is no shortage of tools.”

Murchison said, “Can I help-apart from keeping my mind blank to avoid warping your model?”

Without looking up Conway said, “Yes, please. I’m going to take it through the same sequence once again, but halt it at the point where the dead areas extend to at the present time. When I do that I would like you to think the positions of our incisions and extend and widen them while I seal the severed throat tunnels and think the feeding and transfusion shafts. You withdraw the excised material a short distance and think it solid-dead, that is-while I try to get across the idea that the remainder is alive and twitching and likely to stay that way.”

She caught on very quickly but Conway had no way of knowing if their patient had, or could, catch on. Behind them Harrison was at work on the damaged tread while before them their model of the patient and the effects of their present surgery became more and more detailed- right down to the miniature corrugated seals and what happened to the creature when one of them was collapsed. But still there was no indication from the patient that it understood what they were trying to tell it.

Suddenly Conway stood up and began climbing the sloping floor. He said, “I’m sorry, I have to move out of range for a minute to catch my mental breath.”

“Me, too,” she said a few minutes later. “I’ll join you … look!”

Conway had been staring at the darkness of the cavern roof to rest both his mind and his eyes. He looked down quickly, thinking they were him into the digger and, while Conway made contact with the surface, Murchison instinctively raised her hand in farewell to the cavern and the shapes of the tool models scattered across the shelf. She must have been thinking very hard about her good-bye because her last model raised its hand also and kept it there while the digger crawled slowly out of mental range.

Suddenly all three repeaters were alive and Dermod was staring at him, his face reflecting concern, relief and excitement in sequence and then altogether. He said, “Doctor, I thought we’d lost you-you blanked out four hours ago. But I can report progress. The incision is proceeding and all tool attacks ceased half an hour ago. There is no tool trouble reported from the tunnel seals, the decontamination teams, the transfusion shafts anywhere. Doctor, is this a temporary condition?”

Conway let his breath go in a long, loud sigh of relief. Their patient was a very bright lad despite its physically slow reaction times. He shook his head and said, “You will have no more trouble from the tools. In fact, you will find them of assistance in helping maintain equipment and for use in awkward sections of the incision once we make it understand our needs. You can also forget about digging that isolation trench-our patient retains enough mobility to withdraw itself from the newly excised material-which means that ships which would have been tied up in digging that trench will now be free to extend the incision more rapidly, so that our operation will be completed in a fraction of the time originally thought necessary.

“You see, sir,” Conway ended, “we now have the active cooperation of our patient.”

Major surgery was completed in just under four months and Conway was ordered back to Sector General. Postoperative treatment would take a great many years and would proceed in conjunction with the exploration of Drambo and the closer investigation of its life-forms and cultures. Before leaving, while he was still seriously troubled by the thought of the casualty figures, Conway had once questioned the value of what they had done. A rather supercilious cultural contact specialist had tried to make it very simple for him by saying that difference, whether it was cultural, physiological or technological, was immensely valuable. They would learn much from the strata creature and the rollers while they were teaching them. Conway, with some difficulty, accepted that. He could also accept the fact that, as a surgeon, his work on Drambo was done. It was much harder to accept the fact that the pathology team, particularly one member of it, still had a lot of work to do.

While O’Mara did not openly enjoy his anguish, neither did he display sympathy.

“Stop suffering so loudly in silence, Conway,” said the Chief Psychologist on his return, “and sublimate yourself-preferably in quicklime. But failing that there is always work, and an odd case has just come in which you might like to look at. I’m being polite, of course. It is your case as of now. Observe.”

The large visi screen behind O’Mara’s desk came to life and he went on. “This beastie was found in one of the hitherto unexplored regions, the victim of an accident which virtually cut its ship and itself in two. Airtight bulkheads sealed off the undamaged section and your patient was able to withdraw itself, or some of itself, before they closed. It was a large ship, filled with some kind of nutrient earth, and the victim is still alive- or should I say half alive. You see, we don’t know which half of it we rescued. Well?”

Conway stared at the screen, already devising methods of immobilizing a section of the patient for examination and treatment, of synthesizing supplies of that nutrient soil which now must be virtually sucked dry, and for studying the wreck’s controls to gain data on its sensory equipment. If the accident which had wrecked its ship had been due to an explosion in the power plant, which was likely, then this might well be the front half containing the brain.

His new patient was not quite the Midgard Serpent but it did not fall far short of it. Twisting and coiling it practically filled the enormous hangar deck which had been emptied to accommodate it.

“Well?” said O’Mara again.

Conway stood up. Before turning to go he grinned and said, “Small, isn’t it?”