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was an expanse of sparkling white noise. The captain swore and jabbed at
several of its control studs without result. Even the green POWER ON light was
dead.
The type and intensity of the captain's emotional radiation was beginning to
worry Prilicla. He said, "Something has hap-pened, friend Fletcher. What is
troubling you?"
"My tester just died," said the captain. Suddenly it grabbed the instrument in
both hands, raised it high above its head and slammed it downwards with all of
its strength against the deck before adding, "And I was expecting it to
happen,
file:///F|/rah/James%20White/White,%20James%...or%20General%2012%20-%20Double%
20Contact.txt (47 of 144) [5/21/03 10:31:16 PM]
file:///F|/rah/James%20White/White,%20James%20-%20Sector%20General%2012%20-%20
Double%20Contact.txt dammit!"
"Temper, Captain," said Murchison, radiating irritation and surprise as it
bent down to pick up the remains of the device.
"No!" said Fletcher urgently. "Stay away from it. Probably there's no physical
danger to yourselves because it's dead, de-funct. But don't touch it until we
know the technical reason for what happened here."
"Which was what?" said Prilicla.
He spoke very gently because the other's feelings were con-fused, fearful,
excited, and radiating all over the emotional spec-trum. It was an
unprecedented mental condition for the usually calm and imperturbable captain
to display.
Murchison's feeling irritation at the other's brusque manner was being
replaced by the. clinical calm of a physician towards someone who might
shortly become a patient. But before the captain could reply, there was an
interruption from
Naydrad speaking on their head-sets.
"Dr. Prilicla," it said. "One of the casualties, the last one you brought in,
has returned to partial consciousness. Judging by its manner, it was the
ship's commanding officer. It is greatly agitated, its speech is slurred and
unintelligible, and, in spite of being immobilized, it is fighting all
attempts at administering further sedative shots. The self-inflicted
additional trauma is causing a marked deterioration in its clinical condition.
If we patch you through, will you speak to it? Or better still, come back here
and try your projective empathy on its mind?"
While the charge nurse was speaking, Prilicla had been try-ing not to tremble
at the thought of what the severely burned and prematurely conscious patient
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was doing to itself. He said, "Of course, friend Naydrad. I'll talk to it now
and while I'm flying back to join you. If it is Terragar's captain, then
Rhabwar will have its family and personal names on file. Quickly, please, find
out what they are. Using them in conversation will help reassure it, but I'll
speak to it now."
"No," said Fletcher. "I know his name. Let me talk to him."
He felt Murchison's earlier calm disappear in an unchar-acteristic flare of
anger as it said, "What the hell's got into you, Captain? This is a clinical
matter. It is definitely not in your area of expertise."
Both of their faces were showing the reddening of tempo-rarily elevated blood
pressure, but the anger of the captain was being overlaid by feelings of
increasing certainty as it said, "Sorry, ma'am. In this case it is, because
right now I'm the only one here who knows what happened."
CHAPTER 10
The captain was not allowing the intense sympathy and con-cern it was feeling
to affect the calm, unemotional tone of its voice as it spoke via the
communicator screen to the patient, but considering the urgency of the
situation, Prilicla thought that friend Fletcher's long-range bedside manner
was very good.
"Captain Davidson, George," it began. "This is Don Fletcher, Rhabwar. We were
able to land your ship, cool it in the sea, and recover your crew. Apart from
the burn injuries, which ire severe, you are in no immediate danger,
and please believe me neither are we.. . ."
No sentient creature, Prilicla thought as an uncontrollable tremor shook his
body, should ever have to suffer such an inten-sity of pain, much less have to
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