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important and closely-timed courses of treatment and the physical injury,
perhaps even death, to the more fragile life-forms through its ignorant
blundering about-Conway felt himself go a little sick.
For the failure to capture the runaway had made plain one very disquieting
fact, and that was that the SRTT was not too young and immature not to know
how to work the intersection locks...
Half angrily, Conway pushed these useless anxieties to the back of his mind
and began explaining to Prilicla about the patients in the ward they were
going to visit next, and the protective measures and examinative procedures
necessary when handling them.
This ward contained twenty-eight infants of the FROB classification- low,
squat, immensely strong beings with a horny covering that was like flexible
armor plate. Adults of the species with their increased mass tended to be slow
and ponderous, but the infants could move surprisingly fast despite the
condition of four times Earth-normal gravity and pressure in which they lived.
Heavy-duty suits were called for in these conditions and the floor level of
the ward was never used by visiting physicians or nursing staff except in
cases of the gravest emergency. Patients for examination were raised from the
floor by a grab and lifting apparatus to the cupola set in the ceiling for
this purpose, where they were anesthetized before the grab was released. This
was done with a long, extremely strong needle which was inserted at the point
where the inner side of the foreleg joined the trunk-one of the very few soft
spots on the FROB's body.
..... I expect you to break a lot of needles before you get the hang of it,"
Conway added, "but don't worry about that, or think that you are hurting them.
These little darlings are so tough that if a bomb went off beside them they
would hardly blink."
Conway was silent for a few seconds while they walked briskly toward the
FROB ward-Prilicla's six, multi-jointed and pencil-thin legs seeming to spread
out all over the place, but somehow never actually getting underfoot. He no
longer felt that he was walking on eggs when he was near the GLNO, or that the
other would crumple up and blow away if he so much as brushed against it.
Prilicla had demonstrated its ability to avoid all contacts likely to be
physically harmful to it in a way which, now that Conway was becoming
accustomed to it, was both dexterous and strangely graceful.
A man, he thought, could get used to working with anything.
"But to get back to our thick-skinned little friends," Conway resumed,
"physical toughness in that species-especially in the younger age groups-is
not accompanied by resistance to germ or virus infections. Later they develop
the necessary antibodies and as adults are disgustingly healthy, but in the
infant stage..
"They catch everything," Prilicla put in. "And as soon as a new disease is
discovered they get that, too."
Conway laughed. "I was forgetting that most e-t hospitals have their quota of
FROBs and that you may already have had experience with them. You will know
also that these diseases are rarely fatal to the infants, but that their cure
is long, complicated, and not very rewarding, because they straightaway catch
something else. None of our twenty-eight cases here are serious, and the
reason that they are here rather than at a local hospital is that we are
trying to produce a sort of shotgun serum which will artificially induce in
them the immunity to infection which will eventually be theirs in later life
and so . . .
Stop!"
Page 90
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The word was sharp, low and urgent, a shouted whisper. Prilicla froze, its
sucker-tipped legs gripping the corridor floor, and stared along with Conway
at the being who had just appeared at the intersection ahead of them.
At first glance it looked like an Illensan. The shapeless, spiny body with the
dry, rustling membrane joining upper and lower appendages belonged
unmistakably to the PVSJ chlorine-breathers. But there were two eating
tentacles which seemed to have been transplanted from an FGLI, a furry breast
pad which was pure DBLF
and it was breathing, as they were, an atmosphere rich in oxygen.
It could only be the runaway.
All the laws of physiology to the contrary Conway felt his heart battering at
the back of his throat somewhere as, remembering O'Mara's strict orders not to
frighten the being, he tried to think of something friendly and reassuring to
say. But the SRTT took off immediately it caught sign of them, and all Conway
could find to say was, "Quick, after it!"
At a dead run they reached the intersection and turned into the corridor taken
by the fleeing SRTT, Prilicla scuttling along the ceiling again to keep out of
the way of Conway's pounding feet. But the sight in front of them caused
Conway to forget all about being gentle and reassuring, and he yelled, "Stop,
you fool! Don't go in there...!"
The runaway was at the entrance to the FROB ward.
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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