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Then there was the worst worry of all. What if, after 380 days at superlight velocity, they arrived at their destination to discover no evidence of the Broa? What if the Sky Flower Nebula was not The Crab and they had just journeyed 7000 light-years in the wrong direction? That was the worst-case scenario.

Better to discover that Sar-Say was telling the gospel truth than not to know. A threat was something humanity could handle. It was fear of the unknown that sapped the human spirit.

Dan Landon took another sip of tea and mentally shook himself. He had noted a tendency in himself to brood of late. It was the isolation, of course. With blackness beyond the hull for six days, 23 hours each week, they were all going a little stir crazy. In fact, the crew as a whole was displaying the symptoms of sensory deprivation. As the commanding officer, it was his job to see that they were kept too busy to think about their troubles. That was good advice for all aboard, including him.

With a grimace, he pulled the morning report up on his screen and began to read. It was not his most enjoyable task of the day and he had been putting it off. He scanned the report and then scowled. Things were not as shipshape in Engineering as they should be.

“Communicator, get me Chief Engineer Dresser.”

“Working,” a disembodied voice said in his ear. A few seconds later, the communicator said, “Mr.

Rykand answered, Captain. He’s calling Chief Engineer Dresser now.” Then after another short wait, he heard, “Yes, Captain.”

“About those figures you sent me this morning …”

He did not get any further. There was a moment of static on the circuit, followed by a sharp intake of breath from Laura Dresser on the other end. Then three long seconds of silence passed before the shouting began.

“What’s the matter!” he demanded.

“It’s Sar-Say, Captain. He has electrocuted himself. I think he’s dead!”

#

Dr. Pamela Faraday had been in the Stellar Survey for twenty years and she would not call her duties strenuous. There just was not much that could go wrong aboard a starship. Save for the real possibility that the entire ship would be vaporized by a small piece of space junk -- a possibility that did not require the attention of a medical doctor -- there were few instances of injury. Mostly she spent her days in her dispensary treating sprains from too active calisthenics and sporting contests, and keeping current with her medical databases. It was thus a shock when she received the panic call from the control room.

“Doctor, this is Landon. Grab your kit and get down to Engineering. Sar-Say’s hearts have stopped.”

“On my way, sir!” she yelled over her shoulder as she grabbed an emergency kit and arrowed for the hatch that offered the most direct route toward where the engineers kept watch over the stardrive.

When she arrived, she found Mark Rykand and Laura Dresser kneeling over the prone figure of the pseudo-simian. Both had their legs tucked beneath anchor frames and they were physically holding Sar-Say’s body down against the deck. Or rather, Mark was using one hand to keep the Taff from floating away. He covered one side of Sar-Say’s muzzle with the other hand. Dr. Faraday wondered what he was doing until she realized that he was giving the alien mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He had covered half the horizontal slits that Sar-Say used for nostrils with his right hand and was blowing air into the muzzle from the opposite side.

Laura Dresser was also active. She crouched over the alien’s chest and was pressing her palms down to stimulate both of the Taff’s hearts in a quick, alternating rhythm. Pamela Faraday wondered where she had learned enough about Sar-Say’s physiology to know to do that.

“Let me in there, please,” the doctor said as she floated above the trio. “No, you keep respiration going, Mark. Laura, you move. I need to get some adrenaline into him!”

One of the things that had kept the doctor busy for the last six months had been reading the extensive medical reports written by the biologists who had studied Sar-Say. The Taff was not human, but his biochemistry was sufficiently similar that most standard medical techniques worked on him. Like human beings, the rate at which his twin hearts beat was controlled by a chemical in his bloodstream. It was not exactly adrenaline, but it was close enough that the substitute would work.

She whipped an injector out of her emergency kit and made certain that it was set to dispense the proper drug before jamming the injector end against Sar-Say’s chest just below where she knew his primary heart to be. She pressed the stud and there was a momentary hissing sound. She moved the injector a few centimeters to the right and repeated the procedure. Then, without wasted motion, she pulled a self-sealing monitor pad from her bag and adhered it to the brown fur midway between the alien’s hearts.

On her wrist, her monitor immediately began emitting a strange double-thrumming sound.

“That’s it,” she exclaimed. “We have heart rhythm again.”

A moment later, Sar-Say shuddered and drew a ragged breath. His eyes twitched and lost some of their glazed look. The alien did not, however, wake up.

After examining his pupils -- the medical reports said their response to stimuli was as involuntary as in human beings -- she turned to Mark. “All right, you can stop blowing now. His hearts are beating again and he is breathing on his own.”

Mark straightened up from where he had been crouching for what seemed an eternity. For the first time he noted the crowd watching through the open hatch. There was a sudden commotion and the crowd parted for the captain.

“All right, what’s going on?” Landon demanded as he elbowed his way through.

Pamela Faraday gave her medical report in a few well-chosen words.

“Will he live?”

“Too soon to tell. We do not know enough about his species for me to offer an intelligent opinion without further observation. I need to get him to the infirmary.”

“Right.” He singled out a couple of spacers who were hanging around outside the hatch. “You two, help the doctor. Mr. Rykand, Chief Engineer Dresser, you come over here with me.”

Mark had a worried look as he watched the two spacers gently lift Sar-Say’s body from the deck. In the microgravity environment, it was less a matter of lifting the limp form as guiding it through the hatch and out into the passageway beyond. The crowd parted to make way as Dr. Faraday led the small party out of sight in the direction of the infirmary.

“What happened?” Landon demanded.

Laura Dresser recounted the events up to the moment that Sar-Say’s unconscious form had floated out of the computer.

“What was he doing inside the damned thing in the first place?”

“We were tracing one of the circuits. I left him to answer the call from you. He must have reached inside and short circuited the power cell.”

“On purpose?”

“Hardly, Captain. I doubt he tried to electrocute himself. He certainly didn’t seem suicidal just before the accident.”

“Mark, is that the way you saw it?”

“Yes, sir. Sar-Say was happy when he showed up and eager to help.”

“Right, what happened next?”

Once it was obvious what had happened, we grabbed his body and held him down on the deck while we performed first aid.”

“Quick thinking on both of your parts. You may have saved his life. What about the computer?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been too busy to check.”

“Please check now, Mr. Rykand.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Mark pulled himself to the computer and gazed inside. One did not need to be a specialist to see that the big machine would never think again. He could see several spots where the circuitry had actually melted.

“It’s trashed, Captain.”

“Well this is one fine hell of a mess!” Landon muttered.

Neither of the others responded. The captain had said it all.

#

Lisa was worried.

She had been working to improve her pronunciation of Broan trade talk when word had reached her of Sar-Say’s accident. Those who saw her between her cabin and the infirmary saw a maniac arrowing through the corridors, heedless of her own safety and that of others. Had she encountered traffic at the passageway junctions, there might have been other patients for Dr. Faraday’s care.

When she arrived in the medical office, she found Sar-Say strapped to a bed with a makeshift oxygen mask over his snout. He looked so small and helpless laying there that large, globular tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. The alien’s own eyes were open and staring into space. They showed no sign of recognition, however. The two orbs were not even pointed in the same direction.

Lisa arrived to find the doctor working on Sar-Say, too busy to answer her questions. Nor was Mark available to tell her what had happened. With nothing to do, Lisa had waited in the passageway outside the infirmary. One problem with microgravity, she discovered, was that it was not conducive to pacing, and without that physical release for her tension, she felt ready to jump out of her skin.

Eventually, Dr. Faraday stuck her head out through the infirmary hatch.

“How is he, Doctor?”

“I think he’ll live. Whether there will be brain damage … well, we will have to wait and see. The chances are good that he will recover fully. Because of quick work by Mark Rykand and Laura Dresser, his brain wasn’t deprived of oxygen very long.”

“When can I see him?”

“Not until morning. Now go find something else to do.”

“Is that wise, Doctor? He is liable to be disoriented when he wakes up. Wouldn’t it be better if there is a friendly face for him to see?”

“In other words, how about letting you stick around?”

“That, too.”

“All right. You will probably just pester me with comm calls if I send you away. You can play nurse if you like, although I warn you, I don’t expect him to wake anytime soon.”

Lisa quickly agreed. Pamela Faraday showed her how to read the monitoring equipment that displayed Sar-Say’s heart and respiratory rates and explained that since he was an alien, she would have to monitor everything manually. The automatics were off line.

“Why not use them?” Lisa asked, puzzled.

“Because they might mistake a normal Taff reaction for an adverse human one. We wouldn’t want the machine to attempt to cure that strange, double-thump in his hearts, now would we?”

“No.”

So it was that Lisa spent the night listening to the “double thump” and mulling over how things might have been different. The longer the Taff remained unconscious, the more extreme the scenarios her anguished mind thought up. What if he never woke up; or worse, if his mind was gone? What a tragedy for the small alien to come so far, only to be felled by a few stray electrons.

Mark showed up with breakfast the next morning.

“How is he doing?”

“No change. His hearts are beating normally; his breathing is shallow and thready, but adequate. The oxygen content of his blood is within tolerance. If only he would wake up!”

Mark had pulled her to him and held her close. “Give him time.”

“What happened down there?” she asked, half-sobbing into his shoulder.

“We’re still not sure. From the evidence, it looks like he picked up one of Laura Dresser’s manipulators and stuck it into the power cell.”

“Why would he do that?”

She felt his shrug rather than saw it. “No way to tell until he wakes up. Maybe he saw something. Maybe curiosity just got the better of him. We’ll have to wait and ask him.”

Mark stayed an hour and then left to return to duty, leaving Lisa once again with her thoughts. Strange how quickly life can change, she mused. One moment, she had been settled into her familiar, daily routine. The next, a friend was at death’s door. She had not felt this morose since her father had died.

Funny that she could be so upset over an alien.

She was on the verge of beginning another cycle of “what might have been” when she was startled by a noise from the bed beside her. She looked up from her readouts to note that Sar-Say had moved an arm.

It had been floating free as it did when he slept. Now, however, it moved upward to grab his head.

Lisa levered herself from her seat and pulled herself to hover over the bed. The alien’s eyes were still not focused, but they did not stare off in two different directions either. Sar-Say’s tongue had retracted into his mouth. She was not sure whether this was a good sign. What if he swallowed it and choked? She thought of sticking her hand into his mouth, but decided not to. An involuntary spasm at an inappropriate moment might cost her a finger.

Sar-Say emitted a low sound like a groan and then slowly turned his head to look at her. She hoped the alien had regained enough consciousness to recognize her broad smile for what it was, despite the copious tears that were making it difficult to see. Sar-Say had told her that among his people, the baring of teeth was a sign of aggression, not friendliness. When she thought his eyes were tracking well enough to prove him awake, she said, “Welcome back.”

Sar-Say said something in an unintelligible language, and then switched to Broan trade talk. “Where is this place?”

“You are in the infirmary aboard the Ruptured Whale. Do you remember what happened?”

The alien’s answering blink was slow in coming, but something seemed to clear in his mind and he said in Standard, “Yes. I saw something that made me curious. I used one of Laura Dresser’s tools to retrieve it.

That is the last I remember --”

“That is enough,” Lisa replied quietly. “You have been injured, but are mending. Rest now. We will talk again after you have regained your strength.”

Consciousness seemed to seep from the Taff as quickly as it had come. His eyes closed and soon he was breathing with the same, slow rhythm that Lisa had watched many a night when they shared his cage aboard PoleStar. A quick glance at the medical readouts confirmed that Sar-Say was sleeping normally.

Lisa sighed. She now knew what it was like to be the parent of a sick child. She could not say that she liked the sensation!

“Wake up sleepyhead!”

Mark Rykand stirred and tried to escape the feminine hand shaking his shoulder. He could not seem to get away. Slowly, with great reluctance, he climbed out of the million-kilometer thick pillow that was sleep and slowly let his senses regain control over his body. When he finally opened his eyes, he found Lisa’s grinning features staring down at him, framed by a tousled blonde mane.