Stranger in a Strange Land

«There's your answer, Jock. When the live stuff gets thin, trot on the movies. Now, Captain, about extraterritoriality: you say the Martians were not opposed?»

«Well, no, sir — but they were not for it, either.»

«I don't follow you.»

Captain van Tromp chewed his lip. «Sir, talking with a Martian is like talking with an echo. You don't get argument but you don't get results.»

«Perhaps you should have brought what's-his-name, your semantician. Or is he waiting outside?»

«Mahmoud, sir. Doctor Mahmoud is not well. A — A slight nervous breakdown, sir.» Van Tromp reflected that dead drunk was the moral equivalent.

«Space happy?»

«A little, perhaps.» These damned groundhogs!

«Well, fetch him around when he's feeling himself. I imagine this young man Smith will be of help, too.»

«Perhaps,» van Tromp said doubtfully.

This young man Smith was busy staying alive. His body, unbearably compressed and weakened by the strange shape of space in this unbelievable place, was at last relieved by the softness of the nest in which these others placed him. He dropped the effort of sustaining it, and turned his third level to his respiration and heart beat.

He saw that he was about to consume himself. His lungs were beating as hard as they did at home, his heart was racing to distribute the influx, all in an attempt to cope with the squeezing of space — and this while smothered by a poisonously rich and dangerously hot atmosphere. He took steps.

When his heart rate was twenty per minute and respiration almost imperceptible, he watched long enough to be sure that he would not discorporate while his attention was elsewhere. When he was satisfied he set a portion of his second level on guard and withdrew the rest of himself. It was necessary to review the configurations of these many new events in order to fit them to himself, then cherish and praise them — lest they swallow him.

Where should he start? When he left home, enfolding these others who were now his nestlings? Or at his arrival in this crushed space? He was suddenly assaulted by lights and sounds of that arrival, feeling it with mind-shaking pain. No, he was not ready to embrace that configuration — back! back! back bevond his first sight of these others who were now his own. Back even before the healing which had followed first grokking[1] that he was not as his nestling brothers … back to the nest itself.

None of his thinkings were in Earth symbols. Simple English he had freshly learned to speak, less easily than a Hindu used it to trade with a Turk. Smith used English as one might use a code book, with tedious and imperfect translation. Now his thoughts, abstractions from half a million years of wildly alien culture, traveled so far from human experience as to be untranslatable.

In the adjoining room Dr. Thaddeus was playing cribbage with Tom Meechum, Smith's special nurse. Thaddeus had one eye on his dials and meters. When a flickering light changed from ninety-two pulsations per minute to less than twenty, he hurried into Smith's room with Meechum at his heels.

The patient floated in the flexible skin of the hydraulic bed. He appeared to be dead. Thaddeus snapped, «Get Doctor Nelson!»

Meechum said, «Yessir!» and added, «How about shock gear, Doc?»

«Get Doctor Nelson!»

The nurse rushed out. The interne examined the patient, did not touch him. An older doctor came in, walking with labored awkwardness of a man long in space and not readjusted to high gravity. «Well, Doctor?»

«Patient's respiration, temperature, and pulse dropped suddenly about two minutes ago, sir.»

«What have you done?»

«Nothing, sir. Your instructions — »

«Good.» Nelson looked Smith over, studied instruments back of the bed, twins of those in the watch room. «Let me know if there is any change.» He started to leave.

Thaddeus looked startled. «But, Doctor — »

Nelson said, «Yes, Doctor? What is your diagnosis?»

«Uh, I don't wish to sound off about your patient, sir.»

«I asked for your diagnosis.»

«Very well, sir. Shock — atypical, perhaps,» he hedged, «but shock, leading to termination.»

Nelson nodded. «Reasonable. But this isn't a reasonable case. I've seen this patient in this condition a dozen times. Watch.» Nelson lifted the patient's arm, let it go. It stayed where he left it.

«Catalepsy?» asked Thaddeus.

«Call it that if you like. Just keep him from being bothered and call me if there is any change.» He replaced Smith's arm.

Nelson left. Thaddeus looked at the patient, shook his head and returned to the watch room. Meechum picked up his cards. «Crib?»

«No.»

Meechum added, «Doc, if you ask me, that one is a case for the basket before morning.»

«No one asked you. Go have a cigarette with the guards. I want to think.»

Meechum shrugged and joined the guards in the corridor; they straightened up, then saw who it was and relaxed. The taller marine said, «What was the excitement?»

«The patient had quintuplets and we were arguing about what to name them. Which one of you monkeys has a butt? And a light?»