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Carlos tore open a pouch of vodka, staring unblinkingly at the corpse. He guzzled half the pouch and coughed as it burned its way down. He handed the rest to Cadma
All of Carlos's struggle had been for nothing. Bobbi had never come out of shock. Her heart had simply given up. Carlos had not cried; he had simply smashed his fist into the wall, damaging both plaster and knuckles. Without a word, he had gone to the camp liquor supply. No one had tried to refuse him.
Now he sat with Cadma
Both seemed cut from the same dark, dangerous cloth.
Jerry moved the scalpel carefully along the creature's head, slitting and then peeling away the skin, exposing the skull's smooth, barely convex arch. "I don't see any fissures at all," he remarked for the record.
He switched to the band drill. It whined, etching its way through the tough layer of tissue. The stench of burning bone tickled Sylvia's nostrils through her gauze face mask.
"Thickheaded tart," Jerry muttered. "This one is definitely older and uglier than the first. Might even be its mama."
"Grendel and Grendel's mother," Sylvia said. "It fits," She winked at Cadma
Jerry lifted a section of skull to expose a pale layer of membrane protecting the brain. Slitting it exposed darkly pinkish jellied pulp.
"Cassandra. Watch this."
The camera moved in closer. Jerry dictated in a carefully controlled voice.
"This has to be olfactory brain tissue. It's well defined and coterminous with nasal passages. Well penetrated with air passages. This critter had one hell of a sense of smell.
"Behind and above that is more tissue that has some similarities, but it's also well defined, and doesn't appear to be part of the olfactory area. If there's any parallel with human evolution, this is the equivalent of cortex, although it sure doesn't look much like what we use for cortex. Lots of convolutions, though. Maybe that's a universal?
"From the size and shape, if I'm right about what this area is and does, the critter is at least as intelligent as a gorilla. Maybe more so. Better sense of smell than a dog or a cat."
The saw whirred again.
"Moving back, there's a whole series of enlarged ganglia complexes.
Subsidiary brains, maybe? I know there are at least three more of these down in the lower spinal area. My guess is they really are subsidiary brains that control reflexes and locomotion. That's one reason the critter can move so fast. The central brain gives orders, but they get carried out by a whole batch of brains distributed along the systems."
Computer networks operate that way. Sylvia looked away from the monster and back to Cadma
Jerry continued to work. His hands moved deftly, guiding the instruments in precise motions, exposing without damaging. From time to time he called up ultrasound and X-ray images on the computer screen, consulted them, then went back to his grisly task. An hour passed.
Presently Jerry removed some tissue samples. "All right. Sylvia, we'll want microscopic examinations of this. Freeze and section and—"
"And the rest. Sure," she said. She kept her voice pleasant.
"Sorry—"
" ‘S all right." Sylvia moved closer. "That oversized jaw. The first one was that way, too."
"Right. Species characteristic, I'd say."
"Yes. Jaw. Oversized feet. Webbed, but with claws, designed for fighting, but also for traction. No hands, though. It was never designed as a tool user."
"Right on that."
Carlos took another stiff drink, then slammed the canteen down. He stood, stepping out of the shadow and closer to the table.
"Traction? Want to see traction? Look at Cadma
He was shaking, and seemed to calm only when Cadma
"I saw that too," Cadma
"You and everyone else, Cadzie. You've both done your parts. Leave the rest of it to us."
She felt a kick, a sensation of pulling, of her pelvic girdle stretching, accompanied by momentary faintness. She caught her balance and shut her mind to the fatigue.
"Sylvie? Are you all right?" Cadma
He sees everything. "Fine."
"No, you're not—"
"Good enough. Look, I promise. As soon as we're finished with the preliminaries, I'll take a nap. I just can't miss being in on this one."
Saw and drills continued to sing and strip away the skin and the flesh from the thing that had haunted their nightmares, while ultrasound recorders watched and remembered. The dissection would later be computer-corrected to form an in-depth holographic template. Then the analysis could begin.
Zack spoke for the first time in hours. "I can almost feel sorry for it." He indicated Cassandra and the other complex instruments in the room. "It couldn't have known what it was up against."
Carlos growled deep in his throat and stood. Before he could move he was halted by Sylvia's laugh. She looked to Cadma
Carlos sat on his stool as the saw began a new song.
They peeled away the ribs. At first Sylvia concentrated on the lungs: flatter than human lungs, less a pair of bags than a webwork with blood vessels ru
She probed into the gland sacs, flattened organs perching atop the lungs. "What in the world?" she whispered. "Cassandra. Close up." She sliced into them with the tip of her scalpel. The walls were elastic and wrinkled, shrunken to a third the size of the lungs. "Whatever this is, it can hold a lot more than it does right now." A brilliant carmine fluid jellied in the sacs, and she spooned out a sample. "I'm going to run an analysis on this."
Sylvia placed the sample in the spare biothermograph ferried down from Geographic. There was a faint humming sound as it pumped the air from the sample chamber.
Thank God that this apparatus, at least, had been duplicated. So much equipment had been lost; they would have a hell of a time working out this creature's gene patterns now. Its flesh might have to be preserved for years before such apparatus could be replaced.
When the BTG had finished evacuating, the dollop of red fluid was burned in a flash, and a quick band of color flashed across the viewer. Sylvia whistled softly.
" ‘Eh?" Jerry prompted. He looked to the screen where the computer analysis of the chromatography would appear.
Sylvia's voice was pensive. "How can this stuff be biological? It looks like oxidizer for a rocket! Oxygen bonded with carbon, iron, magnesium, but mostly oxygen. I wouldn't have believed it. What's the structure of those sacs?"
"Honeycomb. They were filled with the fluid." He probed with the scalpel, frowned and cut again. "Hah. Muscle bands. Here—here—yep. Set up to constrict the sacs, which would inject this stuff into the blood streams. The duct leads directly into the heart chambers—"
"Super oxygenated blood supplement," Sylvia said. "Which means—"
"Right!" Jerry shouted. "That's it! Supercharger! Good lord, no wonder this thing is so damned dangerous."
"What?" Zack demanded. "What have you found?"