The
electronic language translator was strapped to his chest.
Five minutes later he reappeared, frost forming on his blue collar, his
face white as he looked at Dal. "You'd better get down there right
away," he said, "and take your micro-surgical instruments. Tiger, give
me a hand with the anaesthesia tanks. They're keeping a patient alive
with a heart-lung machine right now, and they can't finish the job. It
looks like it might be bad."
* * * * *
The Moruan who escorted them across the city to the hospital was a huge
shaggy creature who left no question of the evolutionary line of his
people. Except for the flattened nose, the high forehead and the
fur-less hand with opposing thumb, he looked for all the world like a
mammoth edition of the Kodiak bears Dal had seen displayed at the
natural history museum in Hospital Philadelphia. Like all creatures with
oxygen-and-water based metabolisms, the Moruans could trace their
evolutionary line to minute one-celled salt-water creatures; but with
the bitter cold of the planet, the first land-creatures to emerge from
the primeval swamp of Morua VIII had developed the heavy furs and the
hibernation characteristics of bear-like mammals. They towered over Dal,
and even Tiger seemed dwarfed by their immense chest girth and powerful
shoulders.
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