even allowed to purchase hand-held weapons and order light armored suits. This step was taken after several major clashes between criminal elements and forces of order were observed from orbit, and those clashes led to mass fights in which the police had no advantage over criminals. Barrington decided that it was easier to arm the quargs themselves with light weapons than to take charge of maintaining order in the colony, and he was quite right. In any event, there were no further major disturbances.
And now Lit-ta and I have arrived at this colony. To Kruger 60 we were delivered by cruiser Moscow, kindly assigned to me from the Fifth Strike Fleet by Admiral Nelson. The lizards’ leader brought along five of the congeners who were in charge of the science and engineering part of the operation, I understand.
“Igorrr,” told me Lit-ta, “It isss highly desirrrable that the quarrrg you brrring me have lived here forrr about ten yearsss. If he diesss, it doesn’t matter, the block in his brrrain will kill him sssoon enough.”
“Why is it so?”
“We don’t know. Maybe the block needsss to be updated perrriodically, otherwissse it’sss killing the host. But we don’t know why they did it.”
“Lit-ta, how long does it take your assistants to grow a cocoon to remove the block?”
“About three hourrrsss.”
“In that time, I will select ten candidates. We’ll get them all to the cruiser together and politely explain that we want to do a full medical diagnostic of their organisms to try and figure out the causes of their deaths in captivity. Many of them have already undergone such procedures. They usually acquiesce in silence and tolerate tests. This time, we’re going to put them in a full diagnostic capsule designed specifically for their bodies. The first five prisoners will undergo the normal procedure in front of each other. They’ll see another patient lie in the capsule, it closes and after a while releases it back alive and well. Except the capsules will be different all the time, and in the fifth capsule, instead of our stuffing, there will be your cocoon. Your men… I’m sorry, but what do I call you to make you comfortable?”
“You can sssay «yourrr lizzzarrrdsss». Sssoundsss good, we apprrreciate,” responded Lit-ta, showing me her split tongue.
“Great. So, can your lizards make it to be as close as possible to the inside of our capsules?”
“That’sss trrricky, but we have to trrry. Otherwissse, it’sss not gonna work.”
“The main thing is that there’s a resemblance. When the outer shell of the capsule is closed, the light will go out, and then do whatever you want, but without any sudden movement.”
“We need accessss to the occipital part of their skull and to the ssspine. There will be attached ssseveral…” Litta thought, looking for a word, “prrrobesss, most likely. They’re sssuch sssoft extensionsss.”
“Very well. We have a lot of stuff in the capsules, too, and these things touch the head and the back during the examination. We’ll just make special holes for your probes, and leave the rest of the capsule inside as it was. There won’t be seen any difference. ”
“I’m ssstarrrting,” Lit-ta nodded in a perfectly human motion and turned to her aides.
The first five quargs passed the standard procedure of examination impassively as usual. They were used to comply with the orders of people, knowing that no one is intentionally harming them, but if they resist, there can be complications.
The sixth prisoner, who looked very similar, like all of them, to a zombie from the grave, but neat and moving normally, unlike this popular horror hero, calmly approached the capsule indicated to him and stepped into the niche behind the doors slid open. The doors closed, and the capsule slowly took up a horizontal position. Nothing unusual happened for five minutes, and then the capsule shook, and the medical diagnostic devices that we didn’t dismantle to provide the procedure some extra credibility gave us a warning.
We urgently stopped the process of «examination», but it was too late, the prisoner died.
“It’sss a classsic death when a block goesss off,” said Lit-ta behind my back, “We haven’t considered sssomething, Igorrr. We have to trrry again.”
Our attempts cost the lives of three more quargs. We changed the terms each time. We’ve even made a complete analogue of lizard cocoon probes from our terrestrial polymer materials and we did a «checkup» of another prisoner first on this simulator. He survived, but when he tried to repeat the procedure with a real cocoon, he died, just like all the others. The only condition we knowingly did not change was the length of the quargs’ captivity. Neither I nor Lit-tа wanted to experiment with prisoners who still have a few years to live. I mean, they’re enemies, but right now, they’re not dangerous and they’re perfectly law-abiding, so it’s better to risk those who are about to die, ’cause if our method works, they’ll have a chance at a normal life for years to come.
“We’rrre making a little bit of a missstake sssomewherrre,” told me Lit-ta while making nervous movements with the tail from which the cruiser officers tried to stay away. ’Cause trampling a high-ranking ally’s tail is, you know, not so good, it’s fraught with diplomatic complications.
“In the latter cassse, we werrre closssest to the target. The block was about to disssintegrrrate, but that’s when the death orrrder went off.”
“Do they feel anything when the block starts to disintegrate?”
“We don’t know. Anyway, it’sss a very sssubtle feeling, almost imperrrccceptible.”
“Can we dull it with something? Like pain?”
“Only the pain ssshould not be too sssevere. I need the patient’sss clearrr consciousssnesss.”
“The pain won’t be strong, but it’ll be throbbing in a jagged rhythm, distracting.”
“Okay. Let’sss trrry it.”
This time our legend for the quargs has changed. We didn’t talk about checkups to find a way to prevent their sudden deaths in captivity, it could put patients on their guard and make them subconsciously listen to life-threatening feelings. We told another batch of test subjects that we’re selecting candidates for resettlement in another colony where living standards are higher, but health requirements are stricter, because the hard work there required certain physique. The prisoners were not very enthusiastic about this information, because they knew that they had at best a few months left to live and that there was no point in changing anything in life, but they agreed to be examined without objection, as a matter of habit, even when we gave them honest warning that there might be pain.
A sixth prisoner entered the capsule as in all previous trials. The first test we did with the dummy probes in order the quarg to get used to the sensations and not twitch. Then the session was repeated with real probes released by the cocoon of lizards. In the fifth minute, the medical complex triggered the alarm, but not in the way it did when a patient died. The quarg was bad, very bad and painful, but he didn’t die, and the resuscitation module, which was automatically activated, called out for help from people, because it couldn’t decide what to do in an unfamiliar situation.
The prisoner survived.
Chapter 2
“The block was rrremoved,” informed me Lit-ta, “but the memorrry isss damaged. There’sss no telling what he’ll rrrememberrr, but what’sss left of it, we’ll get it out of him without killing him. We mussst continue with the other prrrisonerrrsss, Rrrearrr Admirrral, time is rrrunning out.”
Time. It really doesn’t like to wait. But our success has not yet been impressive. We’ve only been able to remove a block from every third quarg, the rest died immediately or went into a coma and died a few hours later. Of course, it was still a breakthrough. The Ministry of Defence Security Service, after listening to my report, became ecstatic and rushed to the Kruger 60 system. They now had a lot of work to do, and a job that was very promising in terms of concrete results and beneficial to their career development.
We fought for patient survival. I never