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He stepped out into the street and looked down to examine the face again. But a portion of the creature's
blanket-body had draped itself across its features and he could see only a waving blur.
Within two blocks be reached the Bright Star bar, went around the corner to the side door and started up the stairs.
Footsteps were descending and he squeezed himself against the railing to let the other person past.
"Kemp," said Angela Maret. "Kemp, what have you there?"
"I found it in the street," Hart told her.
He shifted his arm a little and the blanket-body slipped and she saw the face. She moved back against the railing, her
hand going to her mouth to choke off a scream.
"Kemp! How awful!"
"I think that it is sick. It - "
'What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," Hart said. "It was crying to itself. It was enough to break your heart. I couldn't leave it there."
"I'll get Doc Julliard."
Hart shook his head. "That wouldn't do any good. Doc doesn't know any alien medicine. Besides, he's probably
drunk."
"No one knows any alien medicine," Angela reminded him. "Maybe we could get one of the specialists uptown." Her
face clouded. "Doc is resourceful, though. He has to be down here. Maybe he could tell us - "
"All right," Hart said. "See if you can rout out Doc."
In his room he laid the alien on the bed. It was no longer whimpering. Its eyes were closed and it seemed to be
asleep, although he could not be sure.
He sat on the edge of the bed and studied it and the more he looked at it the less sense it seemed to make. Now he
could see how thin the blanket body was, how light and fragile. It amazed him that a thing so fragile could live at all,
that it could contain in so inadequate a body the necessary physiological machinery to keep itself alive.
He wondered if it might be hungry and if so what kind of food it required. If it were really ill how could he hope to
take care of it when he didn't know the first basic thing about it?
Maybe Doc - But no, Doc would know no more than he did. Doc was just like the rest of them, living hand to mouth,
cadging drinks whenever he could get them, and practicing medicine without adequate equipment and with a
knowledge that had stopped dead in its tracks forty years before.
He heard footsteps coming up the stairs - light steps and trudging heavy ones. It had to be Angela with Doc. She
had found him quickly and that probably meant he was sober enough to act and think with a reasonable degree of
coordination.
Doc came into the room, followed by Angela. He put down his bag and looked at the creature on the bed.
"What have we here?" he asked and probably it was the first time in his entire career that the smug doctorish phrase
made sense.
"Kemp found it in the street," said Angela quickly. "It's stopped crying now."
"Is this a joke?" Doc asked, half wrathfully. "If it is, young man, I consider it in the worst possible taste."
Hart shook his head. "It's no joke. I thought that you might know - "
"Well, I don't," said Doc, with aggressive bitterness.
He let go of the blanket edge and it quickly flopped back upon the bed.
He paced up and down the room for a turn or two. Then he whirled angrily on Angela and Hart.
"I suppose you think that I should do something," he said. "I should at least go through the motions. I should act
like a doctor. I'm sure that is what you're thinking. I should take its pulse and its temperature and look at its tongue and
listen to its heart. Well, suppose you tell me how I do these things. Where do I find the pulse? If I could find it, what is
its normal rate? And if I could figure out some way to take its temperature, what is the normal temperature for a
monstrosity such as this? And if you would be so kind, would you tell me how - short of dissection - I could hope to
locate the heart?"
He picked up his bag and started for the door.
"Anyone else, Doc?" Hart pleaded, in a conciliatory tone. "Anyone who'd know?"
"I doubt it," Doc snapped.
"You mean there's _no one_ who can do a thing? Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Look, son. Human doctors treat human beings, period. Why should we be expected to do more? How often are we
called upon to treat an alien? We're not _expected_ to treat aliens. Oh, possibly, once in a while some specialist or
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