His fellow-creature, hissing in agony, was already a glittering, almost formless thing under the grisly tools of the medic standing over it.
It was, Jerry realized, being laid belly-open with no more regard than is given a lobster's tail-muscle by the gourmet with his tiny three-pronged fork.
Jerry could only watch and wonder and wait to see the use to which the animal would be put. He had not long to wait.
Once laid open, the animal's internal fluid, a pale gray solution, was sucked out into a bulb-headed tube, much as a housewife gets the turkey-drippings from under the bird for basting. The fluid was dribbled into a row of transparent jars with calibrated sides, some getting more, some getting less. Then a drop of liquid—a brown liquid for this one, a red for that one, and so on—was added to each. While Jerry gazed at the scene, fighting the headache that began to grow with the brightness of the lights over the operating table, the medic captured each jar and gave it a sharp, practiced shake.
And then the whole picture was clear to Jerry.
"Crystal-clear," he said, with bitter humor.
For that was the answer. The fur-faces were colloidal, the raccoon/pangolins were crystalloid. Whatever fluid lay within the bellies of the animals, it was a super-saturate, needing but the right chemical additive before coming out of its liquid state to form the right crystals.
In each jar, almost instantly after shaking, bright crystals had begun to form within the liquid. Within but a few moments, the jars were being uncapped and the medics, with neat little tongs, were lifting the crystals from the solutions and placing them within the abdominal cavity of their anesthetized patient. The flap was fastened down into place with a gadget that seemed to work on the principle of a soldering iron. As it slid along the angled edges of the incision the sides met and fused, leaving only a tiny ridge to attest to the fact of the operation.
One of the medics nodded to the bare-to-the-waist creature still standing by. The man shoved over a wheeled cart, slipped the patient onto it and wheeled him out of the room through an archway barely within Jerry's field of vision.