"How long can forty minutes last?" Jerry wondered in growing concern. By his own time-sense, warped by the lifespan of his host, he felt he'd been present in that room well over an hour. And still he was captive to the environment of the scaly crystalloid raccoon/pangolin creature, and doubly imperiled of survival. Even if "his" side took the lead in the struggle, many fur-faces would need this treatment—which destroyed one of his species with each operation.
Jerry did not know whether or not the animals were chosen in any special order. But his mind told him that even were his host the last so chosen, his odds for survival were dwindling fast.
Assuming the wall against which his cage was stacked with the others were the same size as the wall opposite his cage—and symmetrical construction of rooms seemed a strong likelihood—then, judging by his cage-size, the maximum number of cages that could be so stacked was six high and four across, or twenty-four cages. Figuring one animal per cage, that left some twenty-one animals ahead of him.
Possibly—barely possibly—this tier of cages might not be against a wall. It might be the forefront of hundreds of rows of similar stacked cages. But no medic hurrying to save a life would walk to Row #2 when Row #1 was still undepleted.
"So if I just sit here," he thought, gloomily, "I'm bound to end up alongside a fur-face on that table. My life gone so that his may survive. 'It is a far, far better thing I do' and so on, but I don't know as I'm ready to lay down my life for a fur-face without even being given the choice, damn it! Let's figure a way out of this mess!"
The ship went whooomp, suddenly. The room gave a crazy tilt again before—rather sluggishly, Jerry noted with alarm—righting itself. At the same moment the TV screen blanked out.
"Well, there goes the camera," he thought, his insides feeling oddly cold and upset. "That may mean that if I don't die on the operating table, I may well be forced to succumb to a watery grave. Damn! When will those forty minutes be up?"
He was jerked from his thoughts by the appearance of a huge white-furred hand fumbling with the catch on his cage.
Hard, pointed black fingertips reached in through the opened door for him. Jerry snapped and clacked his teeth upon them in vain, as he was carried toward the strap-sided concavity beside a new fur-scorched patient on the operating table.
"Use your head!" he screamed at himself. "These fur-faces aren't expecting an intelligent attack from a lab-animal! The other crystalloid creatures have the paltry instinctive self-preservation mechanism to bite at the objects gripping them, those impervious black fingertips. But you know better, right?"