Old Doc Bonner who derived his nickname from combat rather than chronological age looked inquiringly at Fiske. "Should I post it or pickle it?" he asked.
"Post it. It might blow up before we reach home. Get to work."
"It's a point," Bonner admitted, "but it might not be too valid with Headquarters. Since it hasn't exploded by now it probably won't."
Fiske shook his head. "There's no sense in taking chances. Besides it might belong to a civilian."
"Not this baby," Bonner said. "It's military." He indicated a white line at the base of the skull. "That's where they blow up," he said. "There's a charge implanted there. And besides, it's as you say, sir, we shouldn't take chances." Bonner laid out a row of shining instruments, turned on the visual recorder over the table and went to work.
"Hmm—must have been quite a bit of dissection here," he commented as he inspected the back of the head. "Poor job of suturing and lots of fibrous connective tissue, but it's healed well enough." He cut in delicately with a scalpel. "Oh-oh! Paydirt! Now wait a minute—let's find out where these leads go—hmm,—that'd be the spinal accessory nerve if this head were human, but with this fellow it might be anything." He swung an auto-camera into place and took a series of still pictures, probed the skull for a moment with a pair of long-jawed forceps and lifted out a tiny translucent capsule with a fused dark globule dangling below it. "Ah—here we are." He placed the capsule carefully in a cotton lined pan. "You'd better get that thing down to engineering," he said. "That's not my line. I'll finish this post while you're gone. I might find something of interest to report in the Medical Journal. Incidentally, that capsule was linked to the nerve over a micropore graft. I'm keeping that part for microdissection. It wouldn't do you any good."
Fiske took the pan and left the surgery. Doc was right. This was the part that was his baby, not that ball of meat in there on the tray....
Chief Engineer Sandoval took the pan gingerly. Setting it on a bench he peered at it thoughtfully. "Hmm, a sealed unit," he said. "We'll X-ray it first and maybe then we can do something about it."