STAR SURGEON
scanned by lzmini Jan 2003
Copywrite 1963
Other BOOKS BY JAMES WHITE
The Secret Visitor (1957)
Second Ending (1962)
Deadly Litter (1964)
Escape Orbit (1965)
The Watch Below (1966)
All Judgement Fled (1968)
The Aliens Among Us (1969)
Tomorrow Is Too Far (1971)
Dark Inferno (1972)
The Dream Millennium (1974)
Monsters and Medics (1977)
Underkill (1979)
Future Past (1982)
Federation World (1988)
The Silent Stars Go By (1991)
The White Papers (1996)
Gene Rodden berry's Earth:
Final Conflict-The First Protector (Tor, 2000)
THE SECTOR GENERAL SERIES
Hospital Station (1962)
Star Surgeon (1963)
Major Operation (1971)
Ambulance Ship (1979)
Sector General (1983)
Star Healer (1985)
Code Blue-Emergency (1987)
The Genocidal Healer (1992)
The Galactic Gourmet (Tor, 1996)
Final Diagnosis (Tor, 1997)
Mind Changer (br, 1998)
Double Contact (br, 1999)
Species Classification
The Classification System
by Gary Louie
James White's Sector General stories used a unique four letter
classification system that helped describe the species quickly and
effectivly, as one would require when the hospitol is a multi species
enviroment.
Gary Louie was working on a James White concordance. As part of that he
completed a classification system, for the sector general series which
covers all characters up to Final Diagnosis.
This article appeared in the White Papers. Unfortunatly Gary Louie passed
away, before the concordance was completed.
Classification:AACL
Planet:Unknown
Species:Crepellian Pet No Individual Names Known
A non-intelligent pet kept by AMSOs. It has six python-like
ten-tacles which poke though seals in the cloudy plastic of its
suit. The tentacles are each at least twenty feet long and tipped
with a horny substance which must be steel-hard.
Classification:AACP
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown No Individual Names Known
A race whose remote ancestors were a species of mobile vegetable.
They are slow moving, but the carbon dioxide tanks which they wear
seem to be the only protection they need. AACPs do not eat in the
normal manner but plant themselves in specially prepared soil during
their sleep period, and absorb nutriment in that way.
Classification:AMSL
Planet:Unknown
Species:Creppelian, Crepellian
Individuals:Nurse Towan, Diagnostician Vosan
A species of water breathing octopoids.
Classification:AMSO
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
A larger life-form, in the habit of keeping non-intelligent
AACL-type creatures as pets.
Classification:AUGL
Planet:Chalderescol IT
Species:Chaldor, Chalder
Individuals:Patient AUGL-1 13, Patient AUGL-1 16, Patient AUGL-122,
Patient AUGL-126, Patient AUGL-187, Patient AUGL-193, Patient
AUGL-211, Patient AUGL-218, Patient AUGL-22 1, Patient AUGL-233,
Muromeshomon
The denizens of Chalderescol, an armored fish-like species are
water-breathers who can not live in any other medium for more than a
few seconds. A heavily plated and scaled being, slightly re-sembling
a forty-foot long armour-plated crocodile, except that instead of
legs there is an apparently haphazard arrangement of stubby fins,
and a heavy knife-edged tail. A fringe of ribbon-like tentacles
encircles its middle, projecting through some of the only openings
visible in its organic armor. Chaldors have six rows of teeth in an
over-large mouth. The Chalders are one of the frw in-telligent
species whose personal names are used only between mates, members of
the immediate family, or very special friends.
Classification:BLSU
Planet:Groalter
Species:Groalterri
Individual:Hellishomar the Cutter
The Groalterri overall body configuration is that of a squat
octopoid with short, thick tentacular limbs. Its central torso and
head seem disproportionately large. The eight limbs terminate
alternately in four sets of claws (that will with maturity evolve
into manipula-tory digits) and four flat, sharp-edged, osseous
blades. The organ of speech and hearing is centered above the four
heavily lidded eye that are equally spaced around the cranium. A
macrospecies, there is an element of risk involved to any life-form
of more or less nor-mal body mass which approaches it too closely.
Classification:BRLH
Planet:Tarla
Species:Tarlan
Individuals:Surgeon-Captain/Trainee/Padre Lioren, Sedith and
Wrethrin the Healers
Tarlans are an erect quadrupedal life-form with its for short-legs
supporting a tapering, cone-shaped body. Four long, multi-jointed,
medial arms for heavy lifting and handling sprout from waist-level.
Another four that are suited for more delicate work encircle the
base of the neck. Equally spaced around the head are four eyes whose
stalks are capable of independent motion. Tarlans have very large
teeth. An adult Tarlan stands eight feet tall.
Classification:CLCH
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
Apparent typographical error for Classification CLHG.
Classification:CLHG
Planet:Drambo
Species:Roller
Individuals:Camsaug, Surreshun
The Rollers resemble animated donuts rolling on their outer edge,
with manipulatory appendages in the form of a fringe ofshort
ten-tacles sprouting from the inner circumference between the series
of gill mouths and eyes. Its visual equipment must operate like a
coeleostat since the contents of its field of vision are constantly
rotating. The Rollers must roll to stay alive-there is an ingenious
method of shifting its center of gravity while keeping itself
upright by partially inflating the section of its body which is on
top at any given moment. The continual rolling causes blood to
circulate-it uses a form of gravity feed system instead of a
muscular pump. The species reproduce hermaphroditically. Each parent
after mating grows twin offspring, one on each side of its bodies
like continu-ous blisters encircling the side walls of a tire.
Injury, disease or the mental confusion immediately following birth
could cause the parent to lose balance, roll on to its side, stop
and die. The points where the children eventually detach themselves
from their par-ents remain very sensitive areas to both generations
and their posi-tions are governed by hereditary factors. The result
is that any close blood relation trying to make mating contact
causes itself and the other being considerable pain. The rollers
really do hate their fa-thers and every other relative. The species
is water-breathing with a warm-blooded oxygen-based metabolism. The
life-support mechanism for the species is physically complicated, to
allow the occupant to roll naturally within it. The concept of
modesty is com-pletely alien to this race. This species does not
know the meaning of sleep. There is no such thing as sleeping,
pretending to be dead or unconsciousness. A Roller is either moving
and alive or still and dead.
Classification:CLSR
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
Apparent typographical error for Classification CPSD.
Classification:CPSD
Planet:Unknown
Species:The Blind Ones
No Individual Names Known
These beings are roughly circular, just over a meter in diameter
and, in cross section, a slim oval flattened slightly on the
under-side. In shape they very much resemble their ship, except that
the ship does not have a long, thin horn or sting projecting aft or
a wide, narrow slit on the opposite side which is obviously a mouth.
The upper lip of the mouth is wider and thicker than the lower, and
can be curled over the lower lip, apparently sealing the mout shut.
The beings are covered, on their upper and lower surfaces and around
the rim, by some kind of organic stubble which varies in thickness
from pin-size to the width of a small finger. The stubble on the
underside is much coarser than that on the upper surface, and it is
plain that parts of it are designed for ambulation. The Blind Ones
evolved underground, and have no organs for sight. They formed an
alliance with the Protectors of the Unborn, each species providing
something that other lacked.
Classification:CRLT
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
Senior Physician Conway was unable to classi~ this life-form with
complete certainty. The initial analysis was performed on a cadaver,
an independent portion of a larger composite being. The compos-ite
is a warm-blooded oxygen breather with the type of basic me-tabolism
associated with the physiological grouping CRLT. Even a segment is
massive, measuring approximately twenty meters in length and three
meters in diameter, excluding projecting append-ages. Physically it
resembles the DBLF Kelgian life-form, but it is many times larger
and possesses a leathery tegument rather than the silver fur of the
Kelgians. Like the DBLF's it is multipedal, but the manipulatory
appendages are positioned in a single row along the back. There are
twenty-one of these dorsal limbs, all showing evidence of early
evolutionary specialization. Six of them are long, heavy, and
claw-tipped and are obviously evolved for defense since the being is
a herbivore. The other fifteen are in five groups of three, spaced
between the six heavier tentacles, which terminate in four digits,
two of which are opposable. These thinner limbs are ma-nipulatory
appendages originally evolved for gathering and trans-ferring food
to the mouths-three on each flank opening into three stomachs. Two
additional orifices on each side open into a very large and complex
lung. The structure inside these breathing ori-fices suggests that
expelled air could be interrupted and modulated to produce
intelligence-bearing sounds. On the underside are three openings
used for the elimination of wastes. The mechanism of reproduction is
unclear and the specimen shows evidence of p05-sessing both male and
female genitalia on the forward and rear extremities respectively
The brain, if it is a brain, takes the form of a cable of nerve
ganglia with localized swellings in three places, running
longitudinally through the cadaver like a central core. There is
another and much thinner nerve cable running parallel to the thicker
core, but below it and about twenty-five centimeters from the
underside. Positioned close to each extremity are two sets of three
eyes. Two are mounted dorsally and two on each of the forward and
rear flanks. They are recessed but capable of limited extension;
together they give the being complete and continuous vision
vertically and horizontally. The type and positioning of the visual
equipment and appendages suggest that it evolved on a very
unfriendly world. The tentative Classification is an incomplete CRLT
Classification:DBDG
Planets:Earth, Gregory (Colony)
Species:Earth-human, Gregorian
Individuals:Theologian Augustine, Lieutenant Braithwaite,
Sur-geon-Lieutenant Brenner, Corpsman Briggs, Lieutenant Briggs,
Captain Chaplain Bryson, Lieutenant Carrington, Lieutenant Chen,
Major Chiang, Clarke, Lieutenant Clifton, Junior Intern/Senior
PhysicianlDiagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery Peter Conway, Sergeant
Davis, Major/Colonel Jonathan Dermod, Fleet Commander Dermod,
Lieutenant Dodds, Lieutenant Dowling, Major-Captain Fletcher, Fox,
Trainee Hadley, Harmon, Lieuten-ant Haslam, Patient Hewlitt, Tailor
George L Hewlitt, Mrs. George L Hewlitt, Captain Hokasuri, Major
Holyrod, OR Nurse Hudson, Lieutenant-General Lister, MacEwan, Major
Madden, Captain Mallon, Senior Physician/Diagnostician/Patient
Mannen/Man non, Nurse/Pathologist Murchison, Major Nelson,
Mister/Major/Chief Psychologist O'Mara, Captain Sigvard Nyberg,
Doctor Pelling, General Prentiss, Reviora, Lieutenant-Colonel
Simmons, Colonel Skempton, Surgeon-Lieutenant/Major Stillman,
Lieutenant-Sur-geon Sutherland, Corpsman Timmins, Lieutenant
Wainright, Waring, Corpsman/Colonel-Captain Williamson
Probable Individuals:Lieutenant Carmody, Lieutenant Carson, Section
Chief Caxton, Major Colinson, Major Craythorne, Major Edwards,
Doctor Hamilton, Dietician-in-ChiefKW Hardin, Lieu-tenant Harrison,
Lieutenant Hendricks, Kellerman, Colonel Okaussie, Captain Stillson,
Captain Summerfield, TrooperTeirnan, Surgeon-Captain Telford
This species shows their teeth in a silent snarl when displaying
amusement or friendship and make an unpleasant barking sound that
denotes amusement. The sound, called laughing, in most cases a
psychophysical mechanism for the release of minor degrees of
tension. An Earth-human laughs because of sudden relief from worry
or fear, or to express scorn or disbelief or sarcasm, or in
re-sponse to words or a situation that is ridiculous, illogical or
funny, or out of politeness when the situation or words are not
funny but the person responsible is of high rank. The Earth-human
voice is reputed to be one of the most versatile instruments in the
Galaxy. The Earth-human DBDGs are the only race in the Galactic
Fed-eration with a nudity taboo, and one of the very few member
spe-cies with an aversion to making love in public. The Earth-human
DBDGs make up the majority of the Monitor Corps forces.
Classification:DBDG
Planets:Etlan Empire, Central World (Capital), Imperial Etla
(Capital), Etla, Etla the Sick (Colony)
Species:Etlan, Imperial
Individuals:Heraltnor, Imperial Representative Teltrenn
The physiology of the citizens of the Empire is the same as the
population of their colony Etla. The physiological resemblance is so
close to Earth-human DBDGs that no other disguise other than native
language and dress is needed. There are theories about a prehistoric
colonization program by common, star-travelling an-cestors. Attempts
at procreation between Earth-human DBDGs and Etlans have been
unsuccessful.
Classification:DBDG
Planet:Nidia
Species:Nidian
Individuals:Chief of Procurement Creon-Emesh, Senior Physi-cian and
Tutor Cresk-Sar, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur, Lieu-tenant-Colonel
Dragh-Nin, Senior Physician Lesk-Murog, Senior Food Technician
Sarnyagh-Sa, Yoragh-Kar
Probable Individual:Surgeon-Lieutenant Krack-Yar
The Nidians have seven-fingered hands, stand only four feet tall.
They have a thick red fur coat, and look like a very cuddly
teddy-bear.
Classification:DBDG
Planet:Orligia
Species:Orlig, Orligian
Individuals:Grawlya-Ki/Grulyaw~Ki, Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul,
Major Sachan-Li, Colonel Shech-Rar, Surgeon-Lieutenant Turragh-Mar
Like the neighboring Nidians, Orligians resemble an Earth-hu-man
child's first non-adult friend's teddy bear.
Classification:DBLF
Planet:Ia
Species:Ian (pre-adolescent)
No Individual Narnes Known
The being appears ring-shaped, rather like a large balloon tire.
Overall diameter of the ring is about nine feet, with the thickness
between two and three feet. The tegument is smooth, shiny and grey
in color where it is not covered with a thick, brownish
incrus-tation. The brown stuff, which covers more than half of the
total skin area, looks cancerous, but may be some type of natural
cam-ouflage. There are five pairs of limbs, and no evidence
ofspecial-ization. No visual organs or means of ingestion can be
seen. The being isn't a doughnut, but possesses a fairly normal
anatomy of the DBLF type~a cylindrical, lightly-boned body with
heavy musculature. The being is not ring-shaped, but gives that
impres-sion because for some reason, known best to itself, it has
been try-ing to swallow its tail. Senior Physician Conway, convinced
all along that the patient is undergoing a natural metamorphosis,
observes that the new patient, after the process is complete, is of
classifica-tion GKNM.
Classification:DBLF
Planet:Kelgia
Species:Kelgian
Individuals:Patient Henredth, Senior Physician Karthad, Charge Nurse
Kursedd, Diagnostician Kursedth, Patient Morredeth, Charge Nurse
Naydrad, Fleet Commander Roonardth, Charge Nurse Segroth,
Diagnostician Suggrod, Student Nurse Tarsedth, Diagnostician Towan,
Senior Physician Yarrence
Probable Individual:Charge Nurse Kursenneth
Kelgians are warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, multipedal, and with a
long, flexible cylindrical body covered overall by highly mobile,
silvery fur. The Kelgian forelimbs have three digits. There are
twenty sets of short, thin, and not heavily muscled walking limbs.
The feet, which have no toe-nails or other terminations, are like
small, hard sponges.The fur moves continually in slow ripples from
the conical head right down to the tail. These are completely
involuntary movements triggered by its emotional reactions to
outside stimuli. The evolutionary reasons for this mechanism are not
clearly understood, not even by the Kelgians themselves, but it is
generally believed that the emotionally expressive fur comple-ments
the Kelgian vocal equipment, which lacks emotional flex-ibility of
tone.The movements of the fur make it absolutely clear to another
Kelgian-what a Kelgian feels about the subject under discussion. As
a result they always say exactly what they mean be-cause what they
think is plainly obvious-at least to another Kelgian.They can not do
otherwise. Kelgians have an intense aver-sion towards any surgical
procedure which would damage or dis-figure its most treasured
possession, its furs. To a Kelgian the re moval of a strip or patch
of fur, which in their species represents ~ means of communication
equal to the spoken word, is a personal tragedy which all too often
results in permanent psychological damage. A Kelgian's fur does not
grow again and one whose pelt is damaged can rarely find a mate
because it is unable to fully display its feelings. Kelgians are
very close to Earth-humans in both basic metabolism and temperament.
Except for the thin-walled, narrow casing which houses the brain,
the DBLF species has no boney structure. Their bodies are composed
of an outer cylinder of mus-culature which, in addition to be being
its primary means of loco-motion, serves to protect the vital organs
within it. To the mind of a being more generously reinforced with
bones, this protection is far from adequate. Another severe
disadvantage in the event of in-jury is its complex and extremely
vulnerable circulation system; the blood-supply network which has to
feed the tremendous bands of muscle encircling its body runs close
under the skin, as does the nerve network that controls the mobile
fur. The thick fur of the pelt gives some protection here, but not
against chunks ofjagged-edged, flying metal. An injury which many
other species would consider superficial could cause a DBLF to bleed
to death in min-utes. Kelgians are herbivorous.
Classification:DBPK
Planet:Dwerla
Species:Dwerlan
No Individual Names Known
A warm-blooded oxygen-breathing herbivore that does not walk
upright. Judging by the shape of the spacesuits, the beings are
flat-tened cylinders about six feet long with four sets of
manipulatory appendages behind a conical section which is probably
the head, and another four locomotor appendages. Apart from the
smaller size and number of appendages, the beings physically
resemble the Kelgian race. The pointed, fox-like head and the thick,
broad-striped coat make it look like a furry, short-legged zebra
with an enormous tail. These beings seem not to possess natural
weapons of offrnce or defense, or any signs of having had any in the
past. Even their limbs are not built for speed, so they can not run
from danger. The set used for walking are too short and are padded,
while the fotward set are more slender, less well-muscled and end in
four highly flexible digits which don't possess so much as a
fingernail among them. There are the fur markings, of course, but it
is rare that a life-form rises to the top of its evolutionary tree
by camou-flage alone, or by being nice and cuddly. The species has
two sexes, male and female, and the reproductive system seems
relatively nor-mal. Both sexes use a water soluble dye to enhance
artificially the bands of color on their body fur~clearly the dyes
are for cosmetic reasons. The immature do not use dyes, but use a
brownish pig-ment on a bare patch above the tail.
Classification:DCNF
Planet:Sommaradva
Species:Sommaradvan
Individual:Trainee Cha Th rat
Four Ambulatory limbs; Four waist-level heavy manipulators; and a
set of manipulators for food provisions and fine work encircling the
neck. This being has two stomachs. Sommaradvan society is stratified
into three levels~serviles, warriors, and rulers~which strictly
govern how an individual acts within the society.
Classification:DCSL
Planet:Cromsag
Species:Cromsaggar
No Individual Names Known
This species has three sets of limbs: two ambulators, two medial
heavy manipulators, and two more at neck level for eating and to
perform more delicate work. It has a cranium covered by thick, blue
fur that continues in a narrow strip along the spine to the
vestigial tail.
Classification:DHCG
Planet:Wemar
Species:Wem
Individuals:First Hunter Creethar, Hunter Druuth, Youth Evemth,
First Cook Remrath, First Teacher Tawsar
The Wem life-form is a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing species with
an adult body mass just under three times that of an Earth-human
and, since Wermar's surface gravity is one point three eight
standard Gs, a healthy specimen is proportionately well-muscled. It
resembles the rare Earth beast called a kangaroo. The differences
are that the head is larger and fitted with a really ferocious set
of teeth; each of the two short forelimbs terminate in six-fingered
hands possessing two opposable thumbs, and the tail is more massive
and tapered to a wide, flat triangular tip composed of immobile
osseous material enclosed by a thick, muscular sheath. The
flattening at the end of tail serves a threefold purpose: as its
principal natural weapon, as an emergency method of fast locomotion
while hunting or being hunted, and as a means of transporting infant
Wem who are too small to walk. The Wem hunt by adopting an awkward,
almost ri-diculous stance with their forelimbs tightly folded, their
chins touch-ing the ground, and their long legs spread so as to
allow the tail to curve sharply downwards and forwards between the
limbs so that the flat tip is at their center of balance. When the
tail is straight-ened suddenly to full extension, it acts as a
powerful third leg ca-pable of hurling the Wem forward for a
distance of five or six body lengths. If the hunter does not land on
top of its prey, kicking the creature senseless with the feet before
disabling it with a deep bite through the cervical vertebrae and
underlying nerve trunks, it piv-ots rapidly on one leg so that the
flattened edge of the tail strikes its victim like a blunt, organic
axe. While the tail is highly flexible where downward and forward
movement is concerned, it cannot be el-evated above the horizontal
line of the spinal column.The back and upper flanks are, therefore,
the Wem's only body areas that are vul-nerable to attack by natural
enemies, who must also possess the el-ement of surprise if they are
not to become the victim.
Classification:DRVJ
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Doctor Yeppha
Planet:Unknown
A small, tripedal, fragile being. From the furry dome of its head
there sprout singly and in small clusters, at least twenry eyes.
Classification:DTRC
Species:Rhum
Planet:Unknown
Individual:Crelyarrel
Flat, roughly circular beings, dark gray and wrinkled on one
sur-face, and with a paler, mottled appearance on the other, smooth,
surface. The beings attach to their FGHJ hosts with thick tendrils
growing from the edge of the disk. The tendrils penetrate into their
FGHJ hosts' spinal columns and rear craniums. The DTRCs have their
own special needs that in no way resemble those of their hosts,
whose animal habits and undirected behavior are highly repugnant to
them. It is vital to the DTRCs continued mental well-being that the
masters escape periodically from their hosts to lead their own
lives~usually during the hours of darkness when the tools are no
longer in use and can be quartered where they can not harm
them-selves.
Classification:DTSB
Planet:Traltha
Species:Tralthan
No Individual Names Known
Apparent typographical error for Classification OTSB.
Classification:EGCL
Planet:Duwetz
Species:Dewatti
No Individual Names Known
A warm-blooded, oyxgen-breathing life-form of approximately twice
the body weight of an adult Earth-human. Visually it re-sembles an
outsize snail with a high, conical shell which is pierced around the
tip where its four extensible eyes are located. Equally spaced
around the base of the shell are eight triangular slots from which
project the manipulatory appendages. The carapace rests on a thick,
circular pad of muscle which is the locomotor system. Around the
circumference of the pad are a number of fleshy pro-jections,
hollows and slits associated with its systems of ingestion,
respiration, elimination, reproduction, and nonvisual sensors. The
EGCLs are organic empaths. They are organic transmitters,
reflec-tors and focusers and magnifiers of their own feelings and
those of the beings around them. The faculty has evolved to the
stage where they have no conscious control over the process.
Classification:ELNT
Planet:Melf Four
Species:Melfan
Individuals:Maintenance Technician Dremon, Senior Physician Edanelt,
Diagnostician Ergandhir, Patient Kennonalt, Patient KIetilt,
Maintenance Technician Kiedath, Nurse Lontallet, Senior Physician
Medalont, Senreth
Melfans are large, low slung crab-like crustaceans. The six thin,
bony, tubular, multi-jointed legs project from slits where the bony
carapace and underside join. The legs and all of the body are
ex-oskeletal. The head has large, protruding, vertically-lidded
eyes, enormous mandibles, and pincers projecting forward from the
place where ears should be. Two long, thin and fragile feelers grow
from the sides of the mouth. The species is amphibious.
Classification:EPLA
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Lonvellin
Apparent typographical error for Classification EPLH.
Classification:EPLH
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Lonvellin
The being is large, about one thousand pounds mass, and resembles a
giant, upright pear. Five thick, tentacular appendages grow from the
narrow head section and a heavy apron of muscle at its base gives
evidence of a snail-like, although not necessarily slow, method of
locomotion. The being is warm-blooded and has fairly normal gravity
requirements. Five large mouths are situated below the root of each
tentacle, four being plentifully supplied with teeth and the fifth
housing the vocal apparatus. The tentacles themselves show a high
degree of specialization at their extremities: three of them are
plainly manipulatory, one bears the patient's visual equipment, and
the remaining member terminates in a horn-tipped, boney mace. The
head is featureless, being simply an osseous dome housing the brain.
The cranium is pierced at regular intervals for visual, aural and
olfactory sensors. Their life-span, lengthy to begin with, is
ar-tificially extended. Because they have tremendous minds, they
have plenty of time, but they constantly have to fight against
boredom. Because part of the price of such longevity is an
ever-growing fear of death, they need to have their own personal
physicians~no doubt the most efficient practitioners of medicine
known to them-constantly in attendance.
Classification:FGHJ
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
The being has six limbs, four legs and two arms, all very heavily
muscled, and is hairless except for a narrow band of stiff bristles
running from the top of the head along the spine to the tail, which
seems to have been surgically shortened at an early age. The body
configuration is a thick cylinder of uniform girth between the fore
and rear legs, but the forward torso narrows towards the shoulders
and is carried erect. The neck is very thick and the head small.
There are two eyes, recessed and looking forward, a mouth with very
large teeth, and other openings that are probably aural or olfactory
sense organs. The legs terminate in large, reddish-brown hooves.
Each hoof has four digits and does not appear particularly
dexterous. This creature serves as a host to beings of
Classification DTRC.
Classification:FGLI
Planet:Traltha
Species:Tralthan
Individuals:Patient Cossunallen, Crajarron, Chief Dietitian
Gurronsevas, Patient Horrantor, Senior Physician Hossantir,
Surriltor, Senior Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology Thorn-nastor
A massive entity with an osseous dome housing its brain, six
el-ephantine feet connected to its triple massive shoulders, and
four extensible eyes on an immobile head. Its six stubby legs
normally give the Tralthan species such a stable base they
frequently go to sleep standing up. Even healthy Tralthans have
great difficulty get-ting up again if they fall onto their sides.
Tralthans must not be rolled onto their backs under normal gravity
conditions since this causes organic displacement which would
increase their respira-tory difficulties. Standard gravity at Sector
General is just over half Tralthan normal. Tralthans are
vegetarians.
Classification:FOKT
Planet:Goglesk
Species:Gogleskan
Individuals:Healer '(hone and child
The Gogleskan FOKT resembles a large, dumpy cactuslike plant whose
spikes and hair are richly colored in a pattern which seems less
random the more you look at it. A faint smell comes from the entity,
a combination of musk and peppermint. The mass of un-ruly hair and
spikes covering its erect, ovoid body are less irregular in their
size and placing than is at first apparent. The body hair has
mobility, though not the high degree of flexibility and rapid
mo-bility of the Kelgian fur, and the spikes, some of which are
extremely flexible and grouped together to form a digital cluster,
give evi-dence of specialization. The other spikes are longer and
stiffer, and some of them seem to be partially atrophied, as if they
were evolved for natural defense, but the reason for their presence
has long since gone. There are also a number of long, pale tendrils
lying amid the multicolored hair covering the cranial area, used for
contact telepa-thy. Its voice seems to come from a number of small,
vertical breath-ing orifices which encircles its waist. The being
sits on a flat, mus-cular pad, and it has legs as well. These
members are stubby and concertina-like, and when the four of them
are in use they increase the height of the being by several inches.
The being al50 has two additional eyes at the back of its
head~obviously this species has had to be very watchful in
prehistoric times.
Classification:FROB
Planet:Hudlar
Species:Hudlar, Hudlarian
Individuals:Patient FROB-3, Patient FROB-lO, Patient FROB-18,
Patient FROB-43, Patient FROB-1 132, Trainee FROB-61, Trainee
FROB-73, Senior Physician Garoth, Infant Patient Metiglesh
Hudlars are blocky, pear-shaped beings whose home planet pulls four
Earth gravities and has a high-density atmosphere so rich in
suspended animal and vegetable nutrients that it resembles thick
soup. Although the FROB life-form is warm-blooded and techni-cally
an oxygen-breather, it can go for long periods without air if its
food supply, which it absorbs directly through its thick but highly
porous tegument, is adequate. Hudlars are massive six legged
be-ings. Each leg is an immensely strong tapering tentacle, which
ter-minates in a cluster of flexible digits, curled inward so that
the weight is born on heavy knuckles and the fingers remain clear of
the floor. The two lidless, recessed eyes are protected by hard,
trans-parent and featureless casings. Hudlars communicate using a
speak-mg membrane, which grows like a cock's comb from the top of
the head. The speaking membrane also serves as a sound sensor. The
skin resembles a seamless covering of flexible armor in appearance
and texture. Food is ingested through organs of absorption that
cover both flanks and the wastes are eliminated by a similar
mecha-nism on the underside. Both systems are under voluntary
control. Because of the physiological necessity for avoiding further
sexual contact with its life-mate, a gravid Hudlar female changes
gradu-ally into male mode and, concurrently, its life-mate slowly
becomes female. A Hudlar year after partuition the changes to both
are com-plete.The Hudlar FROBs are acknowledged to be, physically,
stron-gest life-forms of the Galactic Federation and to have the
least-pervious body tegument. Contact with chlorine is instantly
lethal to them. Hudlar blood is yellow and circulates under great
pres-sure and pulse rate. Hudlars consider their names to be their
most private and personal possession, and do not give or use their
names in the presence of anyone who is not a member of the family or
a close friend.
Classification:FSOJ
Planet:Unknown
Species:Protectors of the Unborn
No Individual Names Known
The Protector of the Unborn is a large, immensely strong life-form
that resembles aTralthan, but is less massive with stubbier legs
pro-jecting from a hemispherical carapace flared out slightly around
the lower edges. The deployment of the legs and tentacles is
simi-lar to the Hudlar FROB life-form, but the carapace is a thicker
ELNT Melfan shell without markings, and the FSOJ is plainly not
herbivorous. From openings high on the carapace sprout four
ten-tacles. Two different types of tentacles have been observed on
dif-ferent beings: long and particularly thin tentacles which
terminate in flat, spear-like tips with serrated boney edges, and
thick tentacles terminating in a cluster ofsharp, bony projections
which make them resemble spiked clubs. The four stubby legs also
have osseous pro-jections which enable them to be used as weapons as
well. Midway between two of the tentacle openings there is a larger
gap in the carapace from which protrudes a head, all mouth and
teeth. The large upper and lower mandibles are capable of deforming
all but the strongest metal alloys. A little space is reserved for
two well-protected eyes at the bottom of deep, boney craters. A
serrated tail also protrudes from the heavily slitted carapace.
While the under-side is not armored, as is the carapace, this area
is rarely open to attack, and it is covered by a thick tegument
which apparently gives sufficient protection. In the center of this
area is a thin, longitudi-nal fissure which opens into the birth
canal. It will not open, how-ever, until a few minutes before giving
birth. The FSOJ brain is not in its skull, but deep inside the torso
with the rest of the other vital organs. It is positioned just under
the womb and surrounding the beginning of the birth canal. As a
result, the brain is compressed as the embryo grows. If it is a
difficult birth, the parent's brain is destroyed and junior comes
out fighting, with a convenient food supply available until it can
kill something for itself Senior Physi-cians Conway's first
impression was that the entity was little more than an organic
killing machine. Considering the fact that it is warm-blooded and
oxygen-breathing, and its appendages show no evidence of the ability
to manipulate tools or materials, Patholo-gist Murchison tentatively
classified it as FSOJ and probably non-intelligent. The Unborn young
of the bisexual FSOJ is retained in the womb until it is well-grown
and fully equipped to survive. The Unborn is an intelligent and
telepathic being, but loses these fac-ulties at birth.
Classification:GKNM
Planet:Ia
Species:Ian (adult)
Individual:Patient Makolli
The metamorphosed form of the adolescent DBLF life-form. The species
created a colony in this galaxy, coming from an adjoining one. The
race is oxygen-breathing and oviparous, having a long, rod-like but
flexible body, and possessing four insectile legs, ma-nipulators,
the usual sense organs, and three tremendous sets of wings. The
life-form looks something like a large dragonfly.
Classification:GLNO
Planet:Cinruss
Species:Cinrusskin
Individual:Senior Physician Prilicla
Cinrusskins are enormous, incredibly fragile flying insects, with a
tubular exoskeletal body. Six sucker-tipped pencil-thin legs, four
even more delicately fashioned, tiny, precise manipulators, and four
sets ofwide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings project form
the body. The head is a convoluted eggshell, so finely structured
that the sensory and manipulatory organs that it supports seem ready
to fall off at the first sudden movement. The eyes are large and
triple-lidded. The Cinrusskin are the Federation's only empathic
race. Cinruss has a dense atmosphere and one-eighth gravity.
Cinrusskins are sexless.
Classification:LSVO
Planet:Nallaji
Species:Nallajim
Individuals:Kytili, Senior Physician Seldal
The species has a birdlike, fragile, low-gravity physiology, with
three legs, two not-quite-atrophied wings, and no hands at all. When
LSVOs eat, they are sickened by anything which doesn't look like
bird seed.
Classification:MSVK
Planet:Euril
Species:Eurils
No Individual Names Known
Fragile, tn-pedal, stork-like beings from a low gravity world. The
MSVK environment has dim lighting and a opaque fog for an
at-mosphere. The race is driven by an intense curiosity and hampered
by extreme caution. They are the galaxy's prime observers, and are
content to look and learn and record through their long-probes and
sensors without making their presence known. MSVKs have a low
tolerance to radiation.
Classification:OTSB
Planet:Traltha
Species:Tralthan
No Individual Names Known
Tralthan Surgeons are really two beings instead of one, a
combina-tion of FGLI and OTSB.The OTSB is a nearly mindless symbiont
which lives with its FGLI host. At first glance the OTSB looks like
a furry ball sprouting a long ponytail, but a closer look shows that
the ponytail is composed of scores of fine manipulators, most of
which incorporate sensitive visual organs. A cluster of wire-thin,
eye- and sucker-tipped tentacles sends infinitely detailed visual
in-formation to its giant host and receives instructions from the
host. The Tralthan combinations are the best surgeons the Galaxy has
ever known. Not all Tralthans choose to link up with a symbiote, but
FGLI medics wear them like a badge of office.
Classification:PVGJ
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Doctor Fremvessith
Apparent typographical error for Classification PVSJ.
Classification:PVSJ
Planet:Illensa
Species:Illensan
Individuals:Senior Physician Gilvesh, Charge Nurse Hredlichi,
Diagnostician Lachlichi, Charge Nurse Leethveeschi
Probable Individual:Charge Nurse Lentilatsar
Illensans are chlorine breathers with shapeless spiny bodies and
dry, rustling membranes joining the upper and lower appendages. The
body resembles a haphazard collection of oily, yellow-green,
un-healthy vegetation. The two stubby legs are covered by what look
like oily blisters. Their loose protective suits are transparent
except for the faint yellow fog of chlorine contained within. The
Illensans are generally held to be the most visually repulsive
beings in the Federation, as well as the most vain regarding their
own physical appearance. Illensans suffer digestive upsets if they
exercise after meals. Contact with water is instantly lethal to
chlorine-breathers. PVSJs are not physiologically suited to the use
of stairs and have very sensitive hearing.
Classification:QCQL
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
Apparent typographical error for Classification QLCL. Senior
Phy-sician Mannen did not know there was any such beastie, but
Ma-jor O'Mara had a tape. There were two casualties of this
classifica-tion at Sector General. The operations were suit jobs,
since the gunk that the QCQLs breath would kill anything that walks,
crawls or flies, excluding them.
Classification:QLCL
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
Recent, and very enthusiastic, members of the Federation, this
species had never been to Sector General until the war with the
Empire. Then a small ward was prepared to receive possible QLCL
casualties. The ward was filled with the horribly corrosive fog the
QLCLs used for an atmosphere, and the lighting was stepped up to the
harsh, actinic blue which the they consider restful.
Classification:SNLU
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name: Vosan
Individual:Diagnostician Semlic
The SNLU life form requires a refrigerated life-support system for
its ultra-low-temperature environment while on the Chlorine and
Oxygen levels. A frigid-blooded methane-breather, it is most
com-fortable in an environment only a few degrees above absolute
zero. The SNLUs have a complex mineral and liquid crystalline
struc-ture. The species evolved on the perpetually dark worlds which
detached from their original solar systems and now drift through the
interstellar spaces. Physically they are quite small, averaging
one-third the body mass of a being like a Kelgian. In order to allow
contact with other, warmer, species, the SN LUs are required to wear
a large, complex, highly refrigerated life-support and sensor
trans-lation system, which requires frequent power recharge. The
scales covering the SNLU's eight-limbed, starfish-shaped body shine
coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, mak-ing it
resemble some wondrous, heraldic beast. The SNLUs live and work in
the almost total silence of beings with a hypersensitiv-ity to
audible vibrations. These fragile, crystalline, methane-based
life-forms would decompose at temperatures in excess of eighteen
degrees above absolute zero and be instantly cremated if the
tem-perature rose above minus one-twenty on the temperature scale in
use in the Federation.
Classification:SRJH
Planet:Drambo
Species:Healers or Physicians or Protectors
No Individual Names Known
The Drambon Physicians are glorified leucocytes to the Drambon
Strata Creatures, treating the many independent organisms living in
and around those immense living carpets. The stupid, slow moving
Drambon Physicians stay close to the most active and dan-gerous
stretches of the Drambon shoreline. They resemble jelly-fish, so
transparent that only their internal organs are visible. A
leech-like form of life, the SRJHs seem comfortable in either air or
water. Their reactions in the presence of severe illness or injury
are instinctive. Using their spines or stings, they practice their
profes-sion by withdrawing the blood of their patients and pun fying
it of any infection or toxic substances before returning it to the
patients' bodies. (The process repairs simple physical damage as
well.) How-ever, not all the withdrawn blood is returned. It has not
been es-tablished whether it is physiologically impossible for the
SRJH to return it all or whether the Physician retains a few ounces
as pay-ment for services rendered. A Physicians can kill as well as
cure. It can barely touch a beast, causing a predator to go into a
muscular spasm so violent that parts of its skeleton pop through the
skin. There is no evidence that they communicate verbally, visually,
tac-tually, telepathically, by smell or by any other system known to
Sector General. The quality of their emotional radiation suggests
that they do not communicate at all in the accepted sense. The
Physicians are simply aware ofother beings and objects around them
and, by using their eyes and a mechanism similar to the empathic
faculty, they are able to identi~ friend and foe.
Classification:SRTT
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
This physiological type is amoebic, possessing the ability to
extrude any limbs, sensory organs or protective tegument necessary
to the environment in which it finds itself. It is so fantastically
adaptable that it is difficult to imagine how one of these beings
could ever fall sick in the first place.
Classification:TLTU
Planet:Threcald 5
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:TLTU Diagnostician
A TLTU doctor breathes superheated steam and has pressure and
gravity requirements three times greater than the environment of the
oxygen levels. The local protection needed by a TLTU doctor is a
great, clanking juggernaut which hisses continually as if it is
about to spring a leak. The large protective suit resembles a
spheri-cal pressure boiler bristling with remote handling devices
and mounted on caterpillar treads, and has to be avoided at all
costs. The large size is needed to allow for heaters to render the
occupant comfortable, and surface insulation and refrigerators to
keep the vicinity habitable by other life-forms. The small TLTU
life-form inhabits a heavy-gravity, watery planet with edible
minerals, which circles very close to its parent sun. The TLTU's
blood consists of superheated liquid metal. TLTU patients are
transported in their protective spheres anchored to stretcher
carriers. These spheres emit a high-pitched, shuddering whine as
their generators labor to main-tain the internal temperature at a
comfortable, for their occupants, five hundred degrees.
Classification:TOBS
Planet:Fotawn
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Trainee/Doctor Danalta
This being can extrude any limbs, sense organs, or protective
tegu-ment necessary to the environment or situation in which it
finds it-self. It evolved on a planet with a highly eccentric orbit,
and with climatic changes so severe that an incredible degree of
physical adapt-ability was necessary for survival. It became
dominant on its world, and developed intelligence and a
civilization, not by competing in the matter of natural weapons but
by refining and perfecting its adap-tive capability. When it is
faced by natural enemies, the options are flight, protective
mimicry, or the assumption of a shape frightening to the attacker.
The speed and accuracy of the mimicry, particularly in the almost
perfect reproduction ofbehavior patterns, suggests that the entity
may be a receptive empath. The empathic faculty is under voluntary
control, so that the level of emotional radiation reaching its
receptors can be reduced, or even cut off at will, should it become
too distressing. With such effective means of self-protection
avail-able, the species is impervious to physical damage other than
by com-plete annihilation or application of ultrahigh
temperatures.The con-cept of curative surgery would be a strange one
indeed to members of that race. They do not require mechanisms for
self-protection, so they are likely to be advanced in the
philosophical sciences but back-ward in developing technology. When
not trying to look like some-thing else, TOBSs take the
configuration of a large, dark-green, uneven ball.
Classification:TRLH
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
No Individual Names Known
The TRLH casualty was an ally of the Empire during that war.
Classification was aided by the fact that the patient's spacesuit
was transparent as well as flexible. The atmosphere the being
breathes is as exotic as that of the QCQLs, but can be reproduced.
The TRLH has a thin carapace which covers its back and curves down
and inwards to protect the central area of its underside. Four
thick, single-jointed legs project from the uncovered sections. It
has a large but lightly boned head, four manipulatory appendages,
two recessed but extensible eyes, and two mouths.
Classification:VTXM
Planet:Telf
Species:Telfi, Telphi
Individual:Astrogator-part Cheixic
A group-mind species whose small beetle-like bodies live by the
direct conversion of various combinations and intensities of hard
radiation. Mthough individually the beings are quite stupid, the
gestalt entities are highly intelligent. The Telfi operate in groups
as contact telepaths to pool their mental and physical abilities.
The Telfi have a spoken language as well as the telepathic faculty
used between individuals, especially members of a family gestalt.
An-other variant of the species resembles a large, terrestrial
lizard, just under five feet long from the bulbous head to vestigial
tail, with an extra set of fore-limbs growing from the base of the
neck. The only visible features are two tiny, lidless eyes and the
mouth. The four stubby walking limbs can be bent double to lie flat
against the body while the two, longer forward manipulators can
stretch forward and cross so as to allow the chin to rest on the
crossover point. The skin of a dead Telfi is pale gray with a
mottled and veined effect that resembles unpolished marble. The
color is a symptom of ad-vanced radiation starvation and a lethal
failure of the absorption mechanism. A healthy Telfi reflects no
light at all, looking like liz-ard-shaped black holes. A
healthyTelfi's temperature is below room temperature. Investigating
their ultra-hot metabolism closely is to risk radiation poisoning.
There is a fallacy among non-medics that the Telfi cannot be closely
approached or touched without the use of remotely controlled
manipulators. To live they must absorb the radiation normally
provided by their natural environment but when, for clinical
reasons, the radiation is withdrawn for several days and they are
week from their equivalent of hunger, their ra-dioactive emissions
drop to a harmless level.
Classification:VUXG
Planet:Unknown
Species:Name Unknown
Individual:Dr. Arretapec
The VUXG resembles nothing so much as a withered prune float-mg in a
spherical gob of syrup. The species has telepathic, teleportive,
and~sort of~precognitive abilities. The precognitive ability does
not appear to be of much use because it does not work with
individuals but only with populations, and so far in the fu-ture and
in such a haphazard manner that it is practically useless.
Classification:Unknown
Planet:Drambo
Species:Farmer Fish
No Individual Names Known
The large-headed Farmer Fish are responsible for cultivating and
protecting benign growth and destroying all other growth in the
Drambon Strata Creature. Farmer Fish have stubby arms sprout-ing
from the base of their enlarged heads.
Classification:Unknown
Planet:Drambo
Species:Strata Creatures
No Individual Names Known
The largest creature on the planet Drambo~so large that at a
scoutship's suborbital velocity of six thousand plus miles per hour
it takes just over nine minutes to travel from one side of the
pa-tient to the other. The creature is so vast that it has many
indepen-dent parts performing specialized functions, such as the eye
plants, air renewal plants, Farmer Fish, Thought Controlled Tools,
and vegetable teeth. The parts can communicate via a mineral-rich
sap. The creature uses water instead of blood as its working fluid.
It is not clear if the entire creature is an animal or a plant,
there being components of both in its immense expanse. There is only
one intelligent Strata Creature on Drambo, and it is being treated
for radiation poisoning.
Classification:Unknown
Planet:Drambo
Species:Thought Controlled Tools
No Individual Names Known
Under the mental control of its user, a "tool" can assume any
use-ful shape imagined. At Sector General, one appeared as a Hudlar
type six scalpel, a medium-sized box spanner, a metallic sphere, a
miniature bust of Beethoven, a set of Tralthan dentures, and a
Hudlar food sprayer, among other things. The tools belong to the
only sentient Strata Creature on Drambo, and were used to attack the
medical and military forces attempting to treat the Strata Crea-ture
for radiation poisoning.
Classification:Unknown
Planet:Dutha
Species:Duthan
Individuals:Patient Bowab, His Excellency the Lord Scrennagle of
Dutha
Duthans have a centaur-like body. The torso from the waist up
resembles that of an Earth-human, but the musculature of the arms,
shoulders and chest are subtly different. The hands are five-digi
ted, each comprised of three fingers and two opposable thumbs. The
head is carried erect above a very thick neck, which seems
dispro-portionately small.The face is dominated by two large, soft,
brown eyes that somehow make the slits, pro tuberan ces, and fleshy
petals which comprise the other features visually acceptable.
Classification:Unknowm
Planet:Keran
Species:Keranni
No Individual Names Known
No description given.
Classification:Unknown
Planet:Unknown
Species:Kreglinni
No Individual Names Known
No description given.
Classification:Various
Planet:Meatball
Species:CLCH/CLHG Drambon Rollers, Drambon Farmer Fish, Drambon
Strata Creatures, Drambon Thought Controlled Tools, SRJH Drambon
Healers or Physicians or Protectors
The planet was originally named by the crew of Descartes, but the
name was considered derogatory by one of the native intelligent
species. The planet is now referred to as Drambo.
TO GEORGE L. CHARTERS
FOR LOTS 0F REASONS
CHAPTER 1
Far out on the galactic Rim, where star systems were sparse and the darkness
nearly absolute, Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space. In its three
hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced in the environments of all the
intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum
ranging from the ultra-frigid methane life forms through the more normal oxygen-
and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct
conversion of hard radiation. Its thousands of view ports were constantly ablaze
with light-light in the dazzling variety of color and intensity necessary for
the visual equipment of its extra-terrestrial patients and staff-so that to
approaching ships the great hospital looked like a tremendous, cylindrical
Christmas tree.
Sector General represented a two-fold miracle of engineering and
psychology. Its supply and maintenance was handled by the Monitor Corps-the
Federation's executive and law enforcement arm-who also saw to its
administration, but the traditional friction between the military and civilian
members of its staff did not occur. Neither were there any serious squabbles
among its ten-thousand-odd medical personnel, who were composed of over sixty
different life-forms with sixty differing sets of mannerisms, body. odors and
ways of looking at life. Perhaps their one and only common denominator was the
need of all doctors, regardless of size, shape or number of legs, to cure the
sick.
The staff of Sector General was a dedicated, but not always serious, group
of beings who were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life-had
this not been so they would not have been there in the first place. And they
prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless. Their
advice or assistance was sought by medical authorities from all over the Galaxy.
Pacifists all, they waged a constant, all-out war against suffering and disease
whether it was in individuals or whole planetary populations.
But there were times when the diagnosis and treatment of a diseased
interstellar culture, entailing the surgical removal of deeply-rooted prejudice
and insane moral values without either the patient's cooperation or consent
could, despite the pacifism of the doctors concerned, lead to the waging of war.
Period.
The patient being brought into the observation ward was a large specimen-about
one thousand pounds mass, Conway estimated-and resembled a giant, upright pear.
Five thick, tentacular appendages grew from the narrow head section and a heavy
apron of muscle at its base gave evidence of a snail-like, although not
necessarily slow, method of locomotion. The whole body surface looked raw and
lacerated, as though someone had been trying to take its skin off with a wire
brush.
To Conway there was nothing very unusual about the physical aspect of the
patient or its condition, six years in space Sector General Hospital having
accustomed him to much more startling sights, so he moved forward to make a
preliminary examination. Immediately the Monitor Corps lieutenant who had
accompanied the patient's trolley into the ward moved closer also. Conway tried
to ignore the feeling of breath on the back of his neck and took a closer look
at the patient.
Five large mouths were situated below the root of each tentacle, four
being plentifully supplied with teeth and the fifth housing the vocal apparatus.
The tentacles themselves showed a high degree of specialization at their
extremities; three of them were plainly manipulatory, one bore the patient's
visual equipment and the remaining member terminated in a horn-tipped, honey
mace. The head was featureless, being simply an osseous dome housing the
patient's brain.
There wasn't much else to he seen from a superficial examination. Conway
turned to get his deep probe gear, and walked on the Monitor officer's feet.
"Have you ever considered taking up medicine seriously, Lieutenant?" he
said irritably.
The lieutenant reddened, his face making a horrible clash of color against
the dark green of his uniform collar. He said stiffly, "This patient is a
criminal. It was found in circumstances which indicate that it killed and ate
the other member of its ship's crew. It has been unconscious during the trip
here, but I've been ordered to stand guard on it just in case. I'll try to stay
out of your way, Doctor."
Conway swallowed, his eyes going to the vicious-looking, horny bludgeon
with which, he had no doubt, the patient's species had battered their way to the
top of their evolutionary tree. He said dryly, "Don't try too hard, Lieutenant."
Using his eyes and a portable X-ray scanner Conway examined his patient
thoroughly inside and out. He took several specimens, including sections of the
affected skin, and sent them off to Pathology with three closely written pages
of covering notes. Then he stood back and scratched his head.
The patient was warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, and had fairly normal
gravity and pressure requirements which, when considered with the general shape
of the beastie, put its physiological classification as EPLH. It seemed to be
suffering from a well-developed and widespread epithelioma, the symptoms being
so plain that he really should have begun treatment without waiting for the Path
report. But a cancerous skin condition did not, ordinarily, render a patient
deeply unconscious.
That could point to psychological complications, he knew, and in that case
he would have to call in some specialized help. One of his telepathic colleagues
was the obvious choice, if it hadn't been for the fact that telepaths could only
rarely work minds that were not already telepathic and of the same species as
themselves. Except for the very odd instance, telepathy had been found to be a
strictly closed circuit form of communication. Which left his GLNO friend, the
empath Dr. Prilicla...
Behind him the Lieutenant coughed gently and said, "When you've finished
the examination, Doctor, O'Mara would like to see you."
Conway nodded. "I'm going to send someone to keep an eye on the patient,"
he said, grinning, "guard them as well as you've guarded me."
Going through to the main ward Conway detailed an Earth-human nurse-a very
good-looking Earth-human nurse-to duty in the observation ward. He could have
sent in one of the Tralthan FGLIs, who belonged to a species with six legs and
so built that beside one of them an Earthly elephant would have seemed a
fragile, sylph-like creature, but he felt that he owed the Lieutenant something
for his earlier bad manners.
Twenty minutes later, after three changes of protective armor and a trip through
the chlorine section, a corridor belonging to the AUGL water breathers and the
ultra-refrigerated wards of the methane life-forms, Conway presented himself at
the office of Major O'Mara.
As Chief Psychologist of a multi-environment hospital hanging in frigid
blackness at the Galactic rim, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a
Staff of ten thousand entities who were composed of eighty-seven different
species. O'Mara was a very important man at Sector General. He was also, on his
own admission, the most approachable man in the hospital. O'Mara was fond of
saying that he didn't care who approached him or when, but if they hadn't a very
good reason for pestering him with their silly little problems then they needn't
expect to get away from him again unscathed. To O'Mara the medical staff were
patients, and it was the generally held belief that the high level of stability
among that variegated and often touchy bunch of e-ts was due to them being too
scared of O'Mara to go mad. But today he was in an almost sociable mood.
"This will take more than five minutes so you'd better sit down, Doctor,"
he said sourly when Conway stopped before his desk. "I take it you've had a look
at our cannibal?"
Conway nodded and sat down. Briefly he outlined his findings with regard
to the EPLH patient, including his suspicion that there might be complications
of a psychological nature. Ending, he asked, "Do you have any other information
on its background, apart from the cannibalism?"
"Very little," said O'Mara. "It was found by a Monitor patrol vessel in a
ship which, although undamaged, was broadcasting distress signals. Obviously it
became too sick to operate the vessel. There was no other occupant, but because
the EPLH was a new species to the rescue party they went over its ship with a
fine-tooth comb, and found that there should have been another person aboard.
They discovered this through a sort of ship's log cum personal diary kept on
tape by the EPLH, and by study of the airlock tell-tales and similar protective
gadgetry the details of which don't concern us at the moment. However, all the
facts point to there being two entities aboard the ship, and the log tape
suggests pretty strongly that the other one came to a sticky end at the hands,
and teeth, of your patient."
O'Mara paused to toss a slim sheaf of papers onto his lap and Conway saw that it
was a typescript of the relevant sections of the log. He had time only to
discover that the EPLH's victim had been the ship's doctor, then O'Mara was
talking again.
"We know nothing about its planet of origin," he said morosely, "except
that it is somewhere in the other galaxy~ However, with only one quarter of our
own Galaxy explored, our chances of finding its home world are negligible-"
"How about the Ians," said Conway, "maybe they could help?"
The Ians belonged to a culture originating in the other galaxy which had
planted a colony in the same sector of the home galaxy which contained the
Hospital. They were an unusual species-classification GKNM- which went into a
chrysalis stage at adolescence and metamorphosized from a ten-legged crawler
into a beautiful, winged life-form. Conway had had one of them as a patient
three months ago. The patient had been long since discharged, but the two GKNM
doctors, who had originally come to help Conway with the patient, had remained
at Sector General to study and teach.
"A Galaxy's a big place," said O'Mara with an obvious lack of enthusiasm,
"but try them by all means. However, to get back to your patient, the biggest
problem is going to come after you've cured it.
"You see, Doctor," he went on, "this particular beastie was found in
circumstances which show pretty conclusively that it is guilty of an act which
every intelligent species we know of considers a crime. As the Federation's
police force among other things the Monitor Corps is supposed to take certain
measures against criminals like this one. They are supposed to be tried,
rehabilitated or punished as seems fit. But how can we give this criminal a fair
trial when we know nothing at all about its background, a background which just
might contain the possibility of extenuating circumstances? At the same time we
can't just let it go free..."
"Why not?" said Conway. "Why not point it in the general direction from
whence it came and administer a judicial kick in the pants?"
"Or why not let the patient die," O'Mara replied, smiling, "and save
trouble all around?"
Conway didn't speak. O'Mara was using an unfair argument and they both knew it,
but they also knew that nobody would be able to convince the Monitor enforcement
section that curing the sick and punishing the malefactor were not of equal
importance in the Scheme of Things.
"What I want you to do," O'Mara resumed, "is to find out all you can about
the patient and its background after it comes to and during treatment. Knowing
how soft-hearted, or soft-headed you are, I expect you will side with the
patient during the cure and appoint yourself an unofficial counsel for the
defense. Well, I won't mind that if in so doing you obtain the information which
will enable us to summon a jury of its peers. Understood?"
Conway nodded.
O'Mara waited precisely three seconds, then said, "If you've nothing
better to do than laze about in that chair. .
Immediately on leaving O'Mara's office Conway got in touch with Pathology
and asked for the EPLA report to be sent to him before lunch. Then he invited
the two Ian GKNMs to lunch and arranged for a consultation with Prilicla
regarding the patient shortly afterward. With these arrangements made he felt
free to begin his rounds.
During the two hours which followed Conway had no time to think about his
newest patient. He had fifty-three patients currently in his charge together
with six doctors in various stages of training and a supporting staff of nurses,
the patients and medical staff comprising eleven different physiological types.
There were special instruments and procedures for examining these extra-
terrestrial patients, and when he was accompanied by a trainee whose pressure
and gravity requirements differed both from those of the patient to be examined
and himself, then the "routine" of his rounds could become an extraordinarily
complicated business.
But Conway looked at all his patients, even those whose convalescence was
well advanced or whose treatment could have been handled by a subordinate. He
was well aware that this was a stupid practice which only served to give him a
lot of unnecessary work, but the truth was promotion to a resident Senior
Physician was still too recent for him to have become used to the large-scale
delegation of responsibility. He foolishly kept on trying to do everything
himself.
After rounds he was scheduled to give an initial midwifery lecture to a
class of DBLF nurses. The DBLFs were furry, multipedal beings resembling outsize
caterpillars and were native to the planet Kelgia. They also breathed the same
atmospheric mixture as himself, which meant that he was able to do without a
pressure suit. To this purely physical comfort was added the fact that talking
about such elementary stuff as the reason for Kelgian females conceiving only
once in their lifetime and then producing quads who were invariably divided
equally in sex, did not call for great concentration on his part. It left a
large section of his mind free to worry about the alleged cannibal in his
observation ward.
CHAPTER 2
Half an hour later he was with the two Ian doctors in the Hospital's main dining
hall-the one which catered for Tralthan, Kelgian, human and the various other
warm-blooded, oxygen-breathers on the Staff-eating the inevitable salad. This in
itself did not bother Conway unduly, in fact, lettuce was downright appetizing
compared with some of the things he had had to eat while playing host to other
e-t colleagues, but he did not think that he would ever get used to the gale
they created during lunch.
The GKNM denizens of Ia were a large, delicate, winged life-form who
looked something like a dragonfly. To their rod-like but flexible bodies were
attached four insectile legs, manipulators, the usual sensory organs and three
tremendous sets of wings. Their table manners were not actually unpleasant-it
was just that they did not sit down to dine, they hovered. Apparently eating
while in flight aided their digestions as well as being pretty much a
conditioned reflex with them.
Conway set the Path report on the table and placed the sugar bowl on top
of it to keep it from blowing away. He said, ". . . You'll see from what I've
just been reading to you that this appears to be a fairly simple case. Unusually
so, I'd say, because the patient is remarkably clear of harmful bacteria of any
type. Its symptoms indicate a form of epithelioma, that and nothing else, which
makes its unconsciousness rather puzzling. But maybe some information on its
planetary environment, sleeping periods and so on, would clarify things, and
that is why I wanted to talk to you.
"We know that the patient comes from your galaxy. Can you tell me anything
at all about its background?"
The GKNM on Conway's right drifted a few inches back from the table and
said through its Translator, "I'm afraid I have not yet mastered the intricacies
of your physiological classification system, Doctor. What does the patient look
like?"
"Sorry, I forgot," said Conway. He was about to explain in detail what an
EPLH was, then he began sketching on the back of the Path report instead. A few
minutes later he held up the result and said, "It looks something like that."
Both Ians dropped to the floor.
Conway who had never known the GKNMs to stop either eating or flying during a
meal was impressed by the reaction.
He said, "You know about them, then?"
The GKNM on the right made noises which Conway's Translator reproduced as
a series of barks, the e-t equivalent of an attack of stuttering. Finally it
said, "We know of them. We have never seen one of them, we do not know their
planet of origin, and before this moment we were not sure that they had actual
physical existence. They. . . they are gods, Doctor."
Another VIP... ! thought Conway, with a sudden sinking feeling. His
experience with VIP patients was that their cases were never simple. Even if the
patient's condition was nothing serious there were invariably complications,
none of which were medical.
"My colleague is being a little too emotional," the other GKNM broke in.
Conway had never been able to see any physical difference between the two Ians,
but somehow this one had the air of being a more cynical, world-weary dragonfly.
"Perhaps I can tell you what little is known, and deduced, about them rather
than enumerate all the things which are not .
The species to which the patient belonged was not a numerous one, the Ian
doctor went onto explain, but their sphere of influence in the other galaxy was
tremendous. In the social and psychological sciences they were very well
advanced, and individually their intelligence and mental capacity was enormous.
For reasons known only to themselves they did not seek each other's company very
often, and it was unheard of for more than one of them to be found on any planet
at the same time for any lengthy period.
They were always the supreme ruler on the worlds they occupied.
Sometimes it was a beneficent rule, sometimes harsh-but the harshness, when
viewed with a century or so's hindsight, usually turned out to be beneficence in
disguise. They used people, whole planetary populations, and even interplanetary
cultures, purely as a means to solve the problems which they set themselves, and
when the problem was solved they left. At least this was the impression received
by not quite unbiased observers.
In a voice made flat and emotionless only because of the process of Translation
the Ian went on, ".. . Legends seem to agree that one of them will land on a
planet with nothing but its ship and a companion who is always of a different
species. By using a combination of defensive science, psychology and sheer
business acumen they overcome local prejudice and begin to amass wealth and
power. The transition from local authority to absolute planetary rule is
gradual, but then they have plenty of time. They are, of course, immortal."
Faintly, Conway heard his fork clattering onto the floor. It was a few
minutes before he could steady either his hands or his mind.
There were a few extra-terrestrial species in the Federation who possessed
very long life spans, and most of the medically advanced cultures- Earth's
included-had the means of extending life considerably with rejuvenation
treatments. Immortality, however, was something they did not have, nor had they
ever had the chance to study anyone who possessed it. Until now, that was. Now
Conway had a patient to care for, and cure and, most of all, investigate.
Unless. . . but the GKNM was a doctor, and a doctor would not say immortal if he
merely meant long-lived.
"Are you sure?" croaked Conway.
The Ian's answer took a long time because it included the detailing of a
great many facts, theories and legends concerning these beings who were
satisfied to rule nothing less than a planet apiece. At the end of it Conway was
still not sure that his patient was immortal, but everything he had heard seemed
to point that way.
Hesitantly, he said, "After what I've just heard perhaps I shouldn't ask,
but in your opinion are these beings capable of committing an act of murder and
cannibalism-"
"No!" said one Ian.
"Never!" said the other.
There was, of course, no hint of emotion in the Translated replies, but
their sheer volume was enough to make everyone in the dining hail look up.
A few minutes later Conway was alone. The Ians had requested permission to see
the legendary EPLH and then dashed off full of awe and eagerness. Ians were nice
people, Conway thought, but at the same time it was his considered opinion that
lettuce was fit only for rabbits. With great firmness he pushed his slightly
mussed salad away from him and dialed for steak with double the usual
accessories.
This promised to be a long, hard day.
When Conway returned to the observation ward the Ians had gone and the
patient's condition was unchanged. The Lieutenant was still guarding the nurse
on duty-closely-and was beginning to blush for some reason. Conway nodded
gravely, dismissed the nurse and was giving the Path report a rereading when Dr.
Prilicla arrived.
Prilicla was a spidery, fragile, low-gravity being of classification GLNO
who had to wear G-nullifiers constantly to keep from being mashed flat by a
gravity which most other species considered normal. Besides being a very
competent doctor Prilicla was the most popular person in the hospital, because
its empathic faculty made it nearly impossible for the little being to be
disagreeable to anyone. And, although it also possessed a set of large,
iridescent wings it sat down at mealtimes and ate spaghetti with a fork. Conway
liked Prilicla a lot.
Conway briefly described the EPLH's condition and background as he saw it,
then ended, ..... I know you can't get much from an unconscious patient, but it
would help me if you could-"
"There appears to be a misunderstanding here, Doctor," Prilicla broke in,
using the form of words which was the nearest it ever came to telling someone
they were wrong. The patient is conscious...
"Get back!"
Warned as much by Conway's emotional radiation at the thought of what the
patient's honey club could do to Prilicla's eggshell body as his words, the
little GLNO skittered backward out of range. The Lieutenant edged closer, his
eyes on the still motionless tentacle which ended in that monstrous bludgeon.
For several seconds nobody moved or spoke, while outwardly the patient remained
unconscious. Finally Conway looked at Prilicla. He did not have to speak.
Prilicla said, "I detect emotional radiation of a type which emanates only
from a mind which is consciously aware of itself. The mental processes
themselves seem slow and, considering the physical size of the patient, weak. In
detail, it is radiating feelings of danger, helplessness and confusion. There is
also an indication of some overall sense of purpose."
Conway sighed.
"So it's playing 'possum," said the Lieutenant grimly, talking mostly to
himself.
The fact that the patient was feigning unconsciousness worried Conway less
than it did the Corpsman. In spite of the mass of diagnostic equipment available
to him he subscribed firmly to the belief that a doctor's best guide to any
malfunction was a communicative and cooperative patient. But how did one open a
conversation with a being who was a near deity...?
"We.. . we are going to help you," he said awkwardly. "Do you understand
what I'm saying?"
The patient remained motionless as before.
Prilicla said, "There is no indication that it heard you, Doctor."
"But if it's conscious..." Conway began, and ended the sentence with a
helpless shrug.
He began assembling his instruments again and with Prilicla's help
examined the EPLH again, paying special attention to the organs of sight and
hearing. But there was no physical or emotional reaction while the examination
was in progress, despite the flashing lights and a considerable amount of
ungentle probing. Conway could see no evidence of physical malfunction in any of
the sensory organs, yet the patient remained completely unaware of all outside
stimulus. Physically it was unconscious, insensible to everything going on
around it, except that Prilicla insisted that it wasn't.
What a crazy, mixed-up demi-god, thought Conway. Trust O'Mara to send him the
weirdies. Aloud he said, "The only explanation I can see for this peculiar state
of affairs is that the mind you are receiving has severed or blocked off contact
with all its sensory equipment. The patient's condition is not the cause of
this, therefore the trouble must have a psychological basis. I'd say the beastie
is urgently in need of psychiatric assistance.
"However," he ended, "the head-shrinkers can operate more effectively on a
patient who is physically well, so I think we should concentrate on clearing up
this skin condition first...
A specific had been developed at the hospital against epithelioma of the
type affecting the patient, and Pathology had already stated that it was suited
to the EPLH's metabolism and would produce no harmful side-effects. It took only
a few minutes for Conway to measure out a test dosage and inject subcutaneously.
Prilicla moved up beside him quickly to see the effect. This, they both knew,
was one of the rare, rapid-action miracles of medicine-its effect would be
apparent in a matter of seconds rather than hours or days.
Ten minutes later nothing at all had happened.
"A tough guy," said Conway, and injected the maximum safe dose.
Almost at once the skin in the area darkened and lost its dry, cracked
look. The dark area widened perceptibly as they watched, and one of the
tentacles twitched slightly.
"What's its mind doing?" said Conway.
"Much the same as before," Prilicla replied, "but with mounting anxiety
apparent since the last injection. I detect feelings of a mind trying to make a
decision.., of making a decision...
Prilicla began to tremble violently, a clear sign that the emotional
radiation of the patient had intensified. Conway had his mouth open to put a
question when a sharp, tearing sound dragged his attention back to the patient.
The EPLH was heaving and throwing itself against its restraining harness. Two of
the anchoring straps had parted and it had worked a tentacle free. The one with
the club.
Conway ducked frantically, and avoided having his head knocked off by a fraction
of an inch-he felt that ultimate in blunt instruments actually touch his hair.
But the Lieutenant was not so lucky. At almost the end of its swing the bony
mace thudded into his shoulder, throwing him across the tiny ward so hard that
he almost bounced off the wall. Prilicla, with whom cowardice was a prime
survival characteristic, was already clinging with its sucker-tipped legs to the
ceiling, which was the only safe spot in the room.
From his position flat on the floor Conway heard other straps go and saw
two more tentacles begin feeling about. He knew that in a few minutes the
patient would be completely free of the harness and able to move about the room
at will. He scrambled quickly to his knees, crouched, then dived for the berserk
EPLH. As he hung on tightly with his arms around its body just below the roots
of the tentacles Conway was nearly deafened by a series of barking roars coming
from the speaking orifice beside his ear. The noise translated as "Help me! Help
me!" Simultaneously he saw the tentacle with the great, bony bludgeon at its tip
swing downward. There was a crash and a three inch hollow appeared on the floor
at the point where he had been lying a few seconds previously.
Tackling the patient the way he had done might have seemed foolhardy, but
Conway had been trying to keep his head in more ways than one. Clinging tightly
to the EPLH's body below the level of those madly swinging tentacles, Conway
knew, was the next safest place in the room.
Then he saw the Lieutenant...
The Lieutenant had his back to the wall, half lying and half sitting up. One arm
hung loosely at his side and in the other hand he held his gun, steadying it
between his knees, and one eye was closed in a diabolical wink while the other
sighted along the barrel. Conway shouted desperately for him to wait, but the
noise from the patient drowned him out. At every instant Conway expected the
flash and shock of exploding bullets. He felt paralyzed with fear, he couldn't
even let go.
Then suddenly it was all over. The patient slumped onto its side, twitched
and became motionless. Holstering his unfired weapon the Lieutenant struggled to
his feet. Conway extricated himself and Prilicla came down off the ceiling.
Awkwardly, Conway said, "Uh, I suppose you couldn't shoot with me hanging
on there?"
The Lieutenant shook his head. "I'm a good shot, Doctor, I could have hit
it and missed you all right. But it kept shouting 'Help me' all the time. That
sort of thing cramps a man's style.
CHAPTER 3
It was some twenty minutes later, after Prilicla had sent the Lieutenant away to
have a cracked humerus set and Conway and the GLNO were fitting the patient with
a much stronger harness, that they noticed the absence of the darker patch of
skin. The patient's condition was now exactly the same as it had been before
undergoing treatment. Apparently the hefty shot which Conway had administered
had had only a temporary effect, and that was decidedly peculiar. It was in fact
downright impossible.
From the moment Prilicla's empathetic faculty had been brought to bear on
the case Conway had been sure that the root of the trouble was psychological. He
also knew that a severely warped mind could do tremendous damage to the body
which housed it. But this damage was on a purely physical level and its method
of repair-the treatment developed and proved time and time again by Pathology-
was a hard, physical fact also. And no mind, regardless of its power or degree
of malfunction, should be able to ignore, to completely negate, a physical fact.
The Universe had, after all, certain fixed laws.
So far as Conway could see there were only two possible explanations.
Either the rules were being ignored because the Being who had made them had also
the right to ignore them or somehow, someone-or some combination of
circumstances or misread data-was pulling a fast one. Conway infinitely
preferred the second theory because the first one was altogether too shattering
to consider seriously. He desperately wanted to go on thinking of his patient
with a small P...
Nevertheless, when he left the ward Conway paid a visit to the office of Captain
Bryson, the Monitor Corps Chaplain, and consulted that officer at some length in
a semi-professional capacity-Conway believed in carrying plenty of insurance.
His next call was on Colonel Skempton, the officer in charge of Supply,
Maintenance and Communications at the Hospital. There he requested complete
copies of the patient's log-not just the sections relevant to the murder-
together with any other background data available to be sent to his room. Then
he went to the AUGL theater to demonstrate operative techniques on submarine
life-forms, and before dinner he was able to work in two hours in the Pathology
department during which he discovered quite a lot about his patient's
immortality.
When he returned to his room there was a pile of typescript on his desk
that was nearly two inches thick. Conway groaned, thinking of his six-hour
recreation period and how he was going to spend it. The thought obtruded of how
he would have liked to spend it, bringing with it a vivid picture of the very
efficient and impossibly beautiful Nurse Murchison whom he had been dating
regularly of late. But Murchison was currently with the FGLI Maternity Section
and their free periods would not coincide for another two weeks.
In the present circumstances perhaps it was just as well, Conway thought,
as he settled down for a good long read.
The Corpsmen who had examined the patient's ship had been unable to convert the
EPLH's time units into the Earth-human scale with any accuracy, but they had
been able to state quite definitely that many of the taped logs were several
centuries old and a few of them dated back to two thousand years or more. Conway
began with the oldest and sifted carefully through them until he came to the
most recent. He discovered almost at once that they were not so much a series of
taped diaries-the references to personal items were relatively rare-as a catalog
of memoranda, most of which was highly technical and very heavy going. The data
relevant to the murder, which he studied last, was much more dramatic.
... My physician is making me sick, the final entry read, it is killing
me. I must do something. It is a bad physician for allowing me to become ill.
Somehow I must get rid of it...
Conway replaced the last sheet on its pile, sighed, and prepared to adopt
a position more conducive to creative thinking; i.e. with his chair tipped far
back, feet on desk and practically sitting on the back of his neck.
What a mess, he thought.
The separate pieces of the puzzle-or most of them, anyway-were available
to him now and required only to be fitted together. There was the patient's
condition, not serious so far as the Hospital was concerned but definitely
lethal if not treated. Then there was the data supplied by the two Ians
regarding this God-like, power-hungry but essentially beneficent race and the
companions-who were never of the same species- who always traveled or lived with
them. These companions were subject to replacement because they grew old and
died while the EPLHs did not. There were also the Path reports, both the first
written one he had received before lunch and the later verbal one furnished
during his two hours with Thornnastor, the FGLI Diagnostician-in-Charge of
Pathology. It was Thornnastor's considered opinion that the EPLH patient was not
a true immortal, and the Considered Opinion of a Diagnostician was as near to
being a rock-hard certainty as made no difference. But while immortality had
been ruled out for various physiological reasons, the tests had shown evidence
of longevity or rejuvenation treatments of the unselective type.
Finally there had been the emotion readings furnished by Prilicla before and
during their attempted treatment of the patient's skin condition. Prilida had
reported a steady radiation pattern of confusion, anxiety and helplessness. But
when the EPLH had received its second injection it had gone berserk, and the
blast of emotion exploding from its mind had, in Prilicla's own words, nearly
fried the little empath's brains in their own ichor. Prilicla had been unable to
get a detailed reading on such a violent eruption of emotion, mainly because it
had been tuned to the earlier and more gentle level on which the patient had
been radiating, but it agreed that there was evidence of instability of the
schizoid type.
Conway wriggled deeper into his chair, closed his eyes and let the pieces
of the puzzle slide gently into place.
It had begun on the planet where the EPLHs had been the dominant life-
form. In the course of time they had achieved civilization which included
interstellar flight and an advanced medical science. Their life span, lengthy to
begin with, was artificially extended so that a relatively short-lived species
like the Ians could be forgiven for believing them to be immortal. But a high
pride had had to be paid for their longevity: reproduction of their kind, the
normal urge toward immortality of race in a species of mortal individuals, would
have been the first thing to go; then their civilization would have dissolved-
been forced apart, rather-into a mass of star-traveling, rugged individualists;
and finally there would have been the psychological rot which set in when the
risk of purely physical deterioration had gone.
Poor demi-gods, thought Conway.
They avoided each other's company for the simple reason that they'd
already had too much of it-century after century of each other's mannerisms,
habits of speech, opinions and the sheer, utter boredom of looking at each
other. They had set themselves vast, sociological problems- taking charge of
backward or errant planetary cultures and dragging them up by their bootstraps,
and similar large-scale philanthropies-because they had tremendous minds, they
had plenty of time, they had constantly to fight against boredom and because
basically they must have been nice people. And because part of the price of such
longevity was an ever-growing fear of death, they had to have their own personal
physicians- no doubt the most efficient practitioners of medicine known to them-
constantly in attendance.
Only one piece of the puzzle refused to fit and that was the odd way in which
the EPLH had negated his attempts to treat it, but Conway had no doubt that that
was a physiological detail which would soon become clear as well. The important
thing was that he now knew how to proceed.
Not every condition responded to medication, despite Thornnastor's claims
to the contrary, and he would have seen that surgery was indicated in the EPLH's
case if the whole business had not been so be-fogged with considerations of who
and what the patient was and what it was supposed to have done. The fact that
the patient was a near-deity, a murderer and generally the type of being not to
be trifled with were details which should not have concerned him.
Conway sighed and swung his feet to the floor. He was beginning to feel so
comfortable that he decided he had better go to bed before he fell asleep.
Immediately after breakfast next day Conway began setting up things for the
EPLH's operation. He ordered the necessary instruments and equipment sent to the
observation ward, gave detailed instructions regarding its sterilization-the
patient was supposed to have killed one doctor already for allowing it to become
sick, and a dim view would be taken if another one was the cause of it catching
something else because of faulty aseptic procedures-and requested the assistance
of a Tralthan surgeon to help with the fine work. Then half an hour before he
was due to start Conway called on O'Mara.
The Chief Psychologist listened to his report and intended course of
action without comment until he had finished, then he said, "Conway, do you
realize what could happen to this hospital if that thing got loose? And not just
physically loose, I mean. It is seriously disturbed mentally, you say, if not
downright psychotic. At the moment it is unconscious, but from what you tell me
its grasp of the psychological sciences is such that it could have us eating out
of its manipulatory appendage just by talking at us.
"I'm concerned as to what may happen when it wakes up."
It was the first time Conway had heard O'Mara confess to being worried
about anything. Several years back when a runaway spaceship had crashed into the
hospital, spreading havoc and confusion through sixteen levels, it was said that
Major O'Mara had expressed a feeling of concern on that occasion also.
"I'm trying not to think about that," said Conway apologetically. "It just
confuses the issue."
O'Mara took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose, a
mannerism of his which could convey more than twenty scathing sentences. He said
coldly, "Somebody should think about these things, Doctor. I trust you will have
no objection to me observing the coming operation. . .
To what was nothing less than a politely worded order there could be no
reply other than an equally polite, "Glad to have you, sir."
When they arrived in the observation ward the patient's "bed" had been
raised to a comfortable operating height and the EPLH itself was strapped
securely into position. The Tralthan had taken its place beside the recording
and anesthetizing gear and had one eye on the patient, one on its equipment and
the other two directed toward Prilicla with whom it was discussing a
particularly juicy piece of scandal which had come to light the previous day. As
the two beings concerned were PVSJ chlorine breathers the affair could have only
an academic interest for them, but apparently their academic interest was
intense. At the sight of O'Mara, however, the scandal-mongering ceased
forthwith. Conway gave the signal to begin.
The anesthetic was one of several which Pathology had pronounced safe for
the EPLH life-form, and while it was being administered Conway found his mind
going off at a tangent toward his Tralthan assistant.
Surgeons of that species were really two beings instead of one, a combination of
FGLI and OTSB. Clinging to the leathery back of the lumbering, elephantine
Tralthan was a diminutive and nearly mindless being who lived in symbiosis with
it. At first glance the OTSB looked like a furry ball with a long ponytail
sprouting from it, but a closer look showed that the ponytail was composed of
scores of fine manipulators most of which incorporated sensitive visual organs.
Because of the rapport which existed between the Tralthan and its symbiote the
FGLI-OTSB combination were the finest surgeons in the Galaxy. Not all Tralthans
chose to link up with a symbiote, but FGLI medics wore them like a badge of
office.
Suddenly the OTSB scurried along its host's back and huddled atop the
dome-like head between the eye-stalks, its tail hanging down toward the patient
and fanning out stiffly. The Tralthan was ready to begin.
"You will observe that this is a surface condition only," Conway said, for
the benefit of the recording equipment, "and that the whole skin area looks
dead, dried-up and on the point of flaking off. During the removal of the first
skin samples no difficulty was encountered, but later specimens resisted removal
to a certain extent and the reason was discovered to be a tiny rootlet,
approximately one quarter of an inch long and invisible to the naked eye. My
naked eye, that is. So it seems clear that the condition is about to enter a new
phase. The disease is beginning to dig in rather than remain on the surface, and
the more promptly we act the better."
Conway gave the reference numbers of the Path reports and his own
preliminary notes on the case, then went on, ..... As the patient, for reasons
which are at the moment unclear, does not respond to medication I propose
surgical removal of the affected tissue, irrigation, cleansing and replacement
with surrogate skin. A Tralthan-guided OTSB will be used to ensure that the
rootlets are also excised. Except for the considerable area to be covered, which
will make this a long job, the procedure is straightforward-"
"Excuse me, Doctors," Prilicla broke in, "the patient is still conscious."
An argument, polite only on Prilicla's side, broke out between the
Tralthan and the little empath. Prilicla held that the EPLH was thinking
thoughts and radiating emotions and the other maintained that it had enough of
the anesthetic in its system to render it completely insensible to everything
for at least six hours. Conway broke in just as the argument was becoming
personal.
"We've had this trouble before," he said irritably. "The patient has been
physically unconscious except for a few minutes yesterday, since its arrival,
yet Prilicla detected the presence of rational thought processes. Now the same
effect is present while it is under anesthetic. I don't know how to explain
this, it will probably require a surgical investigation of its brain structure
to do so, and that is something which will have to wait. The important thing at
the moment is that it is physically incapable of movement or of feeling pain.
Now shall we begin?"
To Prilicla he added, "Keep listening just in case. .
CHAPTER 4
For about twenty minutes they worked in silence, although the procedure did not
require a high degree of concentration. It was rather like weeding a garden,
except that everything which grew was a weed and had to be removed one plant at
a time. He would peel back an affected area of skin, the OTSB's hair-thin
appendages would investigate, probe and detach the rootlets, and he would peel
back another tiny segment. Conway was looking forward to the most tedious
operation of his career.
Prilicla said, "I detect increasing anxiety linked with a strengthening
sense of purpose. The anxiety is becoming intense...
Conway grunted. He could think of no other comment to make.
Five minutes later the Tralthan said, "We will have to slow down, Doctor.
We are at a section where the roots are much deeper...
Two minutes later Conway said, "But I can see them! How deep are they
now?"
"Four inches," replied the Tralthan. "And Doctor, they are visibly
lengthening as we work."
"But that's impossible!" Conway burst out; then, "We'll move to another
area.
He felt the sweat begin to trickle down his forehead and just beside him
Prilicla's gangling, fragile body began to quiver-but not at anything the
patient was thinking. Conway's own emotional radiation just then was not a
pleasant thing, because in the new area and in the two chosen at random after
that the result was the same. Roots from the flaking pieces of skin were
burrowing deeper as they watched.
"Withdraw," said Conway harshly.
For a long time nobody spoke. Prilicla was shaking as if a high wind was blowing
in the ward. The Tralthan was fussing with its equipment, all four of its eyes
focused on one unimportant knob. O'Mara was looking intently at Conway, also
calculatingly and with a large amount of sympathy in his steady gray eyes. The
sympathy was because he could recognize when a man was genuinely in a spot and
the calculation was due to his trying to work out whether the trouble was
Conway's fault or not.
"What happened, Doctor?" he said gently.
Conway shook his head angrily. "I don't know. Yesterday the patient did
not respond to medication, today it won't respond to surgery. Its reactions to
anything we try to do for it are crazy, impossible! And now our attempt to
relieve its condition surgically has triggered off-something-which will send
those roots deep enough to penetrate vital organs in a matter of minutes if
their present rate of growth is maintained, and you know what that means
"The patient's sense of anxiety is diminishing," Prilicla reported. "It is
still engaged in purposeful thinking."
The Tralthan joined in then. It said, "I have noticed a peculiar fact
about those root-like tendrils which join the diseased flakes of skin with the
body. My symbiote has extremely sensitive vision, you will understand, and it
reports that the tendrils seem to be rooted at each end, so that it is
impossible to tell whether the growth is attacking the body or the body is
deliberately holding onto the growth."
Conway shook his head distractedly. The case was full of mad
contradictions and outright impossibilities. To begin with no patient, no matter
how fouled up mentally, should be able to negate the effects of a drug powerful
enough to bring about a complete cure within half an hour, and all within a few
minutes. And the natural order of things was for a being with a diseased area of
skin to slough it off and replace it with new tissue, not hang onto it grimly no
matter what. It was a baffling, hopeless case.
Yet when the patient had arrived it had seemed a simple, straightforward case-
Conway had felt more concern regarding the patient's background than its
condition, whose cure he had considered a routine matter. But somewhere along
the way he had missed something, Conway was sure, and because of this sin of
omission the patient would probably die during the next few hours. Maybe he had
made a snap diagnosis, been too sure of himself, been criminally careless.
It was pretty horrible to lose a patient at any time, and at Sector
General losing a patient was an extremely rare occurrence. But to lose one whose
condition no hospital anywhere in the civilized galaxy would have considered as
being serious. . . Conway swore luridly, but stopped because he hadn't the words
to describe how he felt about himself.
"Take it easy, son.
That was O'Mara, squeezing his arm and talking like a father. Normally
O'Mara was a bad-tempered, bull-voiced and unapproachable tyrant who, when one
went to him for help, sat making sarcastic remarks while the person concerned
squirmed and shamefacedly solved his own problems. His present uncharacteristic
behavior proved something, Conway thought bitterly. It proved that Conway had a
problem which Conway could not solve himself.
But in O'Mara's expression there was something more than just concern for
Conway, and it was probably that deep down the psychologist was a little glad
that things had turned out as they did. Conway meant no reflection on O'Mara's
character, because he knew that if the Major had been in his position he would
have tried as hard if not harder to cure the patient, and would have felt just
as badly about the outcome. But at the same time the Chief Psychologist must
have been desperately worried about the possibility of a being of great and
unknown powers, who was also mentally unbalanced, being turned loose on the
Hospital. In addition O'Mara might also be wondering if, beside a conscious and
alive EPLH, he would look like a small and untutored boy...
"Let's try taking it from the top again," O'Mara said, breaking in on his
thoughts. "Is there anything you've found in the patient's background that might
point to it wanting to destroy itself?"
"No!" said Conway vehemently. "To the contrary! It would want desperately
to live. It was taking unselective rejuvenation treatments, which means that the
complete cell-structure of its body was regenerated periodically. As the process
of storing memory is a product of aging in the brain cells, this would
practically wipe its mind clean after every treatment.
"That's why those taped logs resembled technical memoranda," O'Mara put
in. "That's exactly what they were. Still, I prefer our own method of
rejuvenation even though we won't live so long, regenerating damaged organs only
and allowing the brain to remain untouched..."
"I know," Conway broke in, wondering why the usually taciturn O'Mara had
become so talkative. Was he trying to simplify the problem by making him state
it in non-professional terms? "But the effect of continued longevity treatments,
as you know yourself, is to give the possessor an increasing fear of dying.
Despite loneliness, boredom and an altogether unnatural existence, the fear
grows steadily with the passage of time. That is why it always traveled with its
own private physician, it was desperately afraid of sickness or an accident
befalling it between treatments, and that is why I can sympathize to a certain
extent with its feelings when the doctor who was supposed to keep it well
allowed it to get sick, although the business of eating it afterward-"
"So you are on its side," said O'Mara dryly.
"It could make a good plea of self-defense," Conway retorted. "But I was
saying that it was desperately afraid of dying, so that it would be constantly
trying to get a better, more efficient doctor for itself. . . Oh!"
"Oh, what?" said O'Mara.
It was Prilicla, the emotion sensitive who replied. It said, "Doctor Conway has
just had an idea."
"What is it, you young whelp? There's no need to be so damn secretive . .
!" O'Mara's voice had lost its gentle fatherly tone, and there was a gleam in
his eye which said that he was glad that gentleness was no longer necessary.
"What is wrong with the patient?"
Feeling happy and excited and at the same time very much unsure of
himself, Conway stumbled across to the intercom and ordered some very unusual
equipment, checked again that the patient was so thoroughly strapped down that
it would be unable to move a muscle, then he said, "My guess is that the patient
is perfectly sane and we've been blinding ourselves with psychological red
herrings. Basically, the trouble is something it ate."
"I had a bet with myself you would say that sometime during this case,"
said O'Mara. He looked sick.
The equipment arrived-a slender, pointed wooden stake and a mechanism
which would drive it downward at any required angle and controlled speeds. With
the Tralthan's help Conway set it up and moved it into position. He chose a part
of the patient's body which contained several vital organs which were, however,
protected by nearly six inches of musculature and adipose, then he set the stake
in motion. It was just touching the skin and descending at the rate of
approximately two inches per hour.
"What the blazes is going on?" stormed O'Mara. "Do you think the patient
is a vampire or something!"
"Of course not," Conway replied. "I'm using a wooden stake to give the
patient a better chance of defending itself. You wouldn't expect it to stop a
steel one, would you." He motioned the Tralthan forward and together they
watched the area where the stake was entering the EPLH's body. Every few minutes
Prilicla reported on the emotional radiation. O'Mara paced up and down,
occasionally muttering to himself.
The point had penetrated almost a quarter of an inch when Conway noticed
the first coarsening and thickening of the skin. It was taking place in a
roughly circular area, about four inches in diameter, whose center was the wound
created by the stake. Conway's scanner showed a spongy, fibrous growth forming
under the skin to a depth of half an inch. Visibly the growth thickened and grew
opaque to his scanner's current setting, and within ten minutes it had become a
hard, bony plate. The stake had begun to bend alarmingly and was on the point of
snapping.
"I'd say the defenses are now concentrated at this one point," Conway
said, trying to keep his voice steady, "so we'd better have it out."
Conway and the Tralthan rapidly incised around and undercut the newly-
formed bony plate, which was immediately transferred into a sterile, covered
receptacle. Quickly preparing a shot-a not quite maximum dose of the specific he
had tried the previous day-Conway injected, then went back to helping the
Tralthan with the repair work on the wound. This was routine work and took about
fifteen minutes, and when it was finished there could be no doubt at all that
the patient was responding favorably to treatment.
Over the congratulations of the Tralthan and the horrible threats of
O'Mara-the Chief Psychologist wanted some questions answered, fast- Prilicla
said, "You have effected a cure, Doctor, but the patient's anxiety level has
markedly increased. It is almost frantic."
Conway shook his head, grinning. "The patient is heavily anestheticized
and cannot feel anything. However, I agree that at this present moment.. ." He
nodded toward the sterile container. ..... its personal physician must be
feeling pretty bad."
In the container the excised bone had begun to soften and leak a faintly
purplish liquid. The liquid was rippling and sloshing gently about at the bottom
of the container as if it had a mind of its own. Which was, in fact, the case.
Conway was in O'Mara's office winding up his report on the EPLH and the Major
was being highly complimentary in a language which at times made the compliments
indistinguishable from insults. But this was O'Mara's way, Conway was beginning
to realize, and the Chief Psychologist was polite and sympathetic only when he
was professionally concerned about a person.
He was still asking questions.
An intelligent, amoebic life-form, a organized collection of
submicroscopic, virus-type cells, would make the most efficient doctor
obtainable," said Conway in reply to one of them. "It would reside within its
patient and, given the necessary data, control any disease or organic
malfunction from the inside. To a being who is pathologically afraid of dying it
must have seemed perfect. And it was, too, because the trouble which developed
was not really the doctor's fault. It came about through the patient's ignorance
of its own physiological background.
"The way I see it," Conway went on, "the patient had been taking its
rejuvenation treatments at an early stage of its biological lifetime. I mean
that it did not wait until middle or old age before regenerating itself. But on
this occasion, either because it forgot or was careless or had been working on a
problem which took longer than usual, it aged more than it had previously and
acquired this skin condition. Pathology says that this was probably a common
complaint with this race, and the normal course would be for the EPLH to slough
off the affected skin and carry on as usual. But our patient, because the type
of its rejuvenation treatment caused memory damage, did not know this, so its
personal physician did not know it either."
Conway continued, "This, er, resident physician knew very little about the
medical background of its patient-host's body, but its motto must have been to
maintain the status quo at all costs. When pieces of its patient's body
threatened to break away it held onto them, not realizing that this could have
been a normal occurrence like losing hair or a reptile periodically shedding its
skin, especially as its master would have insisted that the occurrence was not
natural. A pretty fierce struggle must have developed between the patient's body
processes and its doctor, with the patient's mind also ranged against its
doctor. Because of this the doctor had to render the patient unconscious the
better to do what it considered to be the right thing.
"When we gave it the test shots the doctor neutralized them. They were a
foreign substance being introduced into its patient's body, you see. And you
know what happened when we tried surgical removal. It was only when we
threatened underlying vital organs with that stake, forcing the doctor to defend
its patient at that one point..
"When you began asking for wooden stakes," said O'Mara dryly, "I thought
of putting you in a tight harness."
Conway grinned. He said, "I'm recommending that the EPLH takes his doctor
back. Now that Pathology has given it a fuller understanding of its employer's
medical and physiological history it should be the ultimate in personal
physicians, and the EPLH is smart enough to see that."
O'Mara smiled in return. "And I was worried about what it might do when it
became conscious. But it turned out to be a very friendly, likeable type. Quite
charming, in fact."
As Conway rose and turned to go he said slyly, "That's because it's such a
good psychologist. It is pleasant to people all the time...
He managed to get the door shut behind him before the explosion.
CHAPTER 5
n time the EPLH patient, whose name was Lonvellin, was discharged I and
the steady procession of ailing e-ts who came under his care made the memory of
Lonvellin's fade in Conway's mind. He did not know whether the EPLH had returned
to its home galaxy or was still wandering this one in search of good deeds to
do, and he was being kept too busy to care either way. But Conway was not quite
finished with the EPLH.
Or more accurately, Lonvellin was not quite finished with Conway... "How would
you like to get away from the hospital for a few months,
Doctor?" O'Mara said, when Conway had presented himself in the Chief
Psychologist's office in answer to an urgent summons over the PA. "It would be
in the nature of a holiday, almost."
Conway felt his initial unease grow rapidly into panic. He had urgent
personal reasons for not leaving the hospital for a few months. He said, "Well..
The psychologist raised his head and fixed Conway with a pair of level
gray eyes which saw so much and which opened into a mind so keenly analytical
that together they gave O'Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty. He said
dryly, "Don't bother to thank me, it is your own fault for curing such powerful,
influential patients."
He went on briskly, "This is a large assignment, Doctor, but it will
consist mainly of clerical work. Normally it would be given to someone at
Diagnostician level, but that EPLH, Lonvellin, has been at work on a planet
which it says is urgently in need of medical aid. Lonvellin has requested
Monitor Corps as well as hospital assistance in this, and has asked that you
personally should direct the medical side. Apparently a Great Intellect isn't
needed for the job, just one with a peculiar way of looking at things. .
"You're too kind, sir," said Conway.
Grinning, O'Mara said, "I've told you before, I'm here to shrink heads,
not inflate them. And now, this is the report on the situation there at the
moment. . ." He slid the file he had been reading across to Conway, and stood
up. ..... You can brief yourself on it when you board ship. Be at Lock Sixteen
to board Vespasian at 2130, meanwhile I expect you have loose ends to tidy up.
And Conway, try not to look as if all your relatives had died. Very probably
she'll wait for you. If she doesn't, why you have two hundred and seventeen
other female DBDGs to chase after. Goodbye and good luck, Doctor."
Outside O'Mara's office Conway tried to work out how best to tidy up his
loose ends in the six hours remaining before embarkation time. He was scheduled
to take a group of trainees through a basic orientation lecture in ten minutes
from now, and it was too late to foist that job onto someone else. That would
kill three of the six hours, four if he was unlucky and today he felt unlucky.
Then an hour to tape instructions regarding his more serious ward patients, then
dinner. He might just do it. Conway began hurrying toward Lock Seven on the one
hundred and eighth level.
He arrived at the lock antechamber just as the inner seal was opening, and
while catching his breath began mentally checking off the trainees who were
filing past him. Two Kelgian DBLFs who undulated past like giant, silver-furred
caterpillars; then a PVSJ from Illensa, the outlines of its spiny, membranous
body softened by the chlorine fog inside its protective envelope; a water-
breathing Creppelian octopoid, classification AMSL, whose suit made loud
bubbling noises. These were followed by five AACPs, a race whose remote
ancestors had been a species of mobile vegetable. They were slow moving, but the
CO2 tanks which they wore seemed to be the only protection they needed. Then
another Kelgian...
When they were all inside and the seal closed behind them Conway spoke.
Quite unnecessarily and simply as a means of breaking the conversational ice, he
said, "Is everyone present?"
Inevitably they all replied in chorus, sending Conway's Translator into a
howl of oscillation. Sighing, he began the customary procedure of introducing
himself and bidding his new colleagues welcome. It was only at the end of these
polite formalities that he worked in a gentle reminder regarding the operating
principles of the Translator, and the advisability of speaking one at a time so
as not to overload it...
On their home worlds these were all very important people, medically
speaking. It was only at Sector General that they were new boys, and for some of
them the transition from acknowledged master to lowly pupil might be difficult,
so that large quantities of tact were necessary when handling them at this
stage. Later, however, when they began to settle in, they could be bawled out
for their mistakes like anyone else.
"I propose to start our tour at Reception," Conway went on, "where the
problems of admittance and initial treatment are dealt with. Then, providing the
environment does not require complex protective arrangements for ourselves and
the patient's condition is not critical, we will visit the adjacent wards to
observe examination procedures on newly-arrived patients. If anyone wants to ask
questions at any time, feel free to do so.
"On the way to Reception," he continued, "we will use corridors which may
be crowded. There is a complicated system of precedence governing the rights of
way of junior and senior medical staff, a system which you will learn in time.
But for the present there is just one simple rule to remember. If the being
coming at you is bigger than you are, get out of its way."
He was about to add that no doctor in Sector General would deliberately
trample a colleague to death, but thought better of it. A great many e-ts did
not have a sense of humor and such a harmless pleasantry, if taken literally,
could lead to endless complications. Instead he said, "Follow me, please."
Conway arranged for the five AACPs, who were the slowest-moving of the
group, to follow himself and set the pace for the others. After them came the
two Kelgians whose undulating gait was only slightly faster than the vegetable
life-forms preceding them. The chlorine-breather came next and the Creppelian
octopoid brought up the rear, the bubbling noise from its suit giving Conway an
audible indication that his fifty-yard long tail was all in one piece.
Strung out as they were there was no point in Conway trying to talk, and
they negotiated the first stage of the journey in silence-three ascending ramps
and a couple of hundred yards of straight and angled corridors. The only person
they met coming in the opposite direction was a Nidian wearing the armband of a
two-year intern. Nidians averaged four feet in height so that nobody was in any
danger of being trampled to death. They reached the internal lock which gave
access to the water breather's section.
In the adjoining dressing room Conway supervised the suiting-up of the two
Kelgians, then climbed into a light-weight suit himself. The AACPs said that
their vegetable metabolism enabled them to exist under water for long periods
without protection. The Illensan was already sealed against the oxygen-laden air
so that the equally poisonous water did not worry it. But the Creppelian was a
water-breather and wanted to take its suit off-it had eight legs which badly
needed stretching, it said. But Conway vetoed this on the grounds that it would
only be in the water for fifteen minutes at most.
The lock opened into the main AUGL ward, a vast, shadowy tank of tepid
green water two hundred feet deep and five hundred feet across. Conway quickly
discovered that moving the trainees from the lock to the corridor entrance on
the other side was like trying to drive a three dimensional herd of cattle
through green glue. With the single exception of the Creppelian they all lost
their sense of direction in the water within the first few minutes. Conway had
to swim frantically around them, gesticulating and shouting directions, and
despite the cooling and drying elements in his suit the interior soon became
like an overheated Turkish bath. Several times he lost his temper and directed
his charges to a place other than the corridor entrance.
And during one particularly chaotic moment an AUGL patient-one of the
forty-foot, armored, fish-like natives of Chalderescol Il-swam ponderously
toward them. It closed to within five yards, causing a near panic among the
AACPs, said "Student!" and swam away again. Chalders were notoriously antisocial
during convalescence, but the incident did not help Conway's temper any.
It seemed much longer than fifteen minutes later when they were assembled
in the corridor at the other side of the tank. Conway said, "Three hundred yards
along this corridor is the transfer lock into the oxygen section of Reception,
which is the best place to see what is going on there. Those of you who are
wearing protection against water only will remove their suits, the others will
go straight through . .
As he was swimming with them toward the lock the Creppelian said to one of
the AACPs, "Ours is supposed to be filled with superheated steam, but you have
to have done something very bad to be sent there." To which the AACP replied,
"Our Hell is hot, too, but there is no moisture in it at all..."
Conway had been about to apologize for losing his temper back in the tank,
fearing that he might have hurt some sensitive extra-terrestrial feelings, but
obviously they hadn't taken what he'd said very seriously.
CHAPTER 6
Through the transparent wall of its observation gallery, Reception showed as a
large, shadowy room containing three large control desks, only one of which was
currently occupied. The being seated before it was another Nidian, a small
humanoid with seven-fingered hands and an overall coat of tight, curly red fur.
Indicator lights on the desk showed that it had just made contact with a ship
approaching the hospital.
Conway said, "Listen. .
"Identify yourself, please," said the red teddy bear in its staccato,
barking speech-which was filtered through Conway's Translator as flat, toneless
English and which came to the others as equally toneless Kelgian, Illensan or
whatever. "Patient, visitor or staff, and species?"
"Pilot, with one passenger-patient aboard," came the reply. "Both human."
There was a short pause, then; "Give your physiological classification,
please, or make full-vision contact," said the Nidian with a very Earth human
wink toward the watchers in the gallery. "All intelligent races refer to their
own species as human and think of all others as being nonhuman. What you call
yourself has no meaning so far as preparing accommodation for the patient is
concerned..
Conway muted the speaker which carried the conversation between ship and
receptionist into the gallery and said, "This is as good a time as any to
explain our physiological classification system to you. Briefly, that is,
because later there will be special lectures on this subject."
Clearing his throat, he began, "In the four-letter classification system
the first letter indicates the level of physical evolution, the second denotes
the type and distribution of limbs and sense organs and the other two the
combination metabolism and pressure and gravity requirements, which in turn give
an indication of the physical mass and form of protective tegument possessed by
the being. I must mention here, in case any of you might feel inferior regarding
your classification, that the level of physical evolution has no relation to the
level of intelligence...
Species with the prefix A, B and C, he went onto explain, were water
breathers. On most worlds life had originated in the sea and these beings had
developed high intelligence without having to leave it. D through F were warm-
blooded oxygen-breathers, into which group fell most of the intelligence races
in the galaxy, and the G and K types were also oxygen breathing but insectile.
The Ls and Ms were light-gravity, winged beings.
Chlorine-breathing life-forms were contained in the 0 and P groups, and
after that came the more exotic, the more highly-evolved physically and the
downright weird types. Radiation-eaters, frigid-blooded or crystalline beings,
and entities capable of modifying their physical structure at will. Those
possessing extra-sensory powers sufficiently well-developed to make walking or
manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V, regardless of size
or shape.
Conway admitted to anomalies in the system, but these could be blamed on
the lack of imagination by its originators. One of the species present in the
observation gallery was a case in point-the AACP type with its vegetable
metabolism. Normally the A prefix denoted a water breather, there being nothing
lower in the system than the piscatorial life forms. But the AACPs were
vegetables and plants had come before fish.
... Great stress is laid on the importance of a rapid and accurate
classification of incoming patients, who very often are in no condition to
furnish this information themselves," Conway went on. "Ideally, you should reach
a stage of proficiency which will enable you to rattle off a classification
after a three-second glimpse of an e-t foot or section of tegument.
"But look there," he said, pointing.
Over the control desk three screens were alight, and adjacent indicators
added detail to the information contained in the pictures. The first showed the
interior of Lock Three, which contained two Earth-human orderlies and a large
stretcher-carrier. The orderlies wore heavy duty suits and anti-gravity belts,
which didn't surprise Conway at all because Lock Three and its associated levels
were' maintained at five Gs with pressure to match. Another screen showed the
exterior of the lock with its transfer servo-mechanisms and the ship about to
make contact, and the third picture was being relayed from inside the ship and
showed the patient. Conway said, "You can see that it is a heavy, squat life-
form possessing six appendages which serve both as arms and legs. Its skin is
thick, very tough and pitted all over, and is also encrusted in places with a
dry, brownish substance which sometimes flakes off when the patient moves. Pay
particular attention to this brown substance, and to features which seem to be
missing from the body. The tell-tales show a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing
metabolism adapted to a gravity pull of four Gs. Would one of you like to
classify it for me?"
There was a long silence, then the Creppelian AMSL twitched a tentacle and
said, "FROL, sir."
"Very close," said Conway approvingly. "However, I happen to know that
this being's atmosphere is a dense, nearly opaque soup, the resemblance to soup
being increased by the fact that its lower reaches are alive with small airborne
organisms which it feeds upon. You missed the fact that it has no eating mouth
but absorbs food directly via the pitting in its skin. When traveling in space,
however, the food has to be sprayed on, hence the brownish encrustation-"
"FROB," said the Creppelian quickly.
"Correct."
Conway wondered whether this AMSL was a little brighter than the others or
just less shy. He made a mental note to keep an eye on this particular batch of
trainees. He could use a bright assistant in his own wards.
Waving goodbye to the furry receptionist, Conway gathered his flock about
him again and headed them toward the FGLJ ward five levels below. After that
came other wards until Conway decided to introduce them to the complex, far
flung department of the Hospital without whose constant and efficient working
the tremendous establishment of Sector General could not have functioned and the
vast multitude of its patients, staff and maintenance personnel could not have
lived.
Conway was feeling hungry, and it was time he showed them where they all
ate.
AACPs did not eat in the normal manner but planted themselves during their
sleep period in specially prepared soil and absorbed nutriment in that way.
After seeing them settled he deposited the PVSJ in the dim, noisome depths of
the hail where the chlorine-breathers ate, and this left him with the two DBLFs
and the AMSL to dispose of.
The largest dining hail in the hospital, the one devoted to oxygen
breathers, was close by. Conway saw the two Kelgians placed with a group of
their own species, then with a look of hungry yearning toward the Senior's
enclosure he hurried out again to take care of the Creppelian.
To reach the section catering for the water-breathers necessitated a
fifteen minute walk along some of the busiest corridors of the hospital.
Entities of all shapes and sizes flapped, undulated and sometimes walked past
them. Conway had become inured to being jostled by elephantine Tralthans and
having to step carefully around the fragile, diminutive LSVOs, but the
Creppelian was like an armor plated octopus walking on eggs-there were times
when the AMSL seemed afraid to move. The bubbling sounds from its suit had
increased noticeably, too.
Conway tried to make it relax by getting it to talk about its previous
hospital experience, but without much success. Then suddenly they turned a
corner and Conway saw his old friend Prilicla coming from a side ward...
The AMSL went "Wheep!" and its eight legs threshed frantically into
reverse. One of them swung heavily into the back of Conway's knees and he sat
down violently. The octopoid took off down the corridor, still wheeping.
"What the blazes... !" said Conway, with what he thought later was
commendable restraint.
"This is my fault entirely, I frightened it," said Prilicla as it hurried
up. "Are you hurt, Doctor?"
"You frightened it...
The gentle, spider-like creature from Cinruss apologized, "Yes, I'm afraid
so. The combination of surprise and what seems to be a deeply rooted xenophobic
neurosis caused a panic reaction. It is badly frightened but not completely out
of control. Are you hurt, Doctor?"
"Just my feelings," Conway growled, scrambling to his feet and going after
the fleeing Creppelian, who was now out of sight and very nearly out of earshot.
His progress in the wake of the AMSL became a rapid zigzag that was half
sprint and half waltz. To his superiors he called "Excuse me!" and to equals and
inferiors he bawled "Gangway!" Almost at once he began to overtake the AMSL,
proving once again that as an efficient means of locomotion two feet were much
better than eight, and he was just drawing level when the being trapped itself
neatly by turning into a linen storeroom. Conway skidded to a halt outside the
still open door, went in and closed it firmly behind him.
As calmly as shortage of breath would allow he said, "Why did you run
away?"
Words poured suddenly from the AMSL. The Translator filtered out all the
emotional overtones but from the sheer rapidity of its speech he knew that the
Creppelian was having the equivalent of hysterics, and as he listened he knew
that Prilicla's emotional reading had been right. Here was a xenophobic neurosis
and no mistake.
O'Mara will get you if you don't watch out, he thought grimly.
Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, there
were still occasions when inter-racial friction occurred in the hospital.
Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or
a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which affected its professional
efficiency, mental stability, or both. An Earth human doctor, for instance, who
had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a
Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its
treatment. And if one of the Cmrusskins, like Prilicla, were to treat such an
Earth-human patient...
It was O'Mara's job as Chief Psychologist to detect and eradicate such
trouble-or if all else failed, to remove the potentially dangerous individuals-
before such friction developed into open conflict. Conway did not know how
O'Mara would react to a hulking great AMSL who fled in panic from such a fragile
creature as Dr. Prilicla.
When the Creppelian's outburst began to ease off Conway raised his hand
for attention and said, "I realize now that Dr. Prilicla bears a physical
resemblance to a species of small, amphibious predator native to your home
world, and that in your youth you experienced an extremely harrowing incident
with these animals. But Doctor Prilicla is not an animal and the resemblance is
purely visual. Far from being a threat you could kill Prilicla if you were to
touch it carelessly.
"Knowing this," Conway ended seriously, "would you be frightened into
running if you were to meet this being again?"
"I don't know," said the AMSL. "I might."
Conway sighed. He could not help remembering his own first weeks at Sector
General and the horrible, nightmare creatures which had haunted his sleep. What
had made the nightmares particularly horrifying had been the fact that they were
not figments of his imagination but actual, physical realities which in many
cases were only a few bullcheads away.
He had never fled from any of these nightmares who had later become his
teachers, colleagues and eventually friends. But to be honest with himself this
was not due so much to intestinal fortitude as the fact that extreme fear had a
tendency to paralyze Conway rather than to make him run away.
"I think you may need psychiatric assistance, Doctor," he told the
Creppelian gently, "and the hospital's Chief Psychologist will help you. But I
would advise you not to consult him at once. Spend a week or so trying to adapt
to the situation before going to him. You will find that he will think more
highly of you for doing this. .
... And less likely, he added silently, to send you packing as unsuited
for duty in a multi-environment hospital.
The Creppelian left the storeroom with very little persuasion, after
Conway told it that Prilicla was the only GLNO in the hospital at the moment and
that their paths were very unlikely to cross twice in the same day. Ten minutes
later the AMSL was settled in its dining tank and Conway was making for his own
dinner by the fastest possible route.
CHAPTER 7
By a stroke of luck he saw Dr. Mannon at an otherwise empty table in the
Senior's enclosure. Mannon was an Earth-human who had once been Conway's
superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving
Diagnostician status. Currently he was allowed to retain three physiology tapes-
those of a Tralthan specialist in microsurgery and two which had been made by
surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species-but despite this his reactions
were reasonably human. At the moment he was working through a salad with his
eyes turned toward Heaven and the dining hall ceiling in an effort not to look
at what he was eating. Conway sat down facing him and made a sympathetic,
querying noise.
"I've had a Tralthan and a LSVO on my list this afternoon, both long
jobs," Mannon said grumpily. "You know how it is, I've been thinking like them
too much. If only these blasted Tralthans weren't vegetarians, or the LSVOs
weren't sickened by anything which doesn't look like bird seed. Are you anybody
else today?"
Conway shook his head. "Just me. Do you mind if I have steak?"
"No, just don't talk about it."
"I won't."
Conway knew only too well the confusion, mental double vision and the
severe emotional disturbance which went with a physiology tape that had become
too thoroughly keyed in to the operating physician's mind. He could remember a
time only three months ago when he had fallen hopelessly-but hopelessly-in love
with one of a group of visiting specialists from Melf IV. The Melfans were
ELNTs-six-legged, amphibious, vaguely crab-like beings-and while one half of his
mind had insisted that the whole affair was ridiculous the other half thought
lovingly of that gorgeously marked carapace and generally felt like baying at
the moon.
Physiology tapes were decidedly a mixed blessing, but their use was
necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the
physiological data needed for the treatment of patients in a multienvironment
hospital. The incredible mass of data required to take care of them was
furnished by means of Educator tapes, which were simply the brain recordings of
great medical specialists of the various species concerned. If an Earth-human
doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes
until treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. But Senior
Physicians with teaching duties were often called onto retain these tapes for
long periods, which wasn't much fun at all.
The only good thing from their point of view was that they were better off
than the Diagnosticians.
They were the hospital's elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare
beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently up to ten
physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job
of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of
new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a well-known saying in
the hospital, reputed to have originated with O'Mara himself, that anyone sane
enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.
For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted, the
complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge
was impressed on the receiving brain as well. In effect a Diagnostician
subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple
schizophrenia, with the alien personality sharing his mind so utterly different
that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common.
Conway brought his thoughts back to the here and now. Mannon was speaking
again.
"A funny thing about the taste of salad," he said, still glaring at the
ceiling as he ate, "is that none of my alter egos seem to mind it. The sight of
it yes, but not the taste. They don't particularly like it, mind, but neither
does it completely revolt them. At the same time there are few species with an
overwhelming passion for it, either. And speaking of overwhelming passions, how
about you and Murchison?"
One of these days Conway expected to hear gears clashing, the way Mannon
changed subjects so quickly.
"I'll be seeing her tonight if I've time," he replied carefully. "However,
we re just good friends."
"Haw," said Mannon.
Conway make an equally violent switch of subjects by hurriedly breaking
the news about his latest assignment. Mannon was the best in the world, but he
had the painful habit of pulling a person's leg until it threatened to come off
at the hip. Conway managed to keep the conversation off Murchison for the rest
of the meal.
As soon as Mannon and himself split up he went to the intercom and had a
few words with the doctors of various species who would be taking over the
instruction of the trainees, then he looked at his watch. There was almost an
hour before he was due aboard Vespasian. He began to walk a little more
hurriedly than befitted a Senior Physician...
The sign over the entrance read "Recreation Level, Species DBDG, DBLF,
ELNT, GKNM & FGLI." Conway went in, changed his whites for shorts and began
searching for Murchison.
Trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping had given the
recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was
of a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to the sea,
which stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was
blue and cloudless-realistic cloud effects were difficult to reproduce, a
maintenance engineer had told him-and the water of the bay was deep blue shading
to turquoise. It lapped against the golden, gently sloping beach whose sand was
almost too warm for the feet. Only the artificial sun, which was too much on the
reddish side for Conway's taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and
cliff's kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth.
But then space was at a premium~ in Sector General and the people who
worked together were expected to play together as well.
The most effective, yet completely unseen, aspect of the place was the
fact that it was maintained at one-half normal gravity. A half-G meant that
people who were tired could relax more comfortably and the ones who were feeling
lively could feel livelier still, Conway thought wryly as a steep, slow-moving
wave ran up the beach and broke around his knees. The turbulence in the bay was
not produced artificially, but varied in proportion to the size, number and
enthusiasm of the bathers using it.
Projecting from one of the cliffs were a series of diving ledges connected
by concealed tunnels. Conway climbed to the highest, fifty-foot ledge and from
this point of vantage tried to find a DBDG female in a white swimsuit called
Murchison.
She wasn't in the restaurant on the other cliff, or in the shallows
adjoining the beach, or in the deep green water under the diving ledges. The
sand was thickly littered with reclining forms which were large, small,
leathery, scaly and furry-but Conway had no difficulty separating the Earth-
human DBDGs from the general mass, they being the only intelligent species in
the Federation with a nudity taboo. So he knew that anyone wearing clothing, no
matter how abbreviated, was what he considered a human being.
Suddenly he caught a glimpse of white which was partly obscured by two
patches of green and one of yellow standing around it. That would be Murchison,
all right. He took a quick bearing and retraced his steps.
When Conway approached the crowd around Murchison, two Corpsmen and an
intern from the eighty-seventh level dispersed with obvious reluctance. In a
voice which, much to his disgust, had gone up in pitch, he said, "Hi. Sorry I'm
late."
Murchison shielded her eyes to look up at him. "I just arrived myself,"
she said, smiling. "Why don't you lie down?"
Conway dropped onto the sand but remained propped on one elbow, looking at
her.
Murchison possessed a combination of physical features which made it
impossible for any Earth-human male member of the staff to regard her with
anything like clinical detachment, and regular exposure to the artificial but
UV-rich sun had given her a deep tan made richer by the dazzling contrast of her
white swimsuit. Dark auburn hair stirred restively in the artificial breeze, her
eyes were closed again and her lips slightly parted. Her respiration was slow
and deep, that of a person either perfectly relaxed or asleep, and the things it
was doing to her swimsuit was also doing things to Conway. He thought suddenly
that if she was telepathic at this moment she would be up and running for dear
life...
"You look," she said, opening one eye, "like somebody who wants to growl
deep in his throat and beat his manly, clean-shaven chest-"
"It isn't clean-shaven," Conway protested, "it's just naturally not hairy.
But I want you to be serious for a moment. I'd like to talk to you, alone, I
mean...
"I don't care either way about chests," she said soothingly, "so you don't
have to feel bad about it."
"I don't," said Conway, then doggedly; "Can't we get away from this
menagerie and.. . Oops, stampede!"
He reached across quickly and clapped his hand over her eyes,
simultaneously closing his own.
Two Tralthans on a total of twelve, elephantine feet thundered past within
a few yards of them and plowed into the shallows, scattering sand and spray over
a radius of fifty yards. The half-C conditions which allowed the normally slow
and ponderous FGLIs to gambol like lambs also kept the sand they had kicked up
airborne for a considerable time. When Conway was sure that the last grains had
settled he took his hand away from Murchison's eyes. But not completely.
Hesitantly, a little awkwardly, he slid his hand over the soft warm
contour of her cheek until he was cupping the side of her jaw in his palm. Then
gently he pushed his fingers into the soft tangle of curls behind her ear. He
felt her stiffen, then relax again.
"Uh, see what I mean," he said dry-mouthed. "Unless you like half ton
bullies kicking sand in your face
"We'll be alone later," said Murchison, laughing, "when you take me home."
"And then what happens!" Conway said disgustedly. "Just the same as last
time. We'll sneak up to your door, being very careful not to wake your roommate
who has to go on early duty, and then that damned servo will come trundling up..
." Angrily, Conway began to mimic the taped voice of the robot as he went on, ".
. . I perceive that you are beings of classification DBDG and are of differing
genders, and note further that you have been in close juxtaposition for a period
of two minutes forty-eight seconds. In the circumstances I must respectfully
remind you of Regulation Twenty-one, Sub-section Three regarding the
entertaining of visitors in DBDG Nurses' Quarters. .
Almost choking, Murchison said, "I'm sorry, it must have been very
frustrating for you.
Conway thought sourly that the expression of sorrow was rather spoiled by
the suppressed laughter preceding it. He leaned closer and took her gently by
the shoulder. He said, "It was and is. I want to talk to you and I won't have
time to see you home tonight. But I don't want to talk here, you always head for
the water when I get you cornered. Well, I want to get you in a corner, both
literally and conversationally, and ask some serious questions. This being
friends is killing me . .
Murchison shook her head. She took his hand away from her shoulder,
squeezed it and said, "Let's swim."
Seconds later as he chased her into the shallows he wondered if perhaps
she wasn't a little telepathic after all. She was certainly running fast enough.
In half-C conditions swimming was an exhilarating experience. The waves
were high and steep and the smallest splash seemed to hang in the air for
seconds, with individual drops sparkling red and amber in the sun. A badly
executed dive by one of the heavier life-forms-the FGLIs especially had an awful
lot of belly to flop-could cause really spectacular effects. Conway was
threshing madly after Murchison on the fringe of just such a titanic upheaval
when a loudspeaker on the cliff roared into life.
"Doctor Conway," it boomed. "Will Doctor Conway report at Lock Sixteen for
embarkation, please.
They were walking rapidly up the beach when Murchison said, very seriously
for her, "I didn't know you were leaving. I'll change and see you off."
There was a Monitor Corps officer in the lock antechamber. When he saw
Conway had company he said, "Doctor Conway? We leave in fifteen minutes, sir,"
and disappeared tactfully. Conway stopped beside the boarding tube and so did
Murchison. She looked at him but there was no particular expression on her face,
it was just beautiful and very desirable. Conway went on telling her about his
important new assignment although he didn't want to talk about that at all. He
talked rapidly and nervously until he heard the Monitor officer returning along
the tube, then he pulled Murchison tightly against him and kissed her hard.
He couldn't tell if she responded. He had been too sudden, too ungentle .
.
"I'll be gone about three months," he said, in a voice which tried to
explain and apologize at the same time. Then with forced lightness he ended,
"And in the morning I won't feel a bit sorry."
CHAPTER 8
Conway was shown to his cabin by an officer wearing a medic's caduceus over his
insignia who introduced himself as Major Stillman. Although he spoke quietly and
politely Conway got the impression that the Major was not a person who would be
overawed by anything or anybody. He said that the Captain would be pleased to
see Conway in the control room after they had made the first jump, to welcome
him aboard personally.
A little later Conway met Colonel Williamson, the ship's Captain, who gave
him the freedom of the ship. This was a courtesy rare enough on a government
ship to impress Conway, but he soon discovered that although nobody said
anything he was simply in everyone's way in the control room, and twice he lost
himself while trying to explore the ship's interior. The Monitor heavy cruiser
Vespasian was much larger than Conway had realized. After being guided back by a
friendly Corpsman with a too-expressionless face he decided that he would spend
most of the trip in his cabin familiarizing himself with his new assignment.
Colonel Williamson had given him copies of the more detailed and recent
information which had come in through Monitor Corps channels, but he began by
studying the file which O'Mara had given him.
The being Lonvellin had been on the way to a world, about which it had
heard some very nasty rumors, in a practically unexplored section of the Lesser
Megellanic Cloud, when it had been taken ill and admitted to Sector General.
Shortly after being pronounced cured it had resumed the journey and a few weeks
later it had contacted the Monitor Corps. It had stated that conditions on the
world it had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric, and
that it would need advice on the medical side before it could begin to act
effectively against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed
planet. It had also asked if some beings of physiological classification DBDG
could be sent along to act as information gatherers as the natives were of that
classification and were violently hostile to all off-planet life, a fact which
seriously hampered Lonvellin's activities.
The fact of Lonvellin asking for help of any sort was surprising in itself
in view of the enormous intelligence and experience of his species in solving
vast sociological problems. But on this occasion things had gone disastrously
wrong, and Lonvellin had been kept too busy using its defensive science to do
anything else.
According to Lonvellin's report it had begun by observing the planet from
space during many rotations, monitoring the radio transmissions through its
Translator, and taking particular note of the low level of industrialization
which contrasted so oddly with the single, still functioning space port. When
all the information which it had thought necessary had been collected and
evaluated it chose what it considered to be the best place to land.
From the evidence at hand Lonvellin judged the world-the native's name for
it was Etla-to have been a once-prosperous colony which had regressed for
economic reasons until now it had very little contact with outside. But it did
have some, which meant that Lonvellin's first and usually most difficult job,
that of making the natives trust an alien and perhaps visually horrifying being
who had dropped out of the sky, was greatly simplified. These people would know
about e-ts. So it took the role of a poor, frightened, slightly stupid extra-
terrestrial who had been forced to land to make repairs to its ship. For this it
would require various odd and completely worthless chunks of metal or rock, and
it would pretend great difficulty in making the Etlans understand exactly what
it needed. But for these valueless pieces of rubbish it could exchange items of
great value, and soon the more enterprising natives would get to know about it.
At this stage Lonvellin expected to be exploited shamelessly, but it
didn't mind. Gradually things would change. Rather than give items of value it
would offer to perform even more valuable services. It would let it be known
that it now considered its ship to be irreparable, and gradually it would become
accepted as a permanent resident. After that it would be just a matter of time,
and time was something with which Lonvellin was particularly well supplied.
It landed close to a road which ran between two small towns, and soon had
the chance to reveal itself to a native. The native, despite Lonvellin's careful
contact and many reassurances via the Translator, fled. A few hours later small,
crude projectiles with chemical warheads began falling on his ship and the whole
area, which was densely wooded, had been saturated with volatile chemicals and
deliberately set alight.
Lonvellin had been unable to proceed without knowing why this race with
experience of space-travel should be so blindly hostile to e-ts, and not being
in a position to ask questions himself it had called for Earth human assistance.
Shortly afterward Alien Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps had arrived,
sized up the situation for themselves and gone in.
Quite openly, as it happened.
They discovered that the natives were terrified of e-ts because they
believed them to be disease carriers. What was even more peculiar was the fact
that they were not worried by off-planet visitors of their own species or a
closely similar race, members of which would have been more likely to be
carriers of disease: because it was a well-known medical fact that diseases
which affected extra-terrestrials were not communicable to members of other
planetary species. Any race with a knowledge of space travel should know that,
Conway thought. It was the first thing a star traveling culture learned.
He was trying to make some sense out of this strange contradiction, using
a tired brain and some hefty reference works on the Federation's colonization
program, when Major Stillman's arrival made a very welcome interruption.
"We'll arrive in three days time, Doctor," the Major began, "and I think
it's time you had some cloak and dagger training. By that I mean getting to know
how to wear Etlan clothes. It's a very fetching costume, although personally I
don't have the knees for a kilt. .
Etla had been contacted on two levels by the Corps, Stillman went onto
explain. On one they had landed secretly using the native language and dress, no
other disguise being necessary because the physiological resemblance had been so
close. Most of their later information had been gained in this way and so far
none of the agents had been caught. On the other level the Corpsmen admitted
their extra-terrestrial origin, conversed by Translator, and their story was
that they had heard of the plight of the native population and had come to give
medical assistance. The Etlans had accepted this story, revealing the fact that
similar offers of help had been made in the past, that an Empire ship was sent
every ten years loaded with the newest drugs, but despite all this the medical
situation continued to worsen. The Corpsmen were welcome to try to relieve the
situation if they could, but the impression given by the Etlans was that they
were just another party of well-intentional bunglers.
Naturally when the subject of Lonvellin's landing came up the Corps had to
pretend complete ignorance, and their expressed opinions leaned heavily toward
the middle of the road.
It was a very complex problem, Stillman told him, and became more so with
every new report sent in by undercover agents. But Lonvellin had a beautifully
simple plan for clearing up the whole mess. When Conway heard it he wished
suddenly that he hadn't tried to impress Lonvellin with his skill as a doctor.
He would much rather have been back in the hospital right now. This being made
responsible for organizing the cure of an entire planetary population gave him
an unpleasantly gone feeling in the region of his transverse colon..
Etla was beset with much sickness and suffering and narrow, superstitious
thinking, their reaction to Lonvellin being a shocking illustration of their
intolerance toward species which did not resemble themselves. The first two
conditions increased the third, which in turn worsened the first two. Lonvellin
hoped to break this vicious circle by causing a marked improvement in the health
of the population, one that would be apparent to even the least intelligent and
bigoted natives. It would then have the Corpsmen admit publicly that they had
been acting under Lonvellin's instructions all along, which should make the e-t
hating natives feel somewhat ashamed of themselves. Then during the perhaps
temporary increase of e-t tolerance which would follow, Lonvellin would set
about gaining their trust and eventually return to its original long-term plan
for making them a sane, happy and thriving culture again.
Conway told Stillman that he wasn't an expert in these matters but it
sounded like a very good plan.
Stillman said, "I am, and it is. If it works."
On the day before they were due to arrive the Captain asked if Conway
would like to come to Control for a few minutes. They were computing their
position in preparation for making the final jump and the ship had emerged
relatively close to a binary system, one star of which was a short-term
variable.
Awed, Conway thought it was the sort of spectacle which makes people feel
small and alone, makes them feel the urge to huddle together and the need to
talk so that they might re-establish their puny identities amid all the
magnificence. Conversational barriers were down and all at once Captain
Williamson was speaking in tones which suggested three things to the listening
Conway-that the Captain might be human after all, that he had hair and that he
was about to let it down a little;
"Er, Doctor Conway," he began apologetically, "I don't want to sound as if
I'm criticizing Lonvellin. Especially as it was a patient of yours and may also
have been a friend. Neither do I want you to think that I'm annoyed because it
has a Federation cruiser and various lesser units running errands for it. That
isn't so . .
Williamson took off his cap and smoothed a wrinkle from the headband with
his thumb. Conway had a glimpse of thinning gray hair and a forehead whose deep
worry lines had been concealed by the cap's visor. The cap was replaced and he
became the calm, efficient senior officer again.
To put it bluntly, Doctor," he went on, "Lonvellin is what I would call a
gifted amateur. Such people always seem to stir up trouble for us professionals,
upsetting schedules and so on. But this doesn't bother me either, because the
situation Lonvellin uncovered here most definitely needs something done about
it. The point I'm trying to make is that, as well as our survey, colonization
and enforcement duties, we have experience at sorting out just such sociological
tangles as this one, although at the same time I admit that there is no
individual within the Corps with anything like Lonvellin's ability. Nor can we
suggest any plan at the moment better than the one put forward by Lonvellin. .
Conway began to wonder if the Captain was getting at something or merely
blowing off steam. Williamson had not struck him as being the complaining type.
.... . As the person with most responsibility next to Lonvellin on this
project," the Captain finished with a rush, "it is only fair that you know what
we think as well as what we are doing. There are nearly twice as many of our
people working on Etla than Lonvellin knows about, and more are on the way.
Personally I have the greatest respect for our long-lived friend, but I can't
help feeling that the situation here is more complex than even Lonvellin
realizes."
Conway was silent for a moment, then he said, "I've wondered why a ship
like Vespasian was being used on what is basically a cultural study project. Do
you think that the situation is more, ah, dangerous as well?"
"Yes," said the Captain.
At that moment the tremendous double-star system pictured in the view-
screen dissolved and was replaced by that of a normal C-type sun and, within a
distance of ten million miles, the tiny sickle shape of the planet which was
their destination. Before Conway could put any of the questions he was suddenly
itching to ask, the Captain informed him that they had completed their final
jump, that from now until touchdown he would be a very busy man, and ended by
politely throwing him out of the control room with the advice that he should
catch as much sleep as possible before landing.
Back in his cabin Conway undressed thoughtfully and, a part of his mind
was pleased to note, almost automatically. Both Stillman and he had been wearing
Etlan costume-blouse, kilt and a waist-sash with pockets, a beret and a dramatic
calf-length cloak being added for outdoor use-continually for the past few days,
so that now he felt comfortable in it even while dining with Vespasian's
officers. At the moment, however, his discomfort was caused solely by the
Captain's concluding remarks to him in the control room.
Williamson thought that the Etlan situation was dangerous enough to
warrant using the largest type of law enforcement vessel possessed by the
Monitor Corps. Why? Where was the danger?
Certainly there was nothing resembling a military threat on Etla. The very
worst that the Etlans could do they had done to Lonvellin's ship and that had
hurt the being's feelings and nothing else. Which meant that the danger had to
come from somewhere outside.
Suddenly Conway thought he knew what was worrying the Captain. The
Empire...
Several of the reports had contained references to the Empire. It was the
great unknown quantity so far. The Monitor Corps survey vessels had not made
contact with it, which wasn't surprising because this sector of the galaxy was
not scheduled for mapping for another fifty years, and would not have been
entered if Lonvellin's project had not come unstuck. All that was known about
the Empire was that Etla was part of it and that it sent medical aid at regular
if lengthy intervals.
To Conway's mind the quality of that aid and the intervals between its
arrival told an awful lot about the people responsible for sending it. They
could not be medically advanced, he reasoned, or the drugs they sent would have
checked, if only temporarily, some of the epidemics which had been sweeping Etla
at the time. And they were almost certainly poor or the ships would have come at
shorter intervals. Conway would not be surprised if the mysterious Empire turned
out to be a mother world and a few struggling colonies like Etla. But most
important of all, an Empire which regularly sent aid to its distressed colony,
whether it was large, medium or small as Empires went, did not seem to Conway to
be a particularly evil or dangerous entiw To the contrary, on the evidence
available he rather approved of this Empire.
Captain Williamson, he thought as he rolled into bed, was inclined to
worry too much.
CHAPTER 9
Vespasian landed. On the main screen in the Communications room Conway saw
a cracked white expanse of concrete which stretched to the half-mile distant
periphery, where the fine details of vegetation and architecture which would
have made the scene alien were lost in the heat haze. Dust and dried leaves
littered the concrete and small heaps of cloud were scattered untidily about a
very Earth-like sky. The only other ship on the field was a Monitor courier
vessel which was grounded close to the block of disused offices that had been
loaned by the Etlan authorities for use as the visitor's surface base.
Behind Conway the Captain said, "You understand, Doctor, that Lonvellin is
unable to leave its ship, and that any physical contact between us at this stage
would wreck our present good relations with the natives. But this is a big
screen. Excuse me..
There was a click and Conway was looking into the control room of
Lonvellin's ship, with a life-size image of Lonvellin itself sprawling across
most of the picture.
"Greetings, friend Conway," the EPLH's voice boomed from the speaker. "It
is a great pleasure to see you again."
"A pleasure to be here, sir," Conway replied, "I trust you are in good
health . . .
The enquiry was not merely a polite formality. Conway wanted to know if
there had been anymore "misunderstandings" on the cellular level between
Lonvellin and its personal physician, the intelligent, organized virus-colony
which dwelt within its patient-host's body. Lonvellin's doctor had caused quite
a stir at Sector General, where they were still arguing as to whether it should
be classified as a doctor or a disease...
"My health is excellent, Doctor," Lonvellin replied, then straightaway got
down to the business in hand. Conway hastily returned his mind to present time
and concentrated on what the EPLH was saying.
Conway's own instructions were general. He was to coordinate the work of
data-gathering Corps medical officers on Etla and, because the sociological and
medical aspects of the problem were so closely connected, he was advised to keep
abreast of the developments outside his specialty. With the arrival of the
latest reports the sociological problem seemed more confusing, and it was
Lonvellin's hope that a mind trained for the complexities of a multi-environment
hospital would be able to establish a sensible pattern among this welter of
contradictory facts. Dr. Conway would no doubt appreciate the urgency of the
matter, and wish to begin work immediately...
..... And I would like data on the Earth-human Clarke who is operating in
District Thirty-five," Lonvellin went on without a pause, so that I may properly
evaluate the reports of this being..
As Captain Williamson was giving the required information Stillman tapped
Conway's arm and nodded for them to leave. Twenty minutes later they were in the
back of a covered truck on the way to the perimeter. Conway's head and one ear
had been swathed in bandages, and he felt anxious and a little stupid.
"We'll stay hidden until we're clear of the port," Stillman said
reassuringly, "then we'll sit with the driver. Lots of Etlans travel with our
people these days, but it might arouse suspicion for us to be seen coming from
the ship. And we'll head straight for town instead of calling at ground
headquarters. I think you should see some of your patients as soon as possible."
Seriously, Conway said, "I know the symptoms are purely psychosomatic, but
both my feet seem to be in an advanced stage of frostbite . .
Stillman laughed. "Don't worry, Doctor," he said. "The translator bandaged
to your ear will let you know everything that goes on, and you won't have to
speak because I'll explain that your head injury has temporarily affected your
speech centers. Later, however, when you begin to pick up a little of the
language a good tip is to develop a stutter. An impediment of this kind
disguises the fact that the sufferer does not have the local idiom or accent,
the large fault concealing all the smaller ones.
"Not all our undercover people have advanced linguistic training," he
added, "and such ruses are necessary. But the main thing to remember is not to
stay in any one place long enough for the more definite oddities of behavior to
be noticed..
At that point the driver remarked that they were coming level with a blond
whom he could cheerfully stay near for the rest of his life. Stillman went on,
"Despite the coarse suggestions of Corpsman Briggs here, perhaps our best
protection lies in our mental approach to the work, to the fact that our
intentions toward these people are completely honorable. If we were hostile
agents intent on sabotage, or gathering intelligence for a future act of war, we
would be much more likely to be caught. We should be tensed up, trying too hard
to be natural, too suspicious and are more inclined to make mistakes because of
this."
Conway said dryly, "You make it sound too easy." But he felt reassured
nevertheless.
The truck left them in the center of town and they began to walk around.
The first thing Conway noticed was that there were very few large or new-looking
buildings, but that even the oldest were very well kept, and that the Etlans had
a very attractive way of decorating the outside of their houses with flowers. He
saw the people, the men and women working, shopping or going about businesses
which at the present moment he could not even guess at. He had to think of them
as men and women, as being he and she rather than a collection of coldly alien
its.
He saw the twisted limbs, the crutches, the disease scarred faces, his
analytical eye detecting and isolating conditions which had been stamped out
among the Federation citizenship over a century ago. And everywhere he saw a
sight familiar to anyone who had ever been to or worked in a hospital, that of
the less sick patient freely and unselfishly giving all the aid possible to
those who were worse off than himself.
The sudden realization that he was not in a hospital ward where such
sights were pleasantly normal but in a city street brought Conway physically and
mentally to a halt.
"What gets me," he said when he could speak again, "is that so many of
these conditions are curable. Maybe all of them. We haven't had epilepsy for one
hundred and fifty years.. ."
"And you feel like running amuck with a hypo," Stillman put in grimly,
"injecting all and sundry with the indicated specifics. But you have to remember
that the whole planet is like this, and that curing a few would not help at all.
You are in charge of a very big ward, Doctor."
"I've read the reports," Conway said shortly. "It's just that the printed
figures did not prepare me for the actuality..."
He stopped with the sentence incomplete. They had paused at a busy
intersection and Conway noticed that both pedestrian and vehicular traffic had
either slowed or come to a halt. Then he saw the reason.
There was a large wagon coming along the street. Painted and draped
completely in red it was, unlike the other vehicle around it, unpowered. Short
handles projected at intervals along each side and at every handle an Etlan
walked or limped or hobbled, pushing it along. Even before Stillman took his
beret off and Conway followed suit he knew that he was seeing a funeral.
"We'll visit the local hospital now," Stillman said when it had gone past.
"If asked, my story is that we are looking for a sick relative called Mennomer
who was admitted last week. On Etla that is a name like Smith. But we're not
likely to be questioned, because practically everybody does a stint of hospital
work and the staff are used to the part-time help coming and going all the time.
And should we run into a Corps medical officer, as well we might, don't
recognize him.
"And in case you're worried about your Etlan colleagues wanting to look
under your bandages," Stillman went on practically reading Conway's mind, "they
are far too busy to be curious about injuries which have already been treated. .
They spent two hours in the hospital without once having to tell their
story about the ailing Mennomer. It was obvious from the start that Stillman
knew his way about the place, that he had probably worked there. But there were
always too many Etlans about for Conway to ask if it had been as a Corpsman
observer or an undercover part-time nurse. Once he caught a glimpse of a
Corpsman medic watching an Etlan doctor draining a pleural cavity of its
empyema, his expression showing how dearly he would have liked to roll up his
dark green sleeves and wade in himself.
The surgeons wore bright yellow instead of white, some of the operative
techniques verged on the barbaric and the concept of isolation wards or barrier
nursing had never occurred to them-or perhaps it had occurred to them, Conway
thought in an effort to be fair, but the utterly fantastic degree of
overcrowding made it impracticable. Considering the facilities at their disposal
and the gigantic problem it had to face, this was a very good hospital. Conway
approved of it and, judging from what he had seen of its staff, he approved of
them, too.
"These are nice people," Conway said rather inadequately at one point. "I
can't understand them jumping Lonvellin the way they did, somehow they don't
seem to be the type."
"But they did it," Stillman replied grimly. "Anything which hasn't two
eyes, two ears, two arms and two legs, or which has these things but happens to
have them in the wrong places, gets jumped. It's something drummed into them at
a very early age, with their ABCs, practically. I wish we knew why."
Conway was silent. He was thinking that the reason he had been sent here
was to organize medical aid for this planet, and that wandering in fancy dress
over one small piece of the jigsaw was not going to solve the big puzzle. It was
time he got down to some serious work.
As if reading Conway's mind again Stillman said, "I think we should go
back now. Would you prefer to work in the office block or the ship, Doctor?"
Stillman, Conway thought, was going to be a very good aide. Aloud he said,
"The office block, please. I get lost too easily in the ship."
And so Conway was installed in a small office with a large desk, a button
for calling Stillman and some other less-vital communications equipment. After
his first lunch in the officers dining quarters he ate all his meals in the
office with Stillman. Sometimes he slept in the office and sometimes he didn't
sleep at all. The days passed and his eyes began to feel like hot, gritty
marbles in his head from reading reports and more reports. Stillman always kept
them coming. Conway reorganized the medical investigation, bringing in some of
the Corps doctors for discussion or flying out to those who could not for
various reasons get in.
A large number of the reports were outside his province, being copies of
information sent in by Williamson's men on purely sociological problems. He read
them on the off-chance of their having a bearing on his own problem, which many
of them did, But they usually added to his puzzlement.
Blood samples, biopsies, specimens of all kinds began to flow in. They
were immediately loaded onto a courier-the Corps had put three of them at his
disposal now-and rushed to the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology at Sector
General. The results were sub-radioed back to Vespasian, taped, and the reels
dumped on Conway's desk within a few days. The ship's main computer, or rather
the section of it which wasn't engaged on Translator relay, was also placed at
his disposal, and gradually the vaguest suggestion of a pattern seemed to be
emerging out of the flood of related and unrelated facts. But it was a pattern
which made no sense to anyone, least of all Conway. He was nearing the end of
his fifth week on Etla and there was still very little progress to report to
Lonvellin.
But Lonvellin wasn't pushing for results. It was a very patient being who
had all the time in the world. Sometimes Conway found himself wondering if
Murchison would be as patient as Lonvellin.
CHAPTER 10
I n answer to his buzz Major Stillman, red-eyed and with his usually crisp
uniform just slightly rumpled, stumbled in and sat down. They exchanged yawns,
then Conway spoke.
"In a few days I'll have the supply and distribution figures needed to
begin curing this place," he said. "Every serious disease has been listed
together with information on the age, sex and geographical location of the
patient, and the quantities of medication calculated. But before I give the go
ahead for flooding the place with medical supplies I'd feel a lot easier in my
mind if we knew exactly how this situation came about in the first place.
"Frankly, I'm worried," he went on. "I think we may be guilty of replacing
the broken crockery while the bull is still loose in the china shop.
Stillman nodded, whether in agreement or with weariness Conway couldn't
say.
On a planet which was an absolute pest-hole why were infant mortality
figures, or deaths arising from complications or infections during childbirth so
low? Why was there a marked tendency for infants to be healthy and the adults
chronically ill? Admittedly a large proportion of the infant population were
born blind or were physically impaired by inherited diseases, but relatively few
of them died young. They carried their deformities and disfigurements through to
late middle age where, statistically, most of them succumbed.
And there was also statistical evidence that the Etlans were guilty of
gross exhibitionism in the matter of their diseases. They ran heavily to
unpleasant skin conditions, maladies which caused gradual wasting or deformity
of the limbs, and some pretty horrible combinations of both. And their costume
did nothing to conceal their afflictions. To the contrary, Conway had the
feeling sometimes that they were like so many small boys showing off their sore
knees to their friends...
Conway realized that he had been thinking aloud when Stillman interrupted
him suddenly.
"You're wrong, Doctor!" he said, sharply for him. "These people aren't
masochists. Whatever went wrong here originally, they've been trying to fight
it. They've been fighting, with very little assistance, for over a century and
losing all the time. It surprises me they have a civilization left at all. And
they wear an abbreviated costume because they believe fresh air and sunlight is
good for what ails them, and in most cases they are quite right.
"This belief is drilled into them from an early age," Stillman went on,
his tone gradually losing its sharpness, "like their hatred of e-ts and the
belief that isolating infectious diseases is unnecessary. Is dangerous, in fact,
because they believe that the germs of one disease fight the germs of another so
that both are weakened..."
Stillman shuddered at the thought and fell silent.
"I didn't mean to belittle our patients, Major," Conway said. "I have no
sensible answers to this thing so my mind is throwing up stupid ones. But you
mentioned the lack of assistance which the Etlans receive from their Empire. I
would like more details on that, especially on how it is distributed. Better
still, I'd like to ask the Imperial Representative on Etla about it. Have you
been able to find him yet?"
Stillman shook his head and said dryly, "This aid doesn't come like a
batch of food parcels. There are drugs, of course, but most of it would be in
the form of the latest medical literature relevant to the conditions here. How
it reaches the people is something we are just now finding out .
Every ten years an Empire ship would land and be met by the Imperial
Representative, Stillman went on to explain, and after unloading and handing
over what were presumably dispatches it left again within a matter of hours.
Apparently no citizen of the Empire would stay on Ella for a second longer than
was necessary, which was understandable. Then the Imperial Representative, a
personage called Teltrenn, set about distributing the medical aid.
But instead of using the mass distribution media to bring local medical
authorities up to date on these new methods, and allow local GPs time to
familiarize themselves with the theory and procedures before the medication
arrived, Teltrenn sat tight on all the information until such times as he could
pay them a personal visit. Then he handed everything over as being a personal
gift from their glorious Emperor, accruing no small measure of glory himself by
being the middleman, and the data which could have been in the hands of every
doctor on the planet within three months reached them piecemeal in anything up
to six years...
"Six years!" said Conway, startled.
"Teltrenn isn't, so far as we've been able to find out, a very energetic
person," Stillman said. "What makes matters worse is that little or no original
medical research is being done on Etla, due to the absence of the researcher's
most vital tool, the microscope. Ella can't make precision optical equipment and
apparently no Empire ship has thought to bring them.
"It all boils down to the fact," Stillman ended grimly, "that the Empire
does all of Etla's medical thinking for her, and the evidence suggests that
medically the Empire is not very smart."
Conway said firmly, "I'd like to see the correlation between the arrival
of this aid and the incidence of disease immediately thereafter. Can you help me
in that?"
"There's a report just in which might help you," Stillman replied. "It's a
copy of the records of a North Continent hospital which go back past Teltrenn's
last visit to them. The records show that he brought on that occasion some
useful data on obstetrics and a specific against what we have called B-Eighteen.
The incidence of B-Eighteen dropped rapidly within a few weeks there, although
the overall figures remained much the same because F-Twenty-one began to appear
about that time.. ."
B-Eighteen was analogous to a severe influenza, fatal to children and
young adults in four cases out of ten. F-Twenty-one was a mild, nonfatal fever
which lasted three to four weeks during which large, crescentric weals appeared
all over the face, limbs and body. When the fever abated the weals darkened to a
livid purple and remained for the rest of the patient's life.
Conway shook his head angrily. He said, "One of the main things wrong with
Etla is its Imperial Representative!"
Standing up, Stillman said, "We want to ask him a few questions, too.
We've advertised that fact widely by radio and print, so much so that we are now
fairly certain that Teltrenn is hiding from us deliberately. Probably the reason
is a guilty conscience over his mismanagement of affairs here. But a psych
report, based on what hearsay evidence we have been able to gather about him,
has been prepared for Lonvellin. I'll have them send a copy from the ship."
"Thank you," said Conway.
Stillman nodded, yawned and left. Conway thumbed his communicator switch,
contacted Vespasian and asked for an audio link with the fifty miles distant
Lonvellin. He was still worried and wanted to get it off his chest, the only
trouble being he did not know exactly what "it" was.
..... You have done very well, friend Conway," Lonvellin said when he had
finished speaking, "in fulfilling your part of the project so quickly, and I am
fortunate indeed in the quality and eagerness of my assistants. We have now
gained the trust of the Etlan doctors in most areas and the way will shortly be
open to begin full-scale instruction in your latest curative techniques. You
will therefore be returning to your hospital within a few days, and I urge that
you do not leave with the feeling that you have not performed your assigned task
in a completely satisfactory manner. These anxieties you mention are groundless.
"Your suggestion that the being Teltrenn should be removed or replaced as
part of the re-education program is sound," Lonvellin continued ponderously,
"and I already had this step in mind. An added reason for removing it from
office being the well-documented fact that it is the being largely responsible
for keeping alive the widespread intolerance of off planet life-forms. Your
other suggestion that these harmful ideas may originate, not with Teltrenn but
in the Empire, may or may not be correct. This does not, however, call for an
immediate search for and investigation of the Empire which you urge.
Lonvellin's Translated voice was slow and necessarily emotionless, but
Conway seemed to detect a hardening in its tone as it went on, "I perceive Etla
as an isolated world kept in quarantine. The problem can therefore be solved
without bringing in considerations of Empire influences or understanding fully
the various inconsistencies which puzzle us both. These will become plain after
its cure has been effected, and the answers we seek are of secondary importance
to the planet-wide relief of suffering.
"Your contention that the visits of the Imperial ship," it went on, "which
occur every ten years and last only a few hours, is a major factor in this
problem is invalid. I might even suggest that, unconsciously perhaps, you are
laying too much stress on this point merely that your curiosity regarding this
Empire might be satisfied."
You're so right, Conway thought. But before he could reply the EPLH went
on, "I wish to treat Etla as an isolated problem. Bringing in the Empire, which
itself may or may not be in need of medical aid also, would enlarge the scope of
the operation beyond manageable limits.
"However, and purely to remove your evident anxiety," Lonvellin ended,
"you may tell the being Williamson that it has my permission to scout for this
Empire and report on conditions within it. In the event of it being found,
however, no mention of what we are doing here on Etla is to be made until the
operation is completed."
"I understand, sir," Conway said, and broke the connection. He thought it
decidedly odd that Lonvellin had pinned his ears back for being curious, then
almost with the same breath given him permission to indulge that curiosity. Was
Lonvellin more concerned about the Empire's influence here than it cared to
admit, or was the big beastie just going soft in its old age?
He called Captain Williamson.
The Captain hemmed a coupled of times when Conway had finished speaking
and there was a distinctly embarrassed note in his voice when he replied. He
said, "We've had a number of officers, both medical and cultural contact people,
searching for the Empire for the last two months, Doctor. One of them has been
successful and sent in a preliminary report. It comes from a medical officer who
was not attached to the Ella project, and knows very little of what has been
happening here, so it may not be as informative as you might wish. I'll send you
a copy with the material on Teltrenn."
Coughing slightly, Williamson ended, "Lonvellin will have to be informed
of this, naturally, but I must leave it to your discretion when you tell it."
Suddenly Conway laughed out loud. "Don't worry, Colonel, I'll sit on the
information for a while. But if you are found out you can always remind
Lonvellin that the function of a good servant is to anticipate the wishes of his
master.
He continued laughing softly after Williamson signed off, then all at once
the reaction set in.
Conway hadn't laughed much since coming to Etla. And he had not been
guilty of over-identifying with his patients-no half-way decent doctor with the
good of his charges at heart would commit that crime. It was just that nobody
laughed very much on Etla. There was something in the atmosphere of the place, a
feeling comprised both of urgency and hopelessness which seemed to intensify
with each day that passed. It was rather like the atmosphere in a ward where a
patient was going to die, Conway thought, except that even in those
circumstances people found time to make cracks and relax for a few minutes
between crises.
Conway was beginning to miss Sector General. He was glad that in a few
days he would be going back, despite his feeling of dissatisfaction over all the
loose ends he was leaving untied. He began to think about Murchison.
That was something he had not done very often on Etla, either. Twice he
had sent messages to her with the Elan specimens. He knew that Thornnastor in
Pathology would see that she got them, even though Thornnastor was an FGLI with
only the barest of passing interests in the emotional involvements of Earth-
human DBDGs. But Murchison was the undemonstrative type. She might consider that
going to the trouble of smuggling back a reply would be giving him too much
encouragement, or maybe that kiss and run episode at the airlock had soured her
on him completely. She was a peculiar girl. Very serious-minded, extremely
dedicated, absolutely no time for men.
The first time she agreed to date him it had been because Conway had just
pulled off a slick op and wanted to celebrate, and that previously he had worked
with her on a case without once making a pass. Since then he had dated Murchison
regularly and had been the envy of all the male DBDGs in the hospital. The only
trouble was that they had nothing to be envious about...
His lugubrious train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of a
Corpsman who dropped a folder onto his desk and said, "The material on Teltrenn,
Doctor. The other report was confidential to Colonel Williamson and has to be
copied by his Writer. We'll have it for you in fifteen minutes. ~
"Thank you," said Conway. The Corpsman left and he began to read.
Being a colony world which had not had the chance to grow naturally, Etla
did not have national boundaries or the armed forces which went with them, but
the police force enforcing the law on the planet were technically soldiers of
the Emperor and under the command of Teltrenn. It had been a force of these
policemen-soldiers who had attacked, and were still attacking, Lonvellin's ship.
At first appraisal, the report stated, the evidence pointed to Teltrenn having a
personality which was proud and power-hungry, but the cruelty usually found in
such personalities was absent. In his relations with the native population-the
Imperial Representative had not been born on Etla-Teltrenn showed fairness and
consideration. It was plain that he looked down on the natives-way down, almost
as if they were members of a lower species. But he did not, openly, despise
them, and he was never cruel to them.
Conway threw down the report; this was another stupid piece of an already
senseless puzzle, and all at once he was sick of the whole silly business. He
rose and stamped into the outer office, sending the door crashing against the
wall. Stillman twitched slightly and looked up.
"Dump that paperwork until morning!" Conway snapped. "Tonight we are going
to indulge shamelessly in pleasures of the flesh. We're going to sleep in our
own cabins. .
"Sleep?" said Stillman, grinning suddenly. "What's that?"
"I don't know," said Conway, "I thought you might. I hear it's a new
sensation, unutterable bliss and very habit-forming. Shall we live dangerously .
..
"After you," said Stillman.
Outside the office block the night was pleasantly cool. There was broken
cloud on the horizon but above them the stars seemed to crowd down, bright and
thick and cold. This was a dense region of space, a fact further proved by the
meteorites which made white scratches across the sky every few minutes.
Altogether it was an inspiring and calming sight, but Conway could not stop
worrying. He was convinced that he was missing something, and his anxiety was
much worse out here under the sky than it had been at any time in the office.
Suddenly he wanted to read that report on the Empire as quickly as possible.
To Stillman, he said, "Do you ever think of something, then feel horribly
ashamed for having the kind of dirty mind which thinks thoughts like that?"
Stillman grunted, treating it as a rhetorical question, and they continued
walking toward the ship. Abruptly they stopped.
On the Southern horizon the sun seemed to be rising. The sky had become a
pale, rich blue which shaded through turquoise into black, and the bases of the
distant clouds burned pink and gold. Then before they could appreciate, or even
react to this glorious, misplaced sunrise it had faded to an angry red smudge on
the horizon. They felt a tiny shock transmitted through the soles of their
shoes, and a little later they heard a noise like distant thunder.
"Lonvellin's ship!" said Stillman.
They began to run.
CHAPTER 11
The communications room on Vespasian was a whirlwind of activity with the
Captain forming its calm and purposeful center. When Stillman and Conway arrived
orders had gone out to the courier ship and all available helicopters to load
decontamination and rescue gear and proceed to the blast area to render all
possible aid. There was, of course, no hope for the Etlan force which had been
surrounding Lonvellin's ship, but there were isolated farms and at least one
small village on the fringe area. The rescuers would have to deal with panic as
well as radiation casualties, because the Etlans had no experience of nuclear
explosions and would almost certainly resist evacuation.
Out on the field, when Conway had seen Lonvellin's ship go up and had
realized what it meant, he had felt physically ill. And now, listening to
Williamson's urgent but unhurried orders going out, he felt cold sweat trickle
down his forehead and spine. He licked his lips and said, "Captain, I have an
urgent suggestion to make..
He did not speak loudly, but there was something in his tone which made
Williamson swing around immediately.
"This accident to Lonvellin means that you are in charge of the project,
Doctor," Williamson said impatiently. "There is no need for such diffidence."
"In that case," said Conway in the same low, tense voice, "I have orders
for you. Call off the rescue attempts and order everyone back to the ship. Take
off before we are bombed, too..
Conway saw them all looking at him, at his white, sweating face and
frightened eyes, and he could see them all jumping to wrong conclusions.
Williamson looked angry, embarrassed and completely at a loss for a few seconds,
then his expression hardened. He turned to an officer beside him, snapped an
order, then swung to face Conway again.
"Doctor," he began stiffly, "I have just put out our secondary meteor
shield. Any solid object greater than one inch in diameter approaching from any
direction whatever will be detected at a distance of one hundred miles and
automatically deflected by pressors. So I can assure you, Doctor, that we are in
no danger from any hypothetical attack with atomic missiles. The idea of a
nuclear bombardment here is ridiculous, anyway. There is no atomic power on
Etla, none whatever. We have instruments. . . You must have read the report.
"My suggestion," the Captain went on, in exactly the tone he used to
suggest that the junior astrogator make an alteration in course, "is that we
rush all possible help to the survivors of the blow-up, which must have been
caused by a fault in Lonvellin's power pile..."
"Lonvellin wouldn't have a faulty pile!" Conway said harshly. "Like many
long-lived beings it suffered from a constant and increasing fear of death the
longer its life went on. It had the ultimate in personal physicians so that
illness would not shorten its already tremendous life span, and it follows that
it would not have endangered itself by using a ship which was anything but
mechanically perfect.
"Lonvellin was killed," Conway went on grimly, "and the reason they hit
its ship first is probably because they dislike e-ts so much. And it's nice to
know that you can protect the ship, but if we leave now they might not launch
another missile at all, and our people out there and a lot more Etlans would not
have to die...
It was no good, Conway thought sickly. Williamson looked angry and
embarrassed and stubborn-angry at being given apparently senseless orders,
embarrassed because it looked as though Conway was behaving like a frightened
old woman and stubborn because he thought he and not Conway was right. Get the
lead out of your pants, you unprintable fool! Conway raged at him, but under his
breath. He could not address such words to a Monitor Colonel surrounded by
junior officers, and for the added reason that Williamson was not nor ever had
been a fool. He was a reasonable, intelligent, highly competent officer. It was
just that he had not had the chance to put the facts together properly. He
didn't have any medical training, nor did he have a nasty, suspicious mind like
Conway...
"You have a report on the Empire for me," he said instead. "Can I read
it?"
Williamson's eyes flickered toward the battery of view-screens surrounding
them. All showed scenes of frantic activity-a helicopter being readied for
flight, another staggering off the ground with a load obviously in excess of the
safety limit, and a stream of men and decontamination equipment being rushed
through the lock of the courier ship. He said, "You want to read it now...
"Yes," said Conway, then quickly shook his head as another idea struck
him. He had been trying desperately to make Williamson take off immediately and
leave the explanations until later when there was time to give them, but it was
obvious now that he would have to explain first, and fast. He said, "I've a
theory which explains what has been going on here and the report should verify
it. But if I can tell you what I think is in that report before reading it, will
you give my theory enough credence to do what I tell you and take off at once?"
Outside the ship both 'copters were climbing into the night sky, the
courier boat was sealing her lock and a collection of surface transport, both
Etlan and Monitor, was dispersing toward the perimeter. More than half of the
ship's crew were out there, Conway knew, together with all the land-based
Corpsmen who could possibly be spared-all heading for the scene of the blow-up
and all piling up the distance between themselves and Vespasian with every
second which passed.
Without waiting for Williamson's reply, Conway rushed on, "My guess is
that it is an Empire in the strict sense of the word, not a loose Federation
like ours. This means an extensive military organization to hold it together and
implement the laws of its Emperor, and the government on individual worlds would
also be an essentially military one. All the citizens would be DBDGs like the
Etlans and ourselves, and on the whole pretty average people except for their
antipathy toward extraterrestrials, who they have had little opportunity of
getting to know so far."
Conway took a deep breath and went on, "Living conditions and level of
technology should be similar to our own. Taxation might be high, but this would
be negated by government controlled news channels. My guess is that this Empire
has reached the unwieldy stage, say about forty to fifty inhabited systems...
"Forty-three," said Williamson in a surprised voice.
And I would guess that everyone in it knows about Etla and are sympathetic
toward its plight. They would consider it a world under constant quarantine, but
they do everything they can to help it..
"They certainly do!" Williamson broke in. "Our man was on one of the
outlying planets of the Empire for only two days before he was sent to the
Central world for a audience with the Big Chief. But he had time to see what the
people thought of Etla. There are pictures of the suffering Etlans practically
everywhere he looked. In places they out-numbered commercial advertising, and it
is a charity to which the Imperial Government gives full support! These look
like being very nice people, Doctor.
"I'm sure they are, Captain," Conway said savagely. "But don't you think
it a trifle odd that the combined charity of forty-three inhabited systems can
only run to sending one ship every ten years...
Williamson opened his mouth, closed it, and looked thoughtful. The whole
room was silent except for the muted, incoming messages. Then suddenly, from
behind Conway, Stillman swore and said thickly, "I see what he's getting at,
sir. We've got to take off at once. . .
Williamson's eyes flicked from Conway to Stillman and back again. He
murmured, "One could be temporary insanity, but two represents a trend.. ."
Three seconds later recall instructions were going out to all personnel,
their urgency emphasized by the ear-splitting howl of the General Alarm siren.
When every order which had been issued only minutes ago had been reversed,
Williamson turned to Conway again.
"Go on, Doctor," he said grimly. "I think I'm beginning to see it, too.
Conway sighed thankfully and began to talk.
Etla had begun as a normal colony world, with a single space field to land
the initial equipment and colonists, then towns had been set up convenient to
natural resources and the planetary population had increased nicely. But then
they must have been hit by a wave of disease, or a succession of diseases, which
had threatened to wipe them out. Hearing of their plight the citizens of the
Empire had rallied round, as people do when their friends are in trouble, and
soon help began to arrive.
It must have started in a small way but built up quickly as news of the
colony's distress got around. But so far as the Etlans were concerned the
assistance stayed small.
The odd, un-missed pennies of a whole planetary population added up to a
respectable amount, and when scores of worlds were contributing the amount was
something which could not be ignored by the Imperial government, or by the
Emperor himself. Because even in those days the
Empire must have grown too big and the inevitable rot had set in at its core.
More and more revenue was needed to maintain the Empire, and! or to maintain the
Emperor and his court in the luxury to which they felt entitled. It was natural
to assume that they might tell themselves that charity began at home, and
appropriate a large part of these funds for their own use. Then gradually, as
the Etlan charity was publicized and encouraged, these funds became an essential
part of the administration's income.
That was how it had begun.
Etla was placed in strict quarantine, even though nobody in their right
mind would have wanted to go there anyway. But then a calamity threatened, the
Etlans through their own unaided efforts must have begun to cure themselves. The
lucrative source of revenue looked like drying up. Something had to be done,
quickly.
From withholding the aid which would have cured them it was only a small
matter ethically, the administration must have told itself, to keep the Etlans
sick by introducing a few relatively harmless diseases from time to time. The
diseases would have to be photogenic, of course, to have the maximum effect on
the kind-hearted citizenry-disfiguring diseases, for the most part, or those
which left the sufferer crippled or deformed. And steps had to be taken to
ensure that the supply of suffering natives did not fall off, so that the
techniques of gynecology and child care on Etla were well advanced.
At a fairly early stage an Imperial Representative, psychologically
tailored to fit his post, was installed to ensure that the level of health on
the planet was held at the desired point. Somehow the Etlans had ceased to be
people and had become valuable sick animals, which was just how the Imperial
Representative seemed to regard them.
Conway paused at that point. The Captain and Stillman were looking ill, he
thought; which was exactly how he had felt since the destruction of Lonvellin's
ship had caused all the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place.
He said, "A native force sufficient to drive off or destroy chance
visitors is always at Teltrenn's disposal. Because of the quarantine all
visitors are likely to be alien, and the natives have been taught to hate aliens
regardless of shape, number or intentions.
"But how could they be so ... so cold-blooded?" Williamson said, aghast.
"It probably started as simple misappropriation of funds," Conway said
tiredly, "then it gradually got out of hand. But now we, by our interference,
have threatened to wreck a very profitable Imperial racket. So now the Empire is
trying to wreck us."
Before Williamson could reply the Chief Communications officer reported
both helicopter crews back in the ship, also all personnel who had been within
earshot of the siren, which meant everyone in town. The remainder could not make
it back to Vespasian for several hours at least and had been ordered to go under
cover until a scout ship sneaked in later to pick them up. Almost before the
officer had finished speaking the Captain snapped "Lift ship" and Conway felt a
moment's dizziness as the ship's anti-gravity grids compensated for full
emergency thrust. Vespasian climbed frantically for space, with the courier
vessel only ten seconds behind her.
"You must have thought me pretty stupid back there.. ." Williamson began,
then was interrupted by reports from the returned crew-men. One of the
helicopters had been fired on and the men from town had been ordered to stay
there by the local police. These orders had come directly from the Imperial
Representative, with instructions to kill anyone who tried to escape. But the
local police and Corpsmen had come to know each other very well, and the Etlans
had aimed well above their heads...
"This is getting dirtier by the minute," said Stillman suddenly. "You
know, I think we are going to be blamed for what happened around Lonvellin's
ship, for all the casualties in the area. Everything we have done here is going
to be twisted so that we will be the villains. And I bet a lot of new diseases
will be introduced immediately we leave, for which we will be blamed!"
Stillman swore, then went on, "You know how the people of the Empire think
of this planet. Etla is their poor, weak, crippled sister, and we are going to
be the dirty aliens who cold-bloodedly assaulted her..
As the Major had been talking Conway had begun to sweat again. His
deductions regarding the Empire's treatment of Etla had been from medical
evidence, and it had been the medical aspect which had most concerned him, so
that the larger implications of it all had not yet occurred to him. Suddenly he
burst out, "But this could mean a war!"
"Yes indeed," said Stillman savagely, "and that is probably just what the
Imperial government wants. It has grown too big and fat and rotten at the core,
judging by what has been happening here. Within a few decades it would probably
fall apart of its own accord, and a good thing, too. But there is nothing like a
good war, a Cause that everybody can feel strongly about, to pull a crumbling
Empire together again. If they play it right this war could make it stand for
another hundred years."
Conway shook his head numbly. "I should have seen what was happening
sooner," he said. "If we'd had time to tell the Etlans the truth-"
"You saw it sooner than anyone else," the Captain broke in sharply, "and
telling the natives would not have helped them or us if the ordinary people of
the Empire could not have been told also. You have no reason to blame yourself
for-"
"Ordinance Officer," said a voice from one of the twenty-odd speaker
grills in the room. "We have a trace at Green Twelve Thirty-one which I'm
putting on your repeater screen Five. Trace is putting out patterned
interference against missile attack and considerable radar window, suggesting
that it has a guilty conscience and is smaller than we are. Instructions, sir?"
Williamson glanced at the repeater screen. "Do nothing unless it does," he
said, then turned to Stillman and Conway again. When he spoke it was with the
calming, confidence-inspiring tone of the senior officer who bears, and accepts,
full responsibility, a tone which insisted that they were not to worry because
he was there to do it for them.
He said, "Don't look so distressed, gentlemen. This situation, this threat
of interstellar war, was bound to come about sometime and plans have been
devised for dealing with it. Luckily we have plenty of time to put these plans
into effect.
"Spatially the Empire is a small, dense association of worlds," he went on
reassuringly, "otherwise we could not have made contact with them so soon. The
Federation, however, is spread thinly across half the Galaxy. We had a star
cluster to search where one sun in five possessed an inhabited planet. Their
problem is nowhere near as simple. If they were very lucky they might find us in
three years, but my own estimate is that it would be nearer twenty. So you can
see that we have plenty of time."
Conway did not feel reassured and he must have shown it, but the Captain
was trying to meet his objections before he could make them.
"The agent who made the report may help them," Williamson went on quickly.
"Willingly, because he doesn't know the truth about the Empire yet, he may give
information regarding the Federation and the organization and strength of its
Monitor Corps. But because he is a doctor this information is unlikely to be
either complete or accurate, and would be useless anyway unless the Empire knows
where we are. They won't find that out unless they capture an astrogator or a
ship with its charts intact, and that is a contingency which we will take very
great precautions to guard against from this moment on.
"Agents are trained in linguistics, medicine or the social sciences,"
Williamson ended confidently. "Their knowledge of interstellar navigation is
nil. The scout ship which lands them returns to base immediately, this being
standard precautionary procedure in operations of this sort. So you can see that
we have a serious problem but that it is not an immediate one.
"Isn't it?" said Conway.
He saw Williamson and Stillman looking at him-intently and cautiously as
if he was some kind of bomb which, having exploded half an hour ago was about to
do so again. In a way Conway was sorry that he had to explode on them again and
make them share the fear and horrible, gnawing anxiety which up to now had been
his alone. He wet his lips and tried to break it to them as gently as possible.
"Speaking personally," he said quietly, "I don't have the faintest idea of
the coordinates of Traltha, or Illensa or Earth, or even the Earth-seeded planet
where I was born. But there is one set of figures which I do know, and any other
doctor on space service in this Sector is likely to know them also. They are the
coordinates of Sector General.
"I don't think we have any time at all."
CHAPTER 12
The only constructive thing which Conway did during the trip back to Sector
General was to catch up on his sleep, but very often the sleep was made so
hideous by nightmares of the coming war that it was more pleasant to stay awake,
and his waking time he spent in discussions with Williamson, Stillman and the
other senior officers on Vespasian. Since he had called the shots right during
that last half hour on Etla Williamson seemed to value any ideas he might have,
even though problems of espionage, logistics and fleet maneuvers were hardly
within the specialty of a Senior Physician.
The discussions were interesting, informative and, like his dreams,
anything but pleasant.
According to Colonel Williamson an interstellar war of conquest was
logistically impossible, but a simple war of extermination could be fought by
anyone with sufficient force and stomachs strong enough to withstand the thought
of slaughtering other intelligent beings by the planet-load. The Empire had more
than enough force, and the strength of its collective stomach was dependent on
factors over which the Monitor Corps had no control, as yet.
Given enough time agents of the Corps could have infiltrated the Empire.
They already knew the position of one of its inhabited worlds and, because there
was traffic between it and the other planets of the Empire, they would soon know
the positions of others. The first step then would be to gather intelligence and
eventually.. . Well, the Corps were no mean propagandists themselves and in a
situation like this where the enemy was basing their campaign on a series of Big
Lies, some method of striking at this weak spot could be devised. The Corps was
primarily a police organization, a force intended not so much to wage war as to
maintain peace. And like any good police force its actions were constrained by
the possible effects on innocent bystanders-in this case the citizens of the
Empire as well as the people of the Federation.
That was why the plan for undermining the Empire would be set in motion,
even though it could not possibly take effect before the first clash occurred.
Williamson's fondest hope-or prayer might be a more accurate word-was that the
Corpsman who was now in Empire hands would not know, and so would not be able to
tell, the coordinates of Sector General. The Colonel was realist enough to know
that if the agent knew anything the enemy would get it out of him one way or
another. But failing this ideal solution the hospital would be defended in such
a way that it would be the only Federation position that the enemy would know-
unless they diverted a large proportion of their force to the time wasting job
of searching the main body of the Galaxy, which was just what the Corps wanted.
Conway tried not to think of what it would be like at Sector General when
the entire mobile force of the Empire was concentrated there..
A few hours before emergence they received another report from the agent
who was now on the Empire's Central World. The first one had taken nine days to
reach Etla, the second was relayed with top priority coding in eighteen hours.
The report stated that the Central World did not seem to be as hostile
toward extra-terrestrials as Etla and the other worlds of the Empire. The people
there seemed much more cosmopolitan and occasionally e-ts could be seen in the
streets. There were subtle indications, however, that beings had diplomatic
status and were natives of worlds with which the Empire had made treaties with
the purpose of holding them off as a group until such times as it could annex
them individually. So far as the agent personally had been treated, things could
not have been nicer, and in a few days time he was due for an audience with the
Emperor himself. Nevertheless, he was beginning to feel uneasy.
It was nothing that he could put his finger on-he was a doctor who had
been yanked off Survey and pre-Colonization duty, he reminded them, and not one
of the Cultural Contact hot-shots. He got the impression that on certain
occasions and among certain people, all mention of the Federation's aims and
constitution by himself was discouraged, while at other times, usually when
there were only a few people present, they encouraged him to talk at great
length. Another point which worried him was the fact that none of the newscasts
he had seen made any mention of his arrival. Had the position been reversed and
a citizen of the Empire made contact with the Federation, the event would have
been top-line news for weeks.
He wondered sometimes if he was talking too much, and wished that a
subspace receiver could be built as small as a sender so that he could ask for
instructions .
That was the last they ever heard from that agent.
Conway's return to Sector General was not as pleasant as he had thought it
would be a few weeks previously. Then he had expected to return as a near-heroic
personage with the biggest assignment of his career successfully accomplished,
the plaudits of his colleagues ringing in his ears and with Murchison waiting to
receive him with open arms. The latter had been a very slim probability indeed,
but Conway liked to dream sometimes. Instead he was returning from a job which
had blown up most horribly in his face, hoping that his colleagues would not
stop him to ask how or what he had been doing, and with Murchison standing
inside the lock with a friendly smile on her face and both arms hanging
correctly by her sides.
Meeting him after a long absence, Conway thought sourly, was the sort of
thing one friend did for another-there could be nothing more to it than that.
She said it was nice to see him back and he said it was nice to be back, and
when she started to ask questions he said he had a lot of things to do now but
would it be all right if he called her later, and he smiled as if calling her to
arrange a date was the most important thing in his mind. But his smile had
suffered through lack of use and she must have seen that there was something
definitely insincere about it. She went all Doctor-and-Nurse on him, said that
of course he had more important things to attend to, and left quickly.
Murchison had looked as beautiful and desirable as ever and he had
undoubtedly hurt her feelings, but somehow none of these things mattered to
Conway at the moment. His mind would not think of anything but his impending
meeting with O'Mara. And when he presented himself in the office of the Chief
Psychologist shortly afterward it seemed that his worst forebodings were to be
realized.
"Sit down, Doctor," O'Mara began. "So you finally succeeded in involving
us in an interstellar war. . .
"That isn't funny," said Conway.
O'Mara gave him a long, steady look. It was a look which not only noted
the expression on Conway's face but such other factors as his posture in the
chair and the position and movements of his hands. O'Mara did not set much store
by correct modes of address, but the fact that Conway had omitted to say "Sir"
was also being noted as a contributory datum and given its proper place in his
analysis of the situation. The process took perhaps two minutes and during that
time the Chief Psychologist did not move an eyelid. O'Mara had no irritating
mannerisms; his strong, blunt hands never twitched or fiddled with things, and
when he desired it his features could be as expressive as a lump of rock.
On this occasion he let his face relax into an expression of almost benign
disfavor, and finally he spoke.
"I agree," he said quietly, "it isn't a bit funny. But you know as well as
I do that there is always the chance of some well-intentioned doctor in a place
like this stirring up trouble on a large scale. We have often brought in some
weird beastie of a hitherto unknown species who requires treatment urgently, and
there is no time to search for its friends to discover if what we propose to do
is the right procedure in the circumstances. A case in point was that Ian
chrysalis you had a few months ago. That was before we made formal contact with
the Ians, and if you hadn't correctly diagnosed the patient's condition as a
growing chrysalis instead of a malignant growth requiring instant removal, a
procedure which would have killed the patient, we would have been in serious
trouble with the Ians."
"Yes, sir," said Conway.
O'Mara went on, "My remark was in the nature of a pleasantry, and had a
certain aptness considering your recent experience with that Ian. Perhaps it was
in questionable taste, but if you think I'm going to apologize then you
obviously believe in miracles. Now tell me about Etla.
"And," he added quickly before Conway could speak, "my desk and
wastebasket are full of reports detailing the implications and probable dire
consequences of the Etla business. What I want to know is how you handled your
assignment as originally given."
As briefly as possible Conway did as he was told. While he talked he felt
himself begin to relax. He still had a confused and very frightening picture in
the back of his mind of what the war would mean to countless millions of beings,
to the hospital and to himself, but he no longer felt that he was partly
responsible for bringing it about. O'Mara had begun the interview by accusing
him of the very thing he had felt guilty of, then without saying so in so many
words had made him see how ridiculous it had been to feel guilty. But as he
neared the point where Lonvellin's ship had been destroyed, the feeling returned
full strength. If he had put the pieces together sooner, Lonvellin would not
have died...
O'Mara must have detected the change of feeling, but allowed him to finish
before he said, "It surprises me that Lonvellin didn't see it before you did, it
being the brain behind the operation. And while we're on the subject of brains,
yours does not seem to be thrown into complete disorder by problems involving
large numbers of people requiring differing forms of treatment. So I have
another job for you. It is smaller than the Etla assignment, you won't have to
leave the hospital, and with any luck it won't blow up in your face.
"I want you to organize the evacuation of Sector General."
Conway swallowed, then swallowed again.
"Stop looking as though you'd been sandbagged!" O'Mara said testily, "or I
will hit you with something! You must have thought this thing through far enough
to see that we can't have patients here when the Empire force arrives. Or any
non-military staff who have not volunteered to stay. Or any person, regardless
of position or rank, who has in his mind detailed information regarding the
whereabouts of any Federation planets. And surely the idea of telling people
nominally your superiors what to do doesn't frighten you, not after ordering a
Corps Colonel around
Conway felt his neck getting warm. He let the dig about Williamson pass
and said, "I thought we might leave the place empty for them."
"No," said O'Mara dryly. "It has too much sentimental, monetary and
strategic value. We hope to keep a few levels operating for the treatment of
casualties sustained by the defending force. Colonel Skempton is already at work
on the evacuation problem and will help you all he can. What time is it by you,
Doctor?"
Conway told him that when he had left Vespasian it had been two hours
after breakfast.
"Good," said O'Mara. "You can contact Skempton and go to work at once.
With me it is long past bedtime, but I'll sleep here in case you or the Colonel
want something. Goodnight, Doctor."
So saying he took off and folded his tunic, stepped out of his shoes and
lay down. Within seconds his breathing became deep and regular. Suddenly Conway
laughed.
"Seeing the Chief Psychologist lying on his own couch," Conway said
through his laughter, "is something of a traumatic experience. I very much
doubt, sir, if our relationship will ever be quite the same..
As he was leaving O'Mara murmured sleepily, "I'm glad. For a while there I
thought you were going all melancholy on me...
CHAPTER 13
Seven hours later Conway surveyed his littered desk wearily but with a
measure of triumph, rubbed his eyes and looked across at the desk facing his.
For a moment he felt that he was back on Etla and that a red-eyed Major Stillman
would look up and ask what he wanted. But it was a red-eyed Colonel Skempton who
looked up when he spoke.
"The breakdown of patients to be evacuated is complete," Conway said
tiredly. "There are divided first into species, which will indicate the number
of ships required to move them and the living conditions which must be
reproduced in each ship. With some of the weirder types this will necessitate
structural alterations to the vessels, which will take time. Then each species
is sub-divided into degrees of seriousness of the patient's condition, which
will determine the order of their going..
Except, thought Conway sourly, when a patient's condition was such that to
move it would endanger its life. In which case it would have to be evacuated
last instead of first so that treatment could be prolonged as much as possible,
which meant that specialized medical staff who themselves should have been
evacuated by that time would be held back to treat it, and by that time its life
might be endangered by missiles from an Empire warship anyway. Nothing seemed to
happen in a tidy, consecutive fashion anymore.
..... Then it will take a few days for Major O'Mara's department to
process the medical and maintenance staff," Conway went on, "even though he just
has to ask them a few questions under scope. When I arrived I expected the
hospital to be under attack already. At the moment I don't know whether to plan
for a panic evacuation within forty-eight hours, which is the absolute minimum
time for it and which would probably kill more patients than it would save, or
take my time and plan for a merely hurried evacuation."
"I couldn't assemble the transport in forty-eight hours," said Skempton
shortly, and lowered his head again. As Chief of Maintenance and the Hospital's
ranking Monitor officer the job of assembling, modifying and routing the
transports devolved on him, and he had an awful lot of work to do.
"What I'm trying to say," Conway said insistently, "is how much time do
you think we've got?"
The Colonel looked up again. "Sorry, Doctor," he said. "I have an estimate
which came in a few hours ago. . ." He lifted one of the top layer of papers on
his desk and began to read.
Subjecting all the known factors to a rigid analysis, the report stated,
it appeared likely that a short time-lag would occur between the point at which
the Empire discovered the exact position of Sector General and the time when
they acted on this information. The initial action was likely to be an
investigation by a scout ship or a small scouting force. Monitor units at
present stationed around Sector General would attempt to destroy this force.
Whether they were successful or not the Empire's next move would be more
decisive, probably a full-scale offensive which would require many days to
mount. By that time additional units of the Monitor Corps would have reached the
area.
Say eight days," Skempton concluded, "or three weeks if we're lucky. But I
don't think we'll be lucky."
"Thank you," said Conway, and returned to work.
First he prepared an outline of the situation for distribution to the
medical staff within the next six hours. In it he laid as much stress as
possible on the necessity for a quick, orderly evacuation without overdoing it
to the extent of causing a panic, and recommended that patients be informed via
their physicians so as to cause the minimum distress. In the case of seriously
ill patients the doctors in charge should use their discretion whether the
patient should be told or evacuated under sedation. He added that an at present
unspecified number of medical staff would be evacuated with the patients and
that everyone should be prepared to leave the hospital at a few hours notice.
This document he sent to Publications for copying in print and tape so that
everyone would be in possession of the information at roughly the same time.
At least that was the theory, Conway thought dryly. But if he knew his
hospital grapevine the essential data would be circulating ten minutes after it
left his desk.
Next he prepared more detailed instructions regarding the patients. The
warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-forms could leave by any of several levels,
but the heavy-G, high-pressure species would pose special problems, not to
mention the light-gravity MSVKs and LSVOs, the giant, water-breathing AUGLs, the
ultra-frigid types and the dozen or so beings on Level Thirty-eight who breathed
superheated steam. Conway was planning on the operation taking five days for the
patients and an additional two for the staff, and for this rapid clearing of the
wards he would have to send people through levels foreign to them to reach their
embarkation points. There would be possible oxygen contamination of chlorine
environments, danger of chlorine leaking into the AUGL wards, or of water
flooding all over the place. Precautions would have to be taken against failure
of the methane life-forms' refrigerators, breakdown of the antigravity equipment
of the fragile, bird-like LSVOs and rupture of Illensan pressure envelopes.
Contamination was the greatest danger in a multi-environment hospital-
contamination by oxygen, chlorine, methane, water, cold, heat or radiation.
During the evacuation the safety devices usually in operation- airtight doors,
double, inter-level locks, the various detection and alarm systems-would have to
be overridden in the interests of a quick getaway.
Then staff would have to be detailed to inspect the transport units to
ensure that their passenger space accurately reproduced the environment of the
patients they were to carry.
All at once Conway's mind refused to take any more of it. He closed his
eyes, sank his head into the palms of his hands and watched the afterimage of
his desktop fade slowly into redness. He was sick of paperwork. Since being
given the Etla job his whole life had been paperwork; reports, summaries,
charts, instructions. He was a doctor currently planning a complicated
operation, but it was the sort of operation performed by a high-level clerk
rather than a surgeon. Conway had not studied and trained for the greater part
of his life to be a clerk.
He stood up, excused himself hoarsely to the Colonel and left the office.
Without really thinking about it he was moving in the direction of his wards.
A new shift was just coming on duty and to the patients it was half an
hour before the first meal of the day, which made it a very unusual time for a
Senior Physician to do his rounds. The mild panic he caused would, in other
circumstances, have been funny. Conway greeted the intern on duty politely, felt
mildly surprised to find that it was the Creppelian octopoid he had met as a
trainee two months previously, then felt annoyed when the AMSL insisted on
following him around at a respectful distance. This was the proper procedure for
a junior intern, but at that moment Conway wanted to be alone with his patients
and his thoughts.
Most strongly of all he felt the need to see and speak to the sometimes
weird and always wonderful extra-terrestrial patients who were technically under
his care-all the beings he had come to know before leaving for Etla having been
long since discharged. He did not look at their charts, however, because he had
an allergy toward the abstraction of information via the printed word at the
moment. Instead he questioned them closely, almost hungrily, regarding their
symptoms and condition and background. He left some of the minor cases pleased
and flabbergasted by such attention from a Senior Physician, and some might have
been annoyed by his prying. But Conway had to do it. While he still had patients
left he wanted to be a doctor.
An e-t doctor...
Sector General was breaking up. The vast, complex structure dedicated to
the relief of suffering and the advance of xenological medicine was dying,
succumbing like any terminal patient to a disease too powerful for it to resist.
Tomorrow or the next day these wards would begin to empty. The patients with
their exotic variations of physiology, metabolism and complaints would drain
away. In darkened wards the weird and wonderful fabrications which constituted
the alien idea of a comfortable bed would crouch like surrealistic ghosts along
the walls. And with the departure of the e-t patients and staff would go the
necessity for maintaining the environments which housed them, the Translators
which allowed them to communicate, the physiology tapes which made it possible
for one species to treat another.
But the Galaxy's greatest e-t hospital would not die completely, not for
another few days or weeks. The Monitor Corps had no experience of interstellar
wars, this being their first, but they thought they knew what to expect.
Casualties among the ship's crews would be heavy and with a very high proportion
of them fatal. The still-living casualties brought in would be of three types;
decompression, bone-fractures and radiation poisoning. It was expected that two
or three levels would be enough to take care of them, because if the engagement
was fought with nuclear weapons, and there was no reason to suppose otherwise,
most of the decompression and fracture cases would be radiation-terminal also-
there would be no danger of overcrowding.
Then the internal break-up began with the evacuation would continue on the
structural level as the Empire forces attacked. Conway was no military
tactician, but he could not see how the vast, nearly-empty hospital could be
protected. It was a sitting duck, soon to be a dead one. A great, fused and
battered metal graveyard...
All at once a tremendous wave of feeling washed through Conway's mind-
bitterness, sadness and a surge of sheer anger which left him shaking. As he
stumbled out of the ward he didn't know whether he wanted to cry or curse or
knock somebody down. But the decision was taken away from him when he turned the
corner leading to the PVSJ section and collided solidly with Murchison.
The impact was not painful, one of the colliding bodies being well endowed
with shock-absorbing equipment, but it was sharp enough to jolt his mind of a
very somber train of thought onto one infinitely more pleasant. Suddenly he
wanted to watch and talk to Murchison as badly as he had wanted to visit his
patients, and for the same reason. This might be the last time he would see her.
"I-I'm sorry," he stammered, backing off. Then remembering their last
meeting, he said, "I was a bit rushed at the lock this morning, couldn't say
much. Are you on duty?"
"Just coming off," said Murchison in a neutral voice.
"Oh," said Conway, then; "I wondered if... that is, would you mind..."
"I wouldn't mind going for a swim," she said.
"Fine," said Conway.
They went up to the recreation level, changed and met inside on the
simulated beach. While they were walking toward the water she said suddenly,
"Oh, Doctor. When you were sending me those letters, did you ever think of
putting them in envelopes with my name and room number on them?"
"And let everybody know I was writing to you?" Conway said. "I didn't
think you wanted that."
Murchison gave a lady-like snort. "The system you devised was not exactly
secret," she said with a hint of anger in her tone. "Thornnastor in Pathology
has three mouths and it can't keep any of them shut. They were nice letters, but
I don't think it was fitting for you to write them on the back of sputum test
reports...
"I'm sorry," said Conway. "It won't happen again."
With the words the dark mood which the sight of Murchison had pushed from
his mind came rushing back. It certainly wouldn't happen again, he thought
bleakly, not ever. And the hot, artificial sun did not seem to be warming his
skin as he remembered it and the water was not so stingingly cold. Even in the
half-G conditions the swim was wearying rather than exhilarating. It was as if
some deep layer of tiredness swathed his body, dulling all sensation. After only
a few minutes he returned to the shallows and waded onto the beach. Murchison
followed him, looking concerned.
"You've got thinner," she said when she had caught up with him.
Conway's first impulse was to say "You haven't," but the intended
compliment could have been taken another way, and he was lousy enough company
already without running the risk of insulting her. Then he had an idea and said
quickly, "I forgot that you're just off duty and haven't eaten yet. Will we go
to the restaurant?"
"Yes, please," said Murchison.
The restaurant was perched high on the cliff facing the diving ledges and
boasted a continuous transparent wall which allowed a full view of the beach
while keeping out the noise. It was the only place in the recreation level where
quiet conversation was possible. But the quietness was wasted on them because
they hardly spoke at all.
Until half way through the meal when Murchison said, "You aren't eating as
much, either."
Conway said, "Have you ever owned, or navigated, a space vessel?"
"Me? Of course not!"
"Or if you were wrecked in a ship whose astrogator was injured and
unconscious," he persisted, "and the ship's drive had been repaired, could you
give the coordinates for reaching some planet within the Federation?"
"No," said Murchison impatiently. "I'd have to stay there until the
astrogator woke up. What sort of questions are these?"
"The sort I'll be asking all my friends," Conway replied grimly. "If you
had answered 'Yes' to one of them it would have taken a load off my mind."
Murchison put down her knife and fork, frowning slightly. Conway thought
that she looked lovely when she frowned, or laughed, or did anything. Especially
when she was wearing a swimsuit. That was one thing he liked about this place,
they allowed you to dine in swimsuits. And he wished that he could pull himself
out of his dismal mood and be sparkling company for a couple of hours. On his
present showing he doubted if Murchison would let him take her home, much less
cooperate in the clinch for the two minutes, forty-eight seconds it took for the
robot to arrive...
"Something is bothering you," Murchison said. She hesitated, then went on,
"If you need a soft shoulder, be my guest. But remember it is only for crying
on, nothing else."
"What else could I use it for?" said Conway.
"I don't know," she said, smiling, "but I'd probably find out."
Conway did not smile in return. Instead he began to talk about the things
that were worrying him-and the people, including her. When he had finished she
was quiet for a long time. Sadly Conway watched the faintly ridiculous picture
of a young, dedicated, very beautiful girl in a white swimsuit coming to a
decision which would almost certainly cost her life.
"I think I'll stay behind," she said finally, as Conway knew she would.
"You're staying too, of course?"
"I haven't decided yet," Conway said carefully. "I can't leave until after
the evacuation anyway. And there may be nothing to stay for..
He made a last try to make her change her mind. "...and all your e-t training
would be wasted. There are lots of other hospitals that would be glad to have
you...
Murchison sat up straight in her seat. When she spoke it was in the brisk,
competent, no-nonsense tone of a nurse prescribing treatment to a possibly
recalcitrant patient. She said, "From what you tell me you're going to have a
busy day tomorrow. You should get all the sleep you can. In fact, I think you
should go to your room right away.
Then in a completely different tone she added, "But if you'd like to take
me home first..
CHAPTER 14
On the day after instructions to evacuate the hospital had been issued,
everything went smoothly. The patients gave no trouble at all, the natural order
of things being for patients to leave hospital and in this instance their
discharge was just a little bit more dramatic than usual. Discharging the
medical staff, however, was a most unnatural thing. To a patient Hospital was
merely a painful, or at least not very pleasant, episode in his life. To the
staff of Sector General the hospital was their life.
Everything went smoothly with the staff on the first day also. Everyone
did as they were told, probably because habit and their state of shock made that
the easiest thing to do. But by the second day the shock had worn off and they
began to produce arguments, and the person they most wanted to argue with was
Dr. Conway.
On the third day Conway had to call O'Mara.
"What's the trouble!" Conway burst out when O'Mara replied. "The trouble
is making this.., this gaggle of geniuses see things sensibly! And the brighter
a being is the more stupid it insists on acting. Take Prilicla, a beastie who is
so much eggshell and matchsticks that it would blow away in a strong draft, it
wants to stay. And Doctor Mannon, who is as near being a Diagnostician as makes
no difference. Mannon says treating exclusively human casualties would be
something of a holiday. And the reasons some of the others have thought up are
fantastic.
"You've got to make them see sense, sir. You're the Chief Psychologist . .
"Three quarters of the medical and maintenance staff," O'Mara said
sharply, "are in possession of information likely to help the enemy in the event
of their capture. They will be leaving, regardless of whether they are
Diagnosticians, computer men or junior ward orderlies, for reasons of security.
They will have no choice in the matter. In addition to these there will be a
number of specialist medical staff who will feel obliged, because of their
patient's condition, to travel with their charges. So far as the remainder are
concerned there is very little I can do, they are sane, intelligent, mature
beings capable of making up their own minds."
Conway said, "Hah."
"Before you impugn other people's sanity," O'Mara said dryly, "answer me
one question. Are you going to stay?"
"Well.. ." began Conway.
O'Mara broke the connection.
Conway stared at the handset a long time without reclipping it. He still
had not made up his mind if he was going to stay or not. He knew that he wasn't
the heroic type, and he badly wanted to leave. But he didn't want to leave
without his friends, because if Murchison and Prilicla and the others stayed
behind, he couldn't have borne the things they would think about him if he was
to run away.
Probably they all thought that he meant to stay but was being coy about
it, while the truth was that he was too cowardly and at the same time too much
of a hypocrite to admit to them that he was afraid...
The sharp voice of Colonel Skempton broke into his mood of self loathing,
dispelling it for the moment.
"Doctor, the Kelgian hospital ship is here. And an Illensan freighter.
Locks Five and Seventeen in ten minutes."
"Right," said Conway. He left the office at a near run, heading for
Reception.
All three control desks were occupied when he arrived, two by Nidians and
the other by a Corps Lieutenant on stand-by. Conway positioned himself between
and behind the Nidians where he could study both sets of repeater screens and
began hoping very hard that he could deal with the things which would inevitably
go wrong.
The Kelgian vessel already locked on at Five was a brute, one of the
latest interstellar liners which had been partially converted into a hospital
ship on the way out. The alterations were not quite complete, but a team of
maintenance staff and robots were already boarding it together with senior ward
staff who would arrange for the disposition of their patients. At the same time
the occupants of the wards were being readied for the transfer and the equipment
necessary for treating them was being dismantled, rapidly and with little regard
for the subsequent condition of the ward walls. Some of the smaller equipment,
heaped onto powered stretcher-carriers, was already on the way to the ship.
Altogether it looked like being a fairly simple operation. The atmosphere,
pressure and gravity requirement of the patients were exactly those of the ship,
so that no complicated protective arrangements were necessary, and the vessel
was big enough to take all of the Kelgian patients with room to spare. He would
be able to clear the DBLF levels completely and get rid of a few Tralthan FGLIs
as well. But even though the first job was relatively uncomplicated, Conway
estimated that it would take at least six hours for the ship to be loaded and
away. He turned to the other control desk.
Here the picture was in many respects similar. The environment of the
Illensan freighter matched perfectly that of the PVSJ wards, but the ship was
smaller and, considering its purpose, did not have a large crew. The
preparations for receiving patients aboard were, for this reason, not well
advanced. Conway directed extra maintenance staff to the Illensan freighter,
thinking that they would be lucky to get away with sixty PVSJs in the same time
as it took the other ship to clear three whole levels.
He was still trying to find shortcuts in the problem when the Lieutenant's
screen lit up.
"A Tralthan ambulance ship, Doctor," he reported. "Fully staffed and with
provision for six FROBs and a Chalder as well as twenty of their own species. No
preparation needed at their end, they say just load em up.
The AUGL denizens of Chalderescol, a forty-foot long, armored fishlike
species were water-breathers who could not live in any other medium for more
than a few seconds and live. On the other hand the FROBs were squat, immensely
massive and thick-skinned beings accustomed to the crushing gravity and pressure
of Hudlar. Properly speaking Hudlarians did not breathe at all, and their
incredibly strong tegument allowed them to exist for long periods in conditions
of zero gravity and pressure, so that the water in the AUGL section would not
bother them...
Conway said quickly, "Lock Twenty-eight for the Chalder. While they're
loading it send the FROBs through the ELNT section into the main AUGL tank and
out by the same Lock. Then tell them to move to Lock Five and we'll have their
other patients waiting...
Gradually the evacuation got under way. Accommodations was prepared for
the first convalescent PVSJs aboard the Jllensan freighter and the slow trek of
patients and staff through the noisome yellow fog of the chlorine section
commenced. Simultaneously the other screen was showing a long, undulating file
of Kelgians moving toward their ship, with medical and engineering staff
carrying equipment charging up and down the line.
To some it might have seemed callous to evacuate the convalescent patients
first, but there were very good reasons for doing so. With these walking wounded
out of the way the wards and approaches to the locks would be less congested,
which would allow the complicated frames and harnesses containing the more
seriously ill patients to be moved more easily, as well as giving them a little
more time in the optimum conditions of the wards.
"Two more Illensan ships, Doctor," the lieutenant said suddenly. "Small
jobs, capacity about twenty patients each."
"Lock Seventeen is still tied up," said Conway. "Tell them to orbit."
The next arrival was a small passenger ship from the Earth-human world of
Gregory, and with it came the lunch trays. There were only a few Earth-human
patients at Sector General, but at a pinch the Gregorian ship could take any
warm-blooded oxygen-breather below the mass of a Tralthan. Conway dealt with
both arrivals at the same time, not caring if he did have to speak or even
shout, with his mouth full...
Then suddenly the sweating, harassed face of Colonel Skempton flicked onto
the internal screen. He said sharply, "Doctor, there are two Illensan ships
hanging about in orbit. Don't you have work for them?"
"Yes!" said Conway, irritated by the other's tone. "But there is a ship
already loading chlorine-breathers at Seventeen, and there is no other lock
suitable on that level. They'll have to wait their turn.
"That won't do," Skempton cut in harshly. "While they're hanging about out
there they are in danger should the enemy attack suddenly. Ether you start
loading them at once or we send them away to come back later. Probably much
later. Sorry."
Conway opened his mouth and then shut it with a click over what he had
been about to say. Hanging grimly onto his temper he tried to think.
He knew that the build-up of the defense fleet had been going on for days
and that the astrogation officers responsible for bringing those units in would
leave again as soon as possible-either on their own scout ships or with the
patients leaving Sector General. The plan devised by the Monitor Corps called
for no information regarding the whereabouts of the Federation being available
in the minds of the defending forces or the non-combatants who remained in the
hospital. The defense fleet was deployed to protect the hospital and the ships
locked onto it, and the thought of two other ships swinging around loose, ships
which contained fully qualified astrogators aboard, must have made the Monitor
fleet commander start biting his nails.
"Very well, Colonel," Conway said. "We'll take the ships at Fifteen and
Twenty-one. This will mean chlorine-breathers traveling through the DBLF
maternity ward and a part of the AUGL section. Despite these complications we
should have the patients aboard in three hours...
Complications was right...! Conway thought grimly as he gave the necessary
orders. Luckily both the DBLF ward and that section of the AUGL level would be
vacant by the time the chlorine-breathing Illensans in their pressure tents came
through. But the ship from Gregory was at an adjoining lock taking on ELNTs who
were being shepherded through the area by DBLF nurses in protective suits. Also
there were some of the low-G, bird-like MSVKs being brought to the same vessel
through the chlorine ward which he was hoping to clear...
There weren't enough screens in Reception to keep properly in touch with
what was going on down there, Conway decided suddenly. He had the horrible
feeling that a most awful snarl-up would occur if he wasn't careful. But he
couldn't be careful if he didn't know what was going on. The only course was for
him to go there and direct the traffic himself.
He called O'Mara, explained the situation quickly and asked for a relief.
CHAPTER 15
Dr. Mannon arrived, groaned piteously at the battery of screens and flashing
lights, then smoothly took over the job of directing the evacuation. As a
replacement Conway could not have hoped for anyone better. He was turning to go
when Mannon pushed his face within three inches of one of the screens and said
"Harrumph."
Conway stopped. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, nothing," said Mannon, without turning round. "It's just that
I'm beginning to understand why you want to go down there."
"But I told you why!" said Conway impatiently. He stamped out, telling
himself angrily that Mannon was indulging in senseless conversation at a time
when unnecessary talk of any kind was criminal. Then he wondered if the aging
Dr. Mannon was tired, or had a particularly confusing tape riding him, and felt
suddenly ashamed. Snapping at Skempton or the receptionists hadn't worried him
unduly, but he did not want to begin biting the heads off his friends-even if he
was harassed and tired and the whole place was rapidly going to Hell on
horseback. Then very soon he was being kept too busy to feel ashamed.
Three hours later the state of confusion around him seemed to have
doubled, although in actual fact it was simply that twice as much was being
accomplished twice as fast. From his position at one of the high level entrances
to the main AUGL ward Conway could look down on a line of ELNTs-six-legged,
crab-like entities from Melf IV-scuttling or being towed across the floor of the
great tank. Unlike their amphibious patients, the thickly-furred, air breathing
Kelgians attending them had to wear protective envelopes which were sweltering
hot inside. The scraps of Translated conversation which drifted up to him,
although necessarily emotionless, verged on the incandescent. But the work was
being done, and much faster than Conway had ever hoped for.
In the corridor behind him a slow procession of Illensans, some in
protective suits and the more seriously ill in pressure tents which enclosed
their beds, moved past. They were being attended by Earth-human and Kelgian
nurses. The transfer was going smoothly now, but there had been a time only half
an hour back when Conway had wondered if it would go at all...
When the large pressure tents came through into the water-filled AUGL
section they had risen like giant chlorine bubbles and stuck fast against the
ceiling. Towing them along the corridor ceiling had been impossible because
outgrowths of plumbing might have ruptured the thin envelopes, and getting five
or six nurses to weigh them down was impractical. And when he brought in powered
stretcher carriers from the level above-vehicles not designed for but
theoretically capable of operating under water-with the idea of both holding his
super-buoyant patients down and moving them quickly, a battery casing had split
and the carrier became the center of a mass of hissing, bubbling water which had
rapidly turned black.
Conway would not be surprised to hear that the patient on that particular
carrier had a relapse.
He had solved the problem finally with a magnificent flash of inspiration
which, he told himself disgustedly, should have come two seconds after he had
seen the problem. He had quickly switched the artificial gravity grids in the
corridor to zero attraction and in the weightless condition the pressure tents
had lost their buoyancy. It meant that the nurses had to swim instead of walk
with their patients, but that was a small thing.
It was during the transfer of these PVSJs that Conway learned the reason
for Mannon's "Harrumph" up in Reception-Murchison was one of the nurses on that
duty. She hadn't recognized him, of course, but he knew there was only one
person who could fill a nurse's lightweight suit the way she did. He didn't
speak to her, however-it didn't seem to be the proper time or place.
Time passed rapidly without another major crisis developing. At Lock Five
the Kelgian hospital ship was ready to go, waiting only for some of the
hospital's senior staff to go aboard and for a Monitor ship to escort them out
to a safe jump distance. Remembering some of the beings who were scheduled to
leave on that ship, many of them friends of long standing, Conway decided the
chance offered by the quiet spell to say a quick good-bye to some of them. He
called Mannon to tell him where he was going, then headed for Five.
But by the time he arrived the Kelgian ship had gone. In one of the big
direction vision panels he could see it drawing away with a Monitor cruiser in
close attendance; and beyond them, hanging like newly-formed constellations in
the blackness, lay the Monitor defense fleet. The buildup of units around the
hospital was proceeding as planned and had increased visibly since Conway had
looked at it yesterday. Reassured, and not a little awed by the sight, he
hurried back to the AUGL section.
And arrived to find the corridor almost plugged by an expanding sphere of
ice.
The ship from Gregory contained a specially refrigerated compartment for
beings of the SNLU classification. These were fragile, crystalline, methane-
based life-forms who would be instantly cremated if the temperature rose above
minus one-twenty. Sector General was currently treating seven of these ultra-
frigid creatures, and all of them had been packed into a ten-foot refrigerated
sphere for the transfer. Because of the difficulties expected in handling them
they were the last patients for the Gregorian ship.
If there had been a direct opening to space from the cold section they
would have been moved to the ship along the outer hull, but as this was not
possible they had to be brought through fourteen levels from the methane ward to
their loading point at Lock Sixteen. In all the other levels the corridors had
been spacious and filled with air or chlorine, so that all that the protective
sphere had done was to collect a coating of frost and chill the surrounding
atmosphere. But in the AUGL section it was growing ice. Fast.
Conway had known this would happen but had not considered it important
because the sphere should not have been in the water-filled corridor long enough
to cause a problem. But one of the towing lines had snapped and pulled it
against some projecting conduit and within seconds they were welded together
with ice. Now the sphere was encased in an icy shell four feet thick and there
was barely room to pass above or below it.
"Get cutting torches down here," Conway bawled up to Mannon, "quick!"
Three Corpsmen arrived just before the corridor was completely blocked.
With the cutting flames of their torches set to maximum dispersal they attacked
the icy mass, melting it free of the projection and trying to reduce it to a
more manageable size. In the confined space of the corridor the heat being
applied to the ice-ball sent the water temperature soaring up, and none of their
suits had cooling units. Conway began to feel a distinct empathy toward boiled
lobsters. And the great, awkward mass of ice was a danger to life and limb-
danger from being crushed between it and the corridor wall, and the scalding,
nearly opaque water which made it so easy to put an arm or leg between the ice
and a cutting flame.
But finally the job was done. The container with its SNLU occupants was
maneuvered through the inter-level lock into another air-filled section. Conway
rubbed a hand across the outside of his helmet in an unconscious attempt to wipe
the sweat from his forehead and wondered what else would go wrong.
The answer, according to Dr. Mannon up in Reception was not a thing.
All three levels of DBLF patients had left with the Kelgian ship, Mannon
told him enthusiastically, the only caterpillars remaining in the hospital being
a few of the nursing staff. Between them the three Illensan freighters had
cleared the PVSJ wards of their chlorine-breathers, except for a few stragglers
who would be aboard within a few minutes. Among the water-breathing types the
AUGLs and ELNTs were clear, and the SNLUs in their baby iceberg were just going
aboard. In all fourteen levels had been cleared and that was not a bad day's
work. Dr. Mannon suggested that Dr. Conway might take this opportunity of
applying a pillow to his head and going into a state of voluntary
unconsciousness in preparation for an equally busy day tomorrow.
Conway was swimming tiredly toward the inter-level lock, his mind
revolving around the infinitely alluring concepts of a large steak and a long
sleep, when it happened.
Something which he did not see struck him a savage, disabling blow. It bit
simultaneously in the abdomen, chest and legs-the places where his suit was
tightest. Agony burst inside him like a red explosion that was just barely
contained by his tortured body. He doubled up and began to black out, he wanted
to die and he desperately wanted to be sick. But some tiny portion of his brain
unaffected by the pain and nausea insisted that he did not allow himself to be
sick, that being sick inside his helmet was a very nasty way to die...
Gradually the pain receded and became bearable. Conway still felt as if a
Tralthan had kicked him in the groin with all six feet, but other things were
beginning to register. Loud, insistent, gurgling noises and the extremely odd
sight of a Kelgian drifting in the water without its protective suit. A second
look told him that it was wearing a suit, but that it was ruptured and full of
water.
Further down in the AUGL tank two more Kelgians floated, their long, soft,
furry bodies burst open from head to tail, the ghastly details mercifully
obscured by an expanding red fog. And against the opposite wall of the tank
there was an area of turbulence around a dark, irregular hole through which the
water seemed to be leaving.
Conway swore. He thought he knew what had happened. Whatever had made that
ragged-edged hole had, because of the non-compressibility of water, also
expended its force on the unfortunate occupants of the AUGL tank. But because
the other Kelgian and himself had been up here in the corridor they had escaped
the worst effects of it.
Or maybe only one of them had escaped...
It took three minutes for him to drag the Kelgian nurse into the lock ten
yards along the corridor. Once inside he set the pumps going to clear the
chamber of water, simultaneously cracking an air valve. While the last of the
water was draining away he struggled to lay the sodden, inert body on its side
against one wall. The being's silvery pelt was a mass of dirty gray spikes, and
he could detect no pulse or respiration. Conway quickly lay down on his side on
the floor, moved the third and fourth set of legs apart so that he could put his
shoulder into the space between them, then with his own feet braced firmly
against the opposite wall he began to push rhythmically. Sitting on top of it
and pressing down with the palms was not, Conway knew, an effective method of
applying artificial respiration to one of the massive DBLFs. After a few seconds
water began trickling out of its mouth.
He broke off suddenly as he heard somebody trying to open the lock from
the AUGL corridor side. Conway tried his radio, but one or the other of their
sets was not working. Taking off his helmet quickly he put his mouth up against
the seal, cupped his hands around it and yelled, "I've an air-breather in here
without its suit, don't open the seal or else you'll drown us! Come in from the
other side
A few minutes later the seal on the air-filled side opened and Murchison
was looking down at him. She said, "D-Doctor Conway.. ." in a peculiar voice.
Conway straightened his legs sharply, ramming his shoulder into the area
of the Kelgian's underbelly nearest its lungs and said, "What?"
"I... You.., the explosion..." she began. Then after the brief false start
her tone became firm and purposeful as she went on, "There's been an explosion,
Doctor. One of the DBLF nurses is injured, severe lacerated wounds caused by a
piece of floor plating spinning against it. We coagulated at once but I don't
think its holding. And the corridor where its lying is being flooded, the
explosion must have opened a way into the AUGL section. The air-pressure is
dropping slightly so we must be open to space somewhere, too, and there is a
distinct smell of chlorine . .
Conway groaned and ceased his efforts with the Kelgian, but before he
could speak Murchison went on quickly, "All the Kelgian doctors have been
evacuated and the only DBLFs left are this one and a couple who should be around
here somewhere, but they're just nursing staff..
Here was a proper mess, Conway thought as he scrambled to his feet;
contamination and threatening decompression. The injured being would have to be
moved quickly, because if the pressure dropped too much the airtight doors would
drop and if the patient was on the wrong side of them when they did it would be
just too bad. And the absence of a qualified DBLF meant that he would have to
take a Kelgian physiology tape and do the job himself, which meant a quick trip
to O'Mara's office. But first he would have to look at the patient.
"Take over this one, please Nurse," he said, indicating the sodden mass on
the floor, "I think it's beginning to breath for itself, but will you give it
another ten minutes..." He watched while Murchison lay down on her side, knees
bent and with both feet planted against the opposite wall. This was definitely
neither the time nor the place, but the sight of her lying there in that
demoralizingly tight suit made the urgency of patients, evacuations and
physiology tapes diminish for just an instant. Then the tight, moisture beaded
suit made him remember that Murchison had been in the AUGL tank, too, just a few
minutes before the explosion, and he had an awful vision of her lovely body
burst open like those of the two hapless DBLFs...
"Between the third and fourth pair of legs, not the fifth and sixth!"
Conway said harshly as he turned to go.
Which wasn't what he had meant to say at all.
CHAPTER 16
For some reason Conway's mind had been considering the effects of the explosion
rather than its cause. Or perhaps he had been deliberately trying not to think
along that line, trying to fool himself that there had been some sort of
accident rather than that the hospital was under attack. But the yammering PA
reminded him of the truth at every intersection and on the way to O'Mara's
office everyone was moving twice as fast as usual and, as usual, all in a
direction opposite to Conway's. He wondered if they all felt as he did, scared,
unprotected, momentarily expecting a second explosion to rip the floor apart
under their hurrying feet. Yet it was stupid of him to hurry because he might be
rushing toward the spot where the next explosion would occur...
He had to force himself to walk slowly into the Chief Psychologist's
office, detail his requirements and ask O'Mara quietly what had happened.
"Seven ships," O'Mara replied, motioning Conway onto the couch as he
lowered the Educator helmet into position. "They seem to have been small jobs,
with no evidence of unusual armament or defenses. There was quite a scrap. Three
got away and one of the four which didn't launched a missile at us before it was
clobbered. A small missile with a chemical warhead.
"Which is very odd," O'Mara went on thoughtfully, "because if it had been
a nuclear warhead there would be no hospital here now. We weren't expecting them
just as soon as this and were taken by surprise a little. Do you have to take
this patient?"
"Eh? Oh, yes," said Conway. "You know DBLF. Any incised wound is an
emergency with them. By the time another doctor had a look at the patient and
came up here for a tape it might be too late."
O'Mara grunted. His hard, square, oddly gentle hands checked the fitting
of the helmet, then pressed Conway down onto the couch. He went on, "They tried
to press that attack home, it was really vicious. A clear indication, I would
say, of their feelings toward us. Yet they used a chemical head when they could
have destroyed us completely. Peculiar. One thing, though, it has made the
ditherers make up their minds. Anybody who wants to stay here now really wants
to stay and the ones who are leaving are going to leave fast, which is a good
thing from Dermod's point of view. .
Dermod was the fleet commander.
..... Now make your mind a blank," he ended sourly, "or at least make it
blanker than usual."
Conway did not have to try to make his mind a blank, a process which aided
the reception of an alien physiology tape. O'Mara's couch was wonderfully soft
and comfortable. He had never appreciated it properly before, he seemed to be
sinking right into it...
A sharp tap on the shoulder made him jump. O'Mara said caustically, "Don't
go to sleep! And when you finish with your patient go to bed. Mannon can handle
things in Reception and the hospital won't go to pieces without you unless we
get hit with an atomic bomb..
With the first evidence of double-mindedness already becoming apparent,
Conway left the office. Basically the tape was a brain recording of one of the
great medical minds of the species of the patient to be treated. But the doctor
taking such a tape had, literally, to share his mind with a completely alien
personality. That was how it felt, because all the memories and experience of
the being who had donated the tape were impressed on the receiving mind, not
just selected pieces of medical data. Physiology tapes could not be edited.
But the DBLFs were not as alien as some of the beings Conway had had to
share his mind with. Although physically they resembled giant, silvery
caterpillars they had a lot in common with Earth-humans. Their emotional
reactions to such stimuli as music, a piece of scenic grandeur, or DBLFs of the
opposite sex were very nearly identical. This one even liked meat, so that
Conway would not have to starve on salad if he had to keep the tape for any
length of time.
What matter if he did feel unsafe walking on just two legs, or found
himself humping his back rhythmically as he walked. Or even, when he reached the
abandoned DBLF section and the small theater where the patient had been brought,
that a part of his mind thought of Murchison as just another one of those
spindly DBDGs from Earth...
Although Murchison had everything ready for him, Conway did not start at
once. Because of the mind and personality of the great Kelgian doctor sharing
his brain he really felt for the patient now. He appreciated the seriousness of
its condition and knew that there were several hours of delicate, exacting work
ahead of him. At the same time he knew that he was very tired, that he could
barely keep his eyes open. It was an effort even to move his feet, and his
fingers, when he was checking over the instruments, felt like thick, tired
sausages. He knew that he couldn't work in this condition unless he wanted to
kill the patient.
"Fix me a pep-shot, will you please?" he said, biting down on a yawn. For
an instant Murchison looked as if she might give him an argument. Pep-shots were
frowned on in the hospital-their use was sanctioned only in cases of the gravest
emergency, and for very good reasons. But she prepared and injected the shot
without saying anything, using a blunt needle and quite unnecessary force to jab
it home. Even though half his mind wasn't his own, Conway could see that she was
mad at him.
Then suddenly the shot took effect. Except for a slight tingling sensation
in his feet and a blotchiness which only Murchison could see in his face Conway
felt as clear-eyed, alert and physically refreshed as if he had just come out of
a shower after ten hours sleep.
"How's the other one?" he asked suddenly. He had been so tired he had
forgotten the Kelgian he had left with Murchison in the lock.
"Artificial respiration brought it round," she replied, then with more
enthusiasm, "but it was still in shock. I sent it up to the Tralthan section,
they still have a few senior staff there . .
"Good," said Conway warmly. He wanted to say more, to be more personally
complimentary, but he knew that there was no time to stand and chat. He ended,
"Let's begin, shall we. . .
Except for the thin-walled, narrow casing which housed the brain the DBLF
species had no honey structure. Their bodies were composed of an outer cylinder
of musculature which, in addition to being its primary means of locomotion,
served to protect the vital organs within it. To the mind of a being more
generously reinforced with bones this protection was far from adequate. Another
severe disadvantage in the event of injury was its complex and extremely
vulnerable circulatory system; the blood supply network which had to feed the
tremendous bands of muscle encircling its body ran close under the skin. The
thick fur of the pelt gave some protection here, but not against chunks of
jagged-edged, flying metal.
An injury which many other species would consider superficial could cause
a DBLF to bleed to death in minutes.
Conway worked slowly and carefully, dissolving away the coagulant so
hastily applied by Murchison, repairing or partially replacing damaged major
blood vessels and sealing off the minor branches which were too fine for him to
do anything else. This part of the operation worried him- not because it
endangered the life of the patient but because he knew that the beautiful
silvery fur would never grow properly in these areas again, that if it grew at
all it would be yellowed and visually repulsive to a male Kelgian. The injured
nurse was a remarkably handsome young female and such a disfiguration could be a
real tragedy. Conway hoped she wouldn't be too proud to keep the area covered
with surrogate fur. Admittedly it did not have the rich, deep luster of living
fur and would be immediately recognizable for what it was, but neither would it
be so visually distressing...
An hour ago this would have been just another caterpillar, Conway thought
dryly, an "it" about whom he felt only clinical concern. Now he had reached the
stage of worrying about the patient's marriage prospects. A physiology tape
certainly made one feel for one's e-t patients.
When he had finished Conway called Reception, described the patient's
condition and urged that it should be evacuated as quickly as possible. Mannon
told him that there was half a dozen small vessels loading at the moment, most
of them with provision for taking oxy-breathers, and gave him a choice of two
Locks in the vicinity. Mannon added that, with the exception of a few patients
on the critically ill list, all patients of classifications A through G had
either gone or were on the point of going, along with staff members of the same
classifications who had been ordered to go by O'Mara for security reasons.
Some of them had displayed extreme reluctance to leave. One in particular,
a hoary old Tralthan Diagnostician who was unfortunate enough to own a personal
space yacht-something which in normal conditions would not have been considered
a misfortune!-had had to be formally charged with attempted treason, disturbing
the peace and incitement to mutiny and arrested, that being the only way to get
it aboard ship.
As he broke the connection Conway thought that they wouldn't have to go to
such lengths to get him to leave the hospital. He shook his head, angry and
ashamed of himself, and gave Murchison instructions for transferring the patient
to the ship.
The injured Kelgian had to be enclosed in a pressure tent for the initial
stage of its trip through the AUGL ward, which was now open to space. There were
no water-breathers left in the big tank and no water, there being more urgent
things to do than repairing and refilling a section which would very likely
never be used again. The sight of the great tank, empty now, with its walls
vacuum dry and the lush, underwater vegetation which had been designed to make
the ward seem more homelike to its occupants hanging like pieces of brittle,
discolored parchment made Conway feel horribly depressed. The depression
remained with him while they negotiated the three empty chlorine levels below it
and came to another air-filled section.
Here they had to pause to allow a procession of TLTUs to pass. Conway was
glad of the chance to stop for a while because, although the pep-shot had him
still feeling full of artificial beans, Murchison was beginning to droop. As
soon as their patient was aboard he thought he would order her off to bed.
Seven TLTUs filed slowly past, their protective spheres anchored to
stretcher-carriers driven by sweating, tense-faced orderlies. Unlike those of
the methane life-forms these spheres did not collect frost. Instead they emitted
a high-pitched, shuddering whine as their generators labored to maintain the
internal temperature at a comfortable, for their occupants, five hundred
degrees. Each one of them passed in a wave of heat which Conway could feel six
yards away.
If another warhead was to strike here and now, and one of those globes was
opened... Conway didn't think there was a worse way to die than to have the
flesh boiled off his bones in a blast of super-heated steam.
By the time they had handed the patient over to the ship's medical officer
at the Lock, Conway was having difficulty focusing his eyes and his legs had a
definite rubbery feel to them. Bed was indicated, he thought, or another pep-
shot. He had just decided on the former course of treatment when he was collared
respectfully by a Monitor officer wearing a heavy-duty suit which was still
radiating the cold of space.
"The casualties are here, sir," the officer said urgently. "We brought
them in on a supply ship because Reception is tied up with the evacuation. We're
locked onto the DBLF section, but the place is empty and you're the first doctor
I've seen. Will you take care of them?"
Conway almost asked what casualties, but stopped himself in time. There
had been an attack, he remembered suddenly, the attack had been beaten off and
the ensuing casualties, whether great or small, were obviously of prime concern
to this officer. If he had known that Conway had been too busy to think about
the battle and its casualties.
"Where did you put them?" said Conway.
"They're still in the ship," the officer replied, relaxing slightly. "We
thought it better for someone to look at them before they were moved. Some of
them... I mean... Uh, will you follow me, sir?"
There were eighteen of them, the wreckage of men who had been fished out
of the wreckage of a ship, whose suits were still cold to the touch. Only their
helmets had been taken off, and that had been to ascertain whether or not they
still lived. Conway counted three decompressions, the rest being fractures of
varying degrees of complication one of which was quite definitely a depressed
fracture of the skull. There were no radiation cases. So far it had been a clean
war, if any war could have been described as clean...
Conway felt himself getting angry, but fought it back. This was no time to
become emotional over broken, bleeding and asphyxiated patients or the reasons
for them being in that condition. Instead he straightened and turned to
Murchison.
"I'll take another pep-shot," he said briskly, "this will be a long
session. But first I'll have the DBLF tape erased and try to around up some
help. While I'm gone you might see to getting these men out of their suits and
moved to DBLF Theater Five, then you can catch up on your sleep.
"And thank you," he added awkwardly, not wanting to say too much because
the Corpsman was still at his elbow. If he had tried to say the things he wanted
to say to Murchison with eighteen urgent cases lying around their feet the
officer would have been scandalized, and Conway would not have blamed him. But
dammit the Corpsman hadn't been working beside Murchison for the last three
hours, with a pep-shot heightening all his senses...
"If it would help you," said Murchison suddenly, "I could take a pep shot,
too."
Gratefully, Conway said, "You're a very silly girl, but I was hoping you
would say that...
CHAPTER 17
By the eighth day all the extra-terrestrial patients had been evacuated and with
them had gone nearly four-fifths of the hospital's staff. On the levels which
maintained extremes of temperature, pressure or gravity the power was withdrawn
causing the ultra-frigid solids to melt and gasify and the dense or superheated
atmospheres to condense into a sludgy liquid mess on the floors. Then as the
days passed more and more Corpsmen of the Engineering Division arrived,
converting the one-time wards into barracks and tearing out large sections of
the outer hull so that they could erect projector bases and launching platforms.
Dermod's idea now was that Sector General should defend itself instead of
relying completely on the fleet, which had already shown that it wasn't capable
of stopping everything. By the twenty-fifth day Sector General had made the
transition from being a defenseless hospital into what amounted to a heavily
armed military base.
Because of its tremendous size and vast reserves of power-several times
greater than that of the mobile forces defending it-the weapons were many and
truly formidable. Which was as well because on the twenty-ninth day they were
tested to the utmost in the first major attack by the enemy.
It lasted for three days.
Conway knew that there were sound, logical reasons for the Corps
fortifying the hospital as they had done, but he didn't like it. Even after that
fantastic, three-day long attack when the hospital had been hit four times-again
with chemical warheads, luckily he still felt wrong about it: Every time he
thought of the tremendous structure which had been dedicated to the highest
ideals of humanity and medicine being made into an engine of destruction, geared
to a hellish and unnatural ecology wherein it produced its own casualties,
Conway felt angry and sad and not a little sickened by the whole ghastly mess.
Sometimes he was apt to give vent to his opinions...
It was five weeks after the beginning of the evacuation and he was
lunching with Mannon and Prilicla. The main dining hall was no longer crowded at
mealtimes and green uniformed Corpsmen heavily outnumbered the e-ts at the
tables, but there were still upward of two hundred extra-terrestrials in the
place and this was what Conway was currently objecting to.
I still say it's a waste," he said angrily, "a waste of lives, of medical
talent, everything! All the cases are, and will continue to be, Monitor
casualties. Every one an Earth-human. So there are no juicy e-t cases for them
to work on. The e-t staff should be sent home!
"Present company included," he ended, with a glare at Prilicla before he
turned to face Mannon.
Dr. Mannon made an incision in his steak and hefted a generous forkful
mouth ward. Since the disappearance of all his light-gravity patients he had had
his LSVO and MSVK tapes erased and so had no mental restrictions placed on his
diet. In the five weeks since the evacuation he had noticeably put on weight.
"To an e-t," he said reasonably, "we are juicy e-ts."
"You're quibbling," said Conway. "What I'm objecting to is senseless
heroics."
Mannon raised his eyebrows. "But heroics are nearly always senseless," he
said dryly, "and highly contagious as well. In this case I'd say the Corps
started it by wanting to defend this place, and because of that we felt obliged
to stay also to look after the wounded. At least a few of us feel like that, or
we think a few of us feel like that.
"The sane, logical thing to do would have been to get while the going was
good," Mannon continued, not quite looking at Conway, "and not a word would have
been said to those who got. But then these sane, logical people have colleagues
or, uh, friends who they suspect might be in the true hero category, and they
won't leave because of what they imagine their friends will think of them if
they run away. So they'd sooner die than have their friends think they were
cowards, and they stay."
Conway felt his face getting warm, but he didn't say anything.
Mannon grinned suddenly and went on, "But this is a form of heroism, too.
A case of Death before Dishonor, you might say. And before you can turn around
twice everybody is a hero of one kind or the other. And no doubt the e-ts . . ."
He gave a sly glance at Prilicla. ". . . are staying for similar reasons. And
also, I suspect, because they don't want it thought that Earth-human DBDGs have
a monopoly on heroism."
"I see," said Conway. He knew that his face was flaming red. It was now
quite obvious that Mannon knew that the only reason he had stayed in the
hospital was because Murchison, O'Mara and Mannon himself might have been
disappointed in him if he'd left. And at the other side of the table Prilicla,
the emotion sensitive, would be reading him like a book. Conway thought that he
had never felt worse in his whole life.
"You are so right," said Prilicla suddenly, deftly inserting its fork into
the plate of spaghetti before it and using two mandibles to twist. "If it had
not been for the heroic example of you DBDGs I would have been on the second
ship out."
"The second?" asked Mannon.
"I am not," said Prilicla, waving spaghetti for emphasis, "completely
without valor."
Listening to the by-play Conway thought that the honest thing would have
been for him to admit his cowardice to them, but he also knew that to do so
would be to cause embarrassment all round. It was plain that they both knew him
for the coward he was and were telling him in their separate fashions that it
didn't matter. And looking at it objectively it really did not matter, because
there would be no more ships leaving Sector General and its remaining staff were
going to be heroes whether they liked it or not. But Conway still did not think
it right that he should be given credit for being a brave, selfless, dedicated
man of medicine when he was nothing of the sort.
Before he could say anything, however, Mannon switched subjects abruptly.
He wanted to know where Conway and Murchison had been during the fourth, fifth
and sixth days of the evacuation. He said that it was highly suggestive that
both of them were out of circulation at exactly the same time and he began to
list some of the suggestions which occurred to him-which were colorful,
startling and next to physically impossible. Soon Prilicla joined in, although
the sexual mores of two Earth-human DBDGs could have at most only an academic
interest to a sexless GLNO, and Conway was defending himself strenuously from
both sides.
Both Prilicla and Mannon knew that Murchison and himself, along with about
forty other members of the staff, had been keeping at peak operating efficiency
by means of pep-shots for nearly sixty hours. Pep shots did not give something
for nothing, and Conway and the others had been forced to adopt the horizontal
position of the patient for three days while they recovered from an advanced
state of exhaustion. Some of them had literally dropped in their tracks and been
taken away hurriedly, so exhausted that the involuntary muscles of heart and
lungs were threatening to give up with everything else. They had been taken to
special wards where robot devices massaged their hearts, gave artificial
respiration and fed them intraveneously.
Still, it did look bad that Conway and Murchison had not been seen around
together, or separately, or at all for three whole days.
The alarm siren saved Conway just as the counsels for the prosecution were
having it all their own way. He swung out of his seat and sprinted for the door
with Mannon pounding along behind him and Prilicla, its not quite atrophied
wings aided by its anti-gravity devices, whirring away in front.
Come Hell, high water or interstellar war, Conway thought warmly as he
headed for his wards, while there was a reputation to blacken or a leg to pull,
Mannon would be there with the latest scandal and prepared to exert traction on
the limb in question until it threatened to come off at the acetabulum. In the
circumstance all this scandal-mongering had irritated Conway at first, but then
he had begun to realize that Mannon was making him see that the whole word
hadn't come to an end yet, that this was still Sector General-a frame of mind
rather than a place-and that it would continue to be Sector General until the
last one of its dedicated and often wacky staff had gone.
When he reached his ward the siren, a constant reminder of the probable
manner of their going, had stopped.
Pressure tents hung slackly over all twenty-eight occupied beds, already
sealed and with their self-contained air units operating against the possibility
of the ward being opened suddenly to space. The nurses on duty, a Tralthan, a
Nidian and four Earth-humans, were struggling into their suits. Conway did the
same, sealing everything as the others had done with the exception of the
faceplate. He made a quick around of his patients, expressed approval to the
Tralthan Senior Nurse, then opened the switch which cut off the artificial
gravity grids in the floor.
Irregularities in the power supply, and that was no rare occurrence when
the hospital's defensive screens were under attack or its weapons went into
action, could cause the artificial gravity grid to vacillate between one half
and two Gs, which was not a good thing when the patients were mainly fracture
cases. It was better to have no gravity at all.
Once patients and staff were protected so far as was possible there was
nothing to do but wait. To keep his mind off what was going on outside Conway
insinuated himself into an argument between a Tralthan nurse and one of the red-
furred Nidians about the modifications currently going on in the giant
Translator computer. This vast electronic brain- the Translator packs which
everyone wore were merely extensions of it, just sending and receiving units-
which handled all the e-t translations in the hospital was, since the
evacuation, operating at only a small fraction of its full potential. Hearing
this Dermod, the fleet commander, had ordered the unused sections to be
reprogrammed to deal with tactical and supply problems. But despite the Corps'
reassurances that they were allowing ample circuits for Translation the two
nurses were not quite happy. Suppose, they said, there should be an occasion
when all the e-ts were talking at once?
Conway wanted to tell them that in his opinion the e-ts, especially the
nurses, were always talking period so that there was really no problem, but he
couldn't think of a tactful way of phrasing it.
An hour passed without anything happening so far as the hospital was
concerned; no hits and no indication that its massive armament had been used.
The nurses on duty were relieved by the next shift, three Tralthans and three
Earth-humans this time, the senior nurse being Murchison. Conway was just
settling down to a very pleasant chat when the siren sounded a steady, low-
pitched, faintly derisive note. The attack was over.
Conway was helping Murchison out of her suit when the PA hummed into life.
"Attention, please," it said urgently. "Will Doctor Conway go to Lock Five
at once, please..
Probably a casualty, Conway thought, one they are not sure how to move. .
. But then the PA shifted without a break into another message.
Will Doctor Mannon and Major O'Mara go to Lock Five immediately, please..
What, Conway wondered, could be at Lock Five which required the services
of two Senior Physicians and the Chief Psychologist. He began to hurry.
O'Mara and Mannon had been closer to Five to begin with and so were there
ahead of him by a few seconds. There was a third person in the lock antechamber,
clad in a heavy-duty suit with its helmet thrown back. The newcomer was graying,
had a thin, lined face and a mouth which was like a tired gray line, but the
overall harshness was offset by a pair of the softest brown eyes Conway had ever
seen in a man. The insignia on his collar was more ornate than Conway had ever
seen before, the highest ranking Corps officer he'd had dealings with being a
Colonel, but he knew instinctively that this was Dermod, the fleet commander.
O'Mara tore off a salute which was returned as punctiliously as it had
been given, and Mannon and Conway received handshakes with apologies for the
gauntlets being worn. Then Dermod got straight down to business.
"I am not a believer in secrecy when it serves no useful purpose," he
began crisply. "You people have elected to stay here to look after our
casualties, so you have a right to know what is happening whether the news is
good or bad. Being the senior Earth-human medical staff remaining in the
hospital, and having an understanding of the probable behavior of your staff in
various contingencies, I must leave it up to you whether this information should
or should not be made public."
He had been looking at O'Mara. His eyes moved quickly to Mannon, then
Conway, then back to O'Mara again. He went on, "There has been an attack, a
completely surprising attack in that it was totally abortive. We did not lose a
single man and the enemy force was completely wiped out. They didn't seem to
know the first thing about deployment or... or anything. We were expecting the
usual sort of attack, vicious, pressed home regardless of cost, that previously
has taken everything we've got to counter. This was a massacre...
Dermod's voice and the look in his eyes, Conway noted, did not reflect any
joy at the victory.
..... Because of this we were able to investigate the enemy wreckage
quickly enough to have a chance of finding survivors. Usually we're too busy
licking our own wounds to have time for this. We didn't find any survivors, but
..
He broke off as two Corpsmen came through the inner seal carrying a
covered stretcher. Dermod was looking straight at Conway when he went on.
He said, "You were on Etla, Doctor, and will see the implications behind
this. And at the same time you might think about the fact that we are under
attack by an enemy who refuses either to communicate or negotiate, fights as
though driven by a fanatical hatred, and yet uses only limited warfare against
us. But first you'd better take a look at this."
When the cover was pulled off the stretcher nobody said anything for a
long time. It was the tattered, grisly remnant of a once-living, thinking and
feeling entity who was now too badly damaged even to classify with any degree of
accuracy. But enough remained to show that it was not and never had been a human
being.
The war, Conway thought sickly, was spreading.
CHAPTER 18
Since Vespasian left Etla we have been trying to infiltrate the Empire with our
agents," Dermod resumed quietly, "and have been successful in planting eight
groups including one on the Central World itself. Our intelligence regarding
public opinion, and through it the propaganda machinery used to guide it, is
fairly dependable.
"We know that feeling against us is high over the Etla business," he
continued, "or rather what we are supposed to have done to the Etlans, but I'll
come to that later. This latest development will make things even worse for us .
.
According to the Imperial government, Dermod explained, Etla had been
invaded by the Monitor Corps. Its natives, under the guise of being offered
medical assistance, had been callously used as guinea-pigs to test out various
types of bacteriological weapons. As proof of this hadn't the Etlans suffered a
series of devastating plagues which had commenced within days of the Monitors
leaving? Such callous and inhuman behavior could not go unpunished, and the
Emperor was sure that every citizen was behind him in the decision he had taken.
But information received-again according to Imperial sources- from a
captured agent of the invaders made it plain that their behavior on Etla was no
isolated instance of wanton brutality. On that luckless planet the invaders had
been preceded by an extra-terrestrial-a stupid, harmless being sent to test the
planet's defenses before landing themselves, a mere tool about which they had
denied any connection or knowledge when later they contacted the Etlan
authorities. It was now plain that they made wide use of such extra-terrestrial
life-forms. That they used them as servants, as experimental animals, probably
as food. .
There was a tremendous structure maintained by the invaders, a combination
military base and laboratory, where atrocities similar to those practiced on
Etla were carried on as a matter of course. The invader agent, who had been
tricked into giving the spatial coordinates of this base, had confessed to what
went on there. It appeared that the invaders ruled over a large number of
differing extra-terrestrial species, and it was here that the methods and
weapons were developed which held them in bondage.
The Emperor stated that he was quite willing, indeed he considered it his
duty, to use his forces to stamp out this foul tyranny. He also felt that he
should use only Imperial forces, because he had to confess with shame that
relations between the Empire and the extra-terrestrials within its sphere of
influence had not always been as warm as they should have been. But if any of
these species who may have been slighted in the past were to offer their aid, he
would not refuse it.
And this explains many of the puzzling aspects of these enemy attacks,"
Dermod went on. "They are restricting themselves to vibratory and chemical
weapons, and in the confined space of our defense globe we must do the same,
because this place must be captured rather than destroyed. The Emperor must find
out the positions of the Federation planets to keep the war going. The fact that
they fight viciously and to the death can be explained by their being afraid of
capture, because to them the hospital is nothing but a space-going torture
chamber.
"And the completely ineffectual recent attack," he continued, "must have
been mounted by some of the hot-headed e-t friends of the Empire, who were
probably allowed to come here without proper training or information about our
defenses. They were wiped out, and that will cause a lot of e-ts on their side
who are wavering to make up their minds.
"In the Empire's favor," he ended bitterly.
When the fleet commander stopped speaking Conway remained silent; he had
had access to the Empire reports sent to Williamson and knew that Dermod was not
exaggerating the situation. O'Mara had had similar information and maintained
the same grim silence. But Dr. Mannon was not the silent type.
"But this is ridiculous!" he burst out. "They're twisting things! This is
a hospital, not a torture chamber. And they're accusing us of the things they
are doing themselves. . .
Dermod ignored the outburst, but in such a way as not to give offense. He
said soberly, "The Empire is unstable politically. With enough time we could
replace their present government with something more desirable. The Imperial
citizens would do it themselves, in fact. But we need time. And we also have to
stop the war from spreading too much, from gaining too much momentum. If too
many extra-terrestrial allies join the Empire against us the situation will
become too complex to control, the original reasons for fighting, or the truth
or otherwise of these accusations, will cease to matter.
"We can gain time by holding out here as long as possible," he ended
grimly, "but there isn't much we can do about restricting the war. Except hope."
He swung his helmet forward and began to fasten it, although his face-
plate was still open for conversation. It was then that Mannon asked the
question which Conway had wanted to ask for a long time, but fear of being
thought a coward had stopped him from asking it.
"Do we have any chance, really, of holding out?"
Dermod hesitated a moment, obviously wondering whether to be reassuring or
to tell the truth. Then he said, "A well-supported and supplied defensive globe
is the ideal tactical position. It can also, if the enemy outnumbers it
sufficiently, be a perfect trap...
When Dermod left, the specimen he had brought with him was claimed by
Thornnastor, the Tralthan Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, who would no
doubt be happy with it for days. O'Mara went back to bullying his charges into
remaining sane, and Mannon and Conway went back to their wards. The reaction of
the staff to the possibility of e-ts attacking them was about equally divided
between concern over the war spreading and interest regarding the possible
methods necessary to treat casualties belonging to a brand new species.
But two weeks passed without the expected attack developing. The Monitor
Corps warships continued to arrive, shoot their astrogators back in life-ships,
and take up their positions. From the hospital's direct vision ports they seemed
to cover the sky, as if Sector General was the center of a vast, tenuous star
cluster with every star a warship. It was an awesome and tremendously reassuring
sight, and Conway tried to visit one of the direct vision panels at least once
every day.
Then on the way back from one of these visits he ran across a party of
Kelgians.
For a moment he couldn't believe his eyes. All the Kelgian DBLFs had been
evacuated, he had watched the last of them go himself, yet here were twenty-odd
of the outsize caterpillars humping along in single file. A closer look showed
that they were not wearing the usual brassard with engineering or medical
emblems on it-instead their silvery fur was dyed with circular and diamond
patterns of red, blue and black. This was Kelgian military insignia. Conway went
storming off to O'Mara.
..... I was about to ask the same question, Doctor," the Chief
Psychologist said gruffly, indicating his vision screen, "although in much more
respectful language. I'm trying to get the fleet commander now, so stop shouting
and sit down!"
Dermod's face appeared a few minutes later. His tone was polite but
hurried when he said, "This is not the Empire, gentlemen. We are obliged to
inform the Federation government and through it the people of the true state of
affairs as we see them, although the item about our being attacked by an enemy
e-t force has not yet been made public.
"But you must give the e-ts within the Federation credit for having the
same feelings as ourselves," he went on, "Extra-terrestrials have stayed behind
at Sector General, and on their various home worlds their friends are beginning
to feel that they should come out here and help defend them. It is as simple as
that."
"But you said that you didn't want the war to spread," Conway protested.
"I didn't ask them to come here, Doctor," Dermod said sharply, "but now
they're here I can certainly use them. The latest intelligence reports indicate
that the next attack may be decisive. .
Later over lunch Mannon received the news about the e-t defenders with the
deepest gloom. He was beginning to enjoy being only himself and guzzling steak
at dinner, he told Conway sadly, and now with the likelihood of e-t casualties
coming in it looked as if they were all going to be tape-ridden again. Prilicla
ate spaghetti and observed how lucky it was that the e-t staff hadn't left the
hospital after all, not-looking at Conway when it said it, and Conway said very
little.
The next attack, Dermod had said, may be decisive...
It began three weeks later after a period during which nothing happened
other than the arrival of a volunteer force of Tralthans and a single ship whose
crew and planet of origin Conway had never heard of before, and whose
classification was QLCL. He learned that Sector General had never had the
opportunity of meeting these beings professionally because they were recent, and
very enthusiastic, members of the Federation. Conway prepared a small ward to
receive possible casualties from this race, filling it with the horribly
corrosive fog they used for an atmosphere and stepping up the lighting to the
harsh, actinic blue which QLCLs considered restful.
The attack began in an almost leisurely fashion, Conway thought as he
watched it through the observation panel. The main defense globe seemed barely
disturbed by the three minor attacks launched at widely separate points on its
surface. All that was visible was three tiny, confused swirls of activity-moving
points of light that were ships, missiles, counter-missiles and explosions-which
looked too slow to be dangerous. But the slowness was only apparent, because the
ships were maneuvering at a minimum of five Gs, with automatic anti-gravity
devices keeping their crews from being pulped by the tremendous accelerations in
use, and the missiles were moving at anything up to fifty Gs. The wide-flung
repulsion screens which sometimes deflected the missiles were invisible as were
the pressors and rattlers which nearly always stopped those which the screens
missed. Even so this was merely an initial probing at the hospital's defenses, a
series of offensive patrols, the curtain-raiser.
Conway turned away from the view-port and began moving toward his post.
Even the unimportant skirmishes produced casualties and he really had no
business being up here sightseeing. Besides, he would get a much truer picture
of how the battle was going down in the wards.
For the next twelve hours casualties arrived in a steady trickle, then the
light, probing attacks changed to heavy, feinting thrusts and the wounded came
in an irregular stream. Then the attack proper began and they became a flood.
He lost all sense of time, of who his assistants were, of the number of
cases he dealt with. There were many times when he needed a pep shot to clear
the fatigue from his mind and hands, but pep-shots were now forbidden regardless
of circumstances-the medical staff were hard pressed enough without some of them
becoming patients. Instead he had to work tired, knowing that he was not
bringing everything he had to the treatment of his patients, and he ate and
slept when he reached the point of not being able to hold his instruments
properly. Sometimes it was the towering bulk of a Tralthan at his side,
sometimes a Corpsman medical orderly, sometimes Murchison. Mostly it was
Murchison, he thought. Either she didn't need to sleep, or she snatched a catnap
the same times as he did, or even at a time like this he was more inclined to
notice her. It was usually Murchison who pushed food at his unresisting face and
told him when he really ought to lie down.
By the fourth day the attack showed no signs of diminishing. The rattlers
on the outer hull were going almost constantly, their power drain making the
lights flicker.
The principle which furnished artificial gravity for the floor and
compensated for the killing accelerations used by the ships also lay behind the
weapons of both sides-the repulsion screen, originally a meteor protection
device, the tractor and pressor beams, and the rattler which was a combination
of both. The rattler pushed and pulled-vibrated- depending on how narrowly it
was focused, at up to eighty Gs. A push of eighty gravities then a pull of
eighty gravities, several times a minute. Naturally it was not always focused
accurately on target, both ships were moving and taking counter-measures, but it
was still tight enough to tear the plating off a hull or, in the case of a small
ship, to shake it until the men inside rattled.
There was a lot of rattler work going on now. The Empire forces were
attacking savagely, compressing the Monitor defense globe down against the
hospital's outer hull. The infighting which was taking place was with rattler
only, space being too congested to fling missiles about indiscriminately. This
applied only to the warring ships, however-there were still missiles being
directed at the hospital, probably hundreds of them, and some of them were
getting through. At least five times Conway felt the tell-tale shock against the
soles of his shoes where his feet were strapped to the operating room floor.
There was no fine diagnostic skill required in the treatment of these
rattled men. It was all too plain that they suffered from multiple and
complicated fractures, some of them of nearly every bone in their bodies. Many
times when he had to cut one of the smashed bodies out of its suit Conway wanted
to yell at the men who had brought it in, "What do you expect me to do with
this. . .
But this was alive, and as a doctor he was supposed to do everything
possible to make it stay that way.
He had just finished a particularly bad one, with both Murchison and a
Tralthan nurse assisting, when Conway became aware of a DBLF in the room. Conway
had become familiar with the dyed patterns of color used by the Kelgian military
to denote rank, and he saw that this one bore an additional symbol which
identified it as a doctor.
"I am to relieve you, Doctor," the DBLF said in a flat, Translated,
hurried voice. "I am experienced in treating beings of your species. Major
O'Mara wants you to go to Lock Twelve at once."
Conway quickly introduced Murchison and the Tralthan-there was another
casualty being floated in and they would be working on it within minutes-then
said, "Why?"
"Doctor Thornnastor was disabled when the last missile hit us," the
Kelgian replied, spraying its manipulators with the plastic its race used
instead of gloves. "Someone with e-t experience is required to take over
Thornnastor's patients and the FGLIs which are coming in now at Lock Twelve.
Major O'Mara suggests you look at them as soon as possible to see what tapes you
need.
"And take a suit, Doctor," the DBLF added as Conway turned to go. "The
level above this one is losing pressure .
There had been little for Pathology to do since the evacuation, Conway
thought as he propelled himself along the corridors leading to Twelve, but the
Diagnostician in charge of that department had demonstrated its versatility by
taking over the largest casualty section. In addition to FGLIs of its own
species Thornnastor had taken DBLFs and Earth-humans, and the patients who had
that lumbering, irascible, incredibly brilliant Tralthan to care for them were
lucky indeed. Conway wondered how badly it was injured, the Kelgian doctor
hadn't been able to tell him.
He passed a view-port and took a quick look outside. It reminded him of a
cloud of angry fireflies. The stanchion he was gripping slapped his hand,
telling him that another missile had struck not too far away.
There were two Tralthans, a Nidian and a space-suited QCQL in the
antechamber when he arrived as well as the ever present Corpsmen. The Nidian
explained that a Tralthan ship had been nearly pulled apart by enemy rattlers
but that many of its crew had survived. The tractor beams mounted on Sector
General itself had whisked the damaged vessel down to the lock and...
The Nidian began to bark at him.
"Stop that!" said Conway irritably.
The Nidian looked startled, then it started to bark again. A few seconds
later the Tralthan nurses came over and began to deafen him with their modulated
fog-horn blasts, and the QCQL was whistling at him through its suit radio. The
Corpsmen, engrossed in bringing the casualties through the boarding tube, were
merely looking puzzled. Suddenly Conway began to sweat.
They had been hit again, but because he had not been holding onto anything
he had not felt it-but he knew exactly where they had been hit. Conway fumbled
with his Translator, rapped it sharply with his knuckles-a completely futile
gesture-and kicked himself toward the intercom.
On every circuit he tried things howled and trumpeted and moaned and made
guttural barking sounds, a mad cacaphony that set Conway's teeth on edge. A
picture of the theater he had just left flashed before his mind, with Murchison
and the Tralthan and the Kelgian doctor working on that casualty and not one of
them knowing what the other was saying. Instructions, vital directions, demands
for instruments or information on the patient's condition-all would be given in
an alien gabble incomprehensible to the theater staff. He was seeing the picture
repeated all over the hospital. Only beings of the same species could make
themselves understood to each other, and even that did not hold true in every
case. There were Earth-humans who did not speak Universal, who spoke languages
native to areas on their home planets and who had to rely on Translators even
when speaking to other Earth-humans...
From the alien babel Conway's straining ears were able to isolate words
and a voice which he could understand. It was intelligence battling through a
high level of background noise, and all at once his ears seemed to tune out the
static and hear only the voice, the voice which was saying,
Three torps playing follow-my-leader, sir. They blasted a way right
through. We can't jury-rig a Translator, there's nothing of it left to do it
with. The last torp went off inside the computer room...
Outside the intercom niche the e-t nurses were whistling and growling and
moaning at him and at each other. He should be giving instructions for the
preliminary examination of his casualties, arranging for ward accommodation,
checking on the readiness of the FGLI theater. But he could not do any of these
things because his nursing staff would not understand a word he said.
CHAPTER 19
For a long time, although it might have only been a few seconds, Conway could
not bring himself to leave the alcove which contained the intercom unit, and the
Chief Psychologist would have been clinically concerned about the thoughts which
were going through his mind just then. But slowly he fought down the panic that
made him want to run away and hide somewhere, by reminding himself savagely that
there was nowhere to run to and by forcing himself to look at the FGLIs drifting
about in the antechamber. The place was literally filled with them.
Conway himself knew only the rudiments of Tralthan physiology, but that
was the least of his worries because he could easily take an FGLI tape. What he
had to do was to start things moving for them now. But it was hard to think of
each other and the Corpsmen shouting to know what was the matter and the
casualties, many of whom were conscious, making pitiful, frantic noises that
were muffled only slightly by their pressure envelopes.
"Sergeant!" Conway bawled suddenly at the senior orderly, waving at the
casualties. "Ward Four-B, Two-Hundred and Seventh level. Know where it is?"
The NCO bobbed his head, and Conway turned to the nurses.
He got nowhere with the Nidian and QCQL despite all his efforts at sign
language, and it was only when he wrapped his legs around one of the FGLI's
forelimbs and by brute force twisted the appendage containing its visual
equipment until the cluster of eyes pointed at where the causalities were going
that he got anywhere at all. Finally he made the Tralthans understand-he hoped-
that they were to accompany the injured and do what they could for them when
they arrived.
Four-B had been given over almost entirely to FGLI casualties and most of
the staff were Tralthan also, which meant that some of the patients could be
reassured by nurses speaking their own language. Conway refused to think of the
other casualties who did not have this advantage. He had been assigned
Thornnastor's wards. One thing at a time.
When he reached O'Mara's office the Major wasn't there. Carrington, one of
his assistants, explained that O'Mara was busy trying to match up patients and
staff into species wherever possible, and that he wanted to see Conway
immediately the Doctor was finished in the Tralthan wards. Carrington added that
as communications were either dead or tied up with e-ts yelling gibberish at
each other would he mind either reporting back here or remaining where he was so
that the Major could find him. Ten minutes later Conway had the tape he wanted
and was on his way to Four-B.
He had taken FGLI tapes before and they weren't too bad. There was a
tendency for him to feel awkward at having to walk on only two feet instead of
six, and he wanted to move his head and neck about to follow moving objects
instead of merely swiveling his eyes. But it was not until he reached the ward
that he realized how fully his Tralthan mind partner had settled in. The rows of
Tralthan patients became his most immediate and pressing concern, while only a
small part of his mind was engaged with the problem of the Tralthan nurses who
were obviously close to panic and whose words, for some odd reason, he could not
understand. For the Earth-human nurses-puny, shapeless and unlovely bags of
dough-he felt only impatience.
Conway went over to the group of shapeless and unlovely bags, although to
the human portion of his mind a couple of them looked very shapely indeed, and
said, "Give me your attention, please. I have a Tralthan tape which will enable
me to treat these FGLJs, but the Translator breakdown means I can't talk to them
or the Tralthan staff. You girls will have to help with the preliminary
examinations and in the theater."
They were all staring at him and losing their fear at being told what to
do again by someone in authority, even though they were being told to do the
impossible. There were forty-seven FGLI patients in the ward, which included
eight new arrivals needing immediate attention. There were only three Earth-
human nurses.
"The FGLI staff and yourselves can't talk now," he went on after a
moment's hesitation, "but you use the same system of medical notation. Some
method of communication can be worked out. It will be slow and roundabout, of
course, but you must let them know what we are doing and get their help.
"Wave your arms," he ended, "draw pictures. Above all, use your pretty
little heads."
Soft soap at a time like this, he thought ashamedly. But it was all he
could think of at the moment, he wasn't a psychologist like O'Mara...
He had dealt with four of the most urgent cases when Mannon arrived with
another FGLJ in a stretcher held to the floor with magnets. The patient was
Thornnastor and it was immediately obvious that the Diagnostician would be
immobilized for a long time to come.
Mannon gave details of Thornnastor's injuries and what he had done about
them, then went on, ". . . Seeing that you have the monopoly on Tralthans you'd
better handle its post-op nursing. And this is the sanest and quietest ward in
the hospital, dammit. What's your secret? Boyish charm, a bright idea, or have
you access to a bootleg Translator?"
Conway explained what he was trying to do about the mixed species nurses.
"Ordinarily I don't hold with nurses and doctors passing notes during an
op," Mannon said. His face was gray with fatigue, his attempt at humor little
more than a conditioned reflex. "But it seemed to work for you. I'll pass the
idea on."
They maneuvered Thornnastor's vast body into one of the padded frameworks
used as beds for FGLIs in weightless conditions, then Mannon said, "I've got an
FGLI tape, too. Needed it for Thorny, here. Now I've got two QCQLs lined up.
Didn't know there was any such beastie until today, but O'Mara has the tape.
It's a suit job, that gunk they breathe would kill anything that walks, crawls
or flies, excluding them. They're both conscious, too, and I can't talk to them.
I can see I'm going to have fun."
Suddenly his shoulders drooped and the muscles holding up the corners of
his mouth gave up the fight. He said dully, "I wish you'd think of something,
Conway. In wards like this where the patients and some nurses are of the same
classification it isn't too bad. Relatively, that is. But other places where the
casualties and staff are completely mixed, and where singletons among the e-t
staff have become casualties in the bombardment, things are rough."
Conway had heard the bombardment, a continuous and irregular series of
crashes that had been transmitted through the metal of the hospital as if
someone was beating on a discordant gong. He had heard them and tried not to
think about them, for he knew that the staff were becoming casualties and the
casualties that the staff had been taking care of were becoming casualties twice
over.
"I can imagine," Conway said grimly. "But with Thornnastor's wards to look
after I've plenty to do-"
"Everybody has plenty to do!" Mannon said sharply, "but someone will have
to come up with something quick!"
What do you want me to do about it? Conway thought angrily at Mannon's
receding back, then he turned to his next patient.
For the past few hours something distinctly odd had been happening in
Conway's mind. It had begun with an increasingly strong feeling that he almost
knew what the Tralthan nurses in the ward were saying. This he put down to the
fact that the FGLI tape he had taken-the complete memory record of an eminent
physiologist of that race-had given him a lot of data on Tralthan attitudes and
expressions and tones of voice. He had never noticed the effect before-probably,
he supposed, because he had never had to deal with so many Tralthans in so short
a time before, and he had always had a Translator anyway. But working with
mainly Tralthan patients had caused the FGLI recorded personality to gain
greater than usual prominence at the expense of the human personality.
There was no struggle for possession of his mind, no conflict in the
process. It happened naturally because he was being forced to do so much FGLI
type thinking. When he did have occasion to speak to an Earth human nurse or
patient, he had to concentrate hard if the first few words they spoke were not
to sound like gibberish to him.
And now he was beginning to hear and understand Tralthan talking.
It was far from perfect, of course. For one thing the elephantine hootings
and trumpetings were being filtered through human rather than Tralthan ears to
the FGLI within his mind, and suffered distortion and change of pitch
accordingly. The words tended to be muffled and growly, but he did get some of
them, which meant that he possessed a Translator of sorts. It was a strictly
one-way affair, of course. Or was it?
When he was preparing the next case for the theater he decided to try
talking back.
His FGLI alter ego knew how the words should sound, he knew how to work
his own vocal cords, and the Earth-human voice was reputed to be one of the most
versatile instruments in the Galaxy. Conway took a deep breath and gave forth.
The first attempt was disastrous. It ended in an uncontrollable fit of
coughing on his part and spread alarm and consternation for the length and
breadth of the ward. But with the third attempt he got through- one of the
Tralthan nurses answered him! After that it was just a matter of time until he
had enough of the more important directions off pat, and subsequent operations
proceeded more quickly, efficiently and with enormously increased chances for
the patient.
The Earth-human nurses were greatly impressed by the odd noises issuing
from Conway's overworked throat. At the same time they seemed to see an element
of humor in the situation...
"Well, well," said a familiar, irascible voice behind him, "a ward full of
happy, smiling patients, with the Good Doctor keeping up morale by doing animal
impressions. What the blazes do you think you're doing?"
O'Mara, Conway saw with a shock, was really angry-not just playing his
usual, short-tempered self. In the circumstances it would be better to answer
the question and ignore the rhetoric.
"I'm looking after Thornnastor's patients, plus some new arrivals," Conway
said quietly. "The Corpsmen and FGLI patients have been taken care of, and I was
about to ask you for a DBLF tape for the Kelgians who have just come in."
O'Mara snorted. "I'll send down a Kelgian doctor to take care of that," he
said angrily, "and your nurses can take care of the others for the time being.
You don't seem to realize that this is one level out of three-hundred eighty-
four, Doctor Conway. That there are ward patients urgently in need of the
simplest treatment or medication, and they won't get it because the staff
concerned whistle while they cheep. That the casualties are piling up around the
locks, some of them in corridors which have been opened to space. Those pressure
litters won't supply air forever, you know, and the people in them can't be
feeling very happy...
"What do you want me to do?" said Conway.
For some reason this made O'Mara angrier. He said bitingly, "I don't know,
Doctor Conway. I am a psychologist. I can no longer act effectively because most
of my patients no longer speak the same language. Those who do I've tried to
chivvy into thinking of something to get us out of this mess. But they're all
too busy treating the sick in their own neighborhood to think of the hospital as
a whole. They want to leave it to the Big Brains...
"In these circumstances," Conway put in, "a Diagnostician seems to be the
logical person to come up with a bright idea."
O'Mara's anger was being explained, Conway thought. It must be pretty
frustrating for a psychologist who could neither listen or talk to his patients.
But the anger seemed almost personal, as if Conway himself had fallen down on
the job in some fashion.
"Thornnastor is out of the picture," O'Mara said, lowering his voice
slightly. "You were probably too busy to know that the other two Diagnosticians
who stayed behind were killed earlier today. Among the Senior Physicians,
Harkness, Irkultis, Mannon-"
"Mannon! Is he. . .
"I thought you might have known about him," O'Mara said almost gently,
"since it happened just two levels away. He was working on two QCQLs when the
theater was opened up. A piece of flying metal ruptured his suit. He's
decompressed, and before that poison they use for air escaped completely he
breathed some of it. But he'll live."
Conway found that he had been holding his breath. He said, "I'm glad."
"Me, too," said O'Mara gruffly. "But what I started to say was that there
are no Diagnosticians left and no Senior Physicians other than yourself, and the
place is in a mess. As the senior surviving medical officer in the hospital,
what do you plan to do about it?"
He stood watching Conway, and waiting.
CHAPTER 20
Conway had thought that nothing could make him feel worse than the realization
some hours previously that the Translator system had broken down. He didn't want
this responsibility, the very thought of it scared him to death. Yet there had
been times when he'd dreamed of being Sector General's director and having
absolute control over all things medical within the gigantic organization. But
in those dreams the hospital had not been a dying, war-torn behemoth that was
virtually paralyzed by the breakdown of communications between its separate and
vital organs, nor had it bristled with death-dealing weapons, nor had it been
criminally understaffed and horribly overcrowded with patients.
Probably these were the only circumstances which would allow someone like
himself to become Director of a hospital like this, Conway told himself sadly.
He wasn't the best available, he was the only one available. Even so it gave him
a quite indescribable feeling, compounded of fear, anger and pride, that he was
to be its head for the remaining days or weeks of its life.
Conway gave a quick look around his ward, at the orderly if uneven rows of
Tralthan and Earth-human beds and at the quietly efficient staff. He had made it
this way. But he was beginning to see that he had been hiding himself down here,
that he had been running away from his responsibilities.
"I do have an idea," he said suddenly to O'Mara. "It isn't a good idea,
and I think we ought to go to your office to talk about it, because you'll
probably object to it, loudly, and that might disturb the patients."
O'Mara looked at him sharply. When he spoke the anger had gone from his
voice so that it was merely normally sarcastic again. He said, "I find all your
ideas objectionable, Doctor. It's because I've got such an orderly mind."
On the way to O'Mara's office they passed a group of high-ranking Monitor
officers and the Major told him that they were part of Dermod's staff who were
preparing to shift tactical command into the hospital. At the moment Dermod was
commanding from Vespasian. But even the capital ships were taking a beating now,
and the fleet commander had already had Domitian not quite shot from under
him...
When they arrived Conway said, "It isn't such a hot idea, and seeing those
Corpsmen on the way up here has given me a better one. Suppose we ask Dermod to
let us use his ship Translators.. .
O'Mara shook his head. "It won't work," he said. "I thought of that idea,
too. It seems the only Translator computers of any use to us are on the big
ships, and they are such an integral part of the structure that it would
practically wreck the ship to take one out. Besides, for our absolute minimum
needs we would require twenty capital ship computers. We haven't got twenty
capital ships left, and what we do have Dermod says he has a much better use
for.
"Now what was your other not very good idea?"
Conway told him.
When he had finished, O'Mara looked at him steadily for nearly a minute.
Finally he said, "Consider your idea objected to, but strongly. Consider, if you
like, that I jumped up and down and pounded the desk, because that is what I'd
be doing if I wasn't so blasted tired. Don't you realize what you'd be letting
yourself in for?"
From somewhere below them came a tearing crash with ridiculous, gong-like
overtones. Conway jerked involuntarily, then said, "I think so. There will be a
lot of mental confusion and discomfort, but I hope to avoid most of it by
letting the tape entity take over almost completely until I have what I need,
then I partly suppress it and do the translation. That was how it worked with
the Tralthan tape and there's no reason why it shouldn't work with DBLFs or any
of the others. The DBLF language should be a cinch, it being easier to moan like
a Kelgian than hoot like a Tralthan. .
He would not have to stay in any one place for very long, Conway hoped,
only long enough to sort out the local translation problems. Some of the e-t
sounds would be difficult to reproduce orally, but he had an idea for modifying
certain musical instruments which might take care of that. And he would not be
the only walking Translator, there were still e-t and human doctors who could
help by taking one or two tapes. Some of them might have done so already, but
had not thought of using them for translation yet. As he talked Conway's tongue
was having a hard job to keep up with his racing mind.
"Just a minute," said O'Mara at one point. "You keep talking about letting
one personality come to the fore, then suppressing it, then bringing out two
together and so on. You might find that you haven't that much control. Multiple
physiology tapes are tricky, and you've never had more than two before at any
one time. I have your records."
O'Mara hesitated for a moment, then went on seriously, "What you get is
the recorded memories of an e-t high in the medical profession on its home
planet. It isn't an alien entity fighting for possession of your mind, but
because its memory and personality are impressed alongside your own you may be
panicked into thinking that it is trying to take over. Some of our tapes were
taken from very aggressive individuals, you see.
"Odd things happen to doctors who take a number of longterm tapes for the
first time," O'Mara went on. "Pains, skin conditions, perhaps organic
malfunctionings develop. All have a psychosomatic basis, of course, but to the
person concerned they hurt just as much as the real thing. These disturbances
can be controlled, even negated, by a strong mind. Yet a mind with strength
alone will break under them in time. Flexibility allied with strength is
required, also something to act as a mental anchor, something that you must find
for yourself...
"Suppose I agree to this," he ended abruptly, "how many will you need?"
Conway thought quickly. Tralthan, Kelgian, Melfan, Nidian, the ambulating
plants he had met before going to Etla, who also had remained behind, and the
beasties Mannon had been treating when he was knocked out of it. He said, "FGLI,
DBLF, ELNT, Nidian-DBDG, AACP and QCQL. Six."
O'Mara compressed his lips. "I wouldn't mind if it was a Diagnostician
doing this," he objected, "because they are used to splitting their minds six
ways. But you are just-"
"The senior medical officer of the hospital," Conway finished for him,
grinning.
"Hm," said O'Mara.
In the silence they could hear human voices and a peculiar, alien gabbling
go past in the corridor outside. Whoever was making the noise must have been
shouting very loud because the Major's office was supposed to be soundproof.
"All right," said O'Mara suddenly, "you can try it. But I don't want to
have deal with you in my professional capacity, and that is a much stronger
possibility than you seem to think. We're too short of doctors to have you
immobilizing yourself in a straight-jacket, so I'm going to set a watchdog on
you. We'll add GLNO to your list."
"Prilicla!"
"Yes. Being an empath it has had a hard time with the sort of emotional
radiation that is going around recently, and I've had to keep it under sedation.
But it will be able to keep a mental eye on you, and probably help you, too.
Move over to the couch."
Conway moved to the couch and O'Mara fitted the helmet. Then the Major
began to talk softly, sometimes asking questions, sometimes just talking. Conway
should be unconscious for a multiple transfer, he said, he should in fact sleep
for at least four hours for the best results, and he needed sleep anyway.
Probably, Q'Mara said, he had thought up this whole, harebrained scheme just to
have a legitimate excuse to sleep. He had a big job ahead, the psychologist told
him quietly, and he would really need to be in seven places as well as being
seven people at once, so that a sleep would do him good...
"It won't be too bad," Conway said, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"I'll stay in any one place only long enough to learn a few basic words and
phrases that I can teach to the nursing staff. Just enough so they'll understand
when an e-t surgeon says 'Scalpel,' or 'Forceps' or 'Stop breathing down the
back of my neck, Nurse...'"
The last words that Conway heard clearly were O'Mara saying, "Hang onto
your sense of humor, lad. You're going to need it..
He awoke in a room that was too large and too small, alien in six
different ways and at the same time completely familiar. He did not feel rested.
Clinging to the ceiling by six pipe stem legs was a tiny, enormous, fragile,
beautiful, disgustingly insectile creature that reminded him of his worst
nightmares the amphibious cllels he used to hunt at the bottom of his private
lake for breakfast, and many other things including a perfectly ordinary GLNO
Cinrusskin like himself. It was beginning to quiver slightly in reaction to the
emotional radiation he was producing. All of him knew that the GLNOs from
Cinruss were empaths.
Fighting his way to the surface of a maelstrom of alien thoughts, memories
and impressions Conway decided that it was time to go to work. Prilicla was
immediately available for the first test of his idea. He began searching for and
bringing up the GLNO memories and experiences, sifting through a welter of alien
data for the type of information which is not consciously remembered but is
constantly in use-data on the Cinrusskin language.
No, not the Cinrusskin language, he reminded himself sharply, his
language. He had to think and feel and listen like a GLNO. Gradually he began to
do it...
And it was not pleasant.
He was a Cinrusskin, a member of a fragile, low-gravity, insect race of
empaths. The handsome, delicately marked exoskeleton and the youthful,
iridescent sheen of Prilicla's not quite atrophied wings were now things which
he could properly appreciate, and the way Prilicla's mandibles quivered in
sudden concern at his distress. For Conway was a member of an empathic race, all
the memories and experience of his GLNO life were those of a normally happy and
healthy empath, but now he was an empath no more. He could see Prilicla, but the
faculty which let him share the other's emotions, and subtly colored every word,
gesture and expression so that for two Cinrusskins to be within visual range was
to be unalloyed pleasure for both, was missing. He could remember having
empathetic contact, remember having it all his life, but now he was little more
than a deaf mute.
His human brain did not possess the empathetic faculty, and it was not
bestowed by filling his mind with memories of having had it.
Prilicla made a series of clicking, buzzing sounds. Conway, who had never
spoken with the GLNO other than by means of the toneless and emotion-filtering
process of Translation, heard it say "I'm sorry" in a voice full of concern and
pity.
In return Conway tried to make the soft trill and click which was
Prilicla's name, the true sound of the Earth-human word "Prilicla" being only a
clumsy approximation. On the fifth attempt he succeeded in making something
which was close to the sound he wanted.
"That is very good, friend Conway," Prilicla said warmly. "I had not
considered this idea of yours possible. Can you understand me?"
Conway sought the word-sounds he needed, then carefully began to form
them. "Thank you," he said, "and yes."
They tried more difficult phrases then, technical words to put across
obtuse medical and physiological details. Sometimes Conway was able to do it,
sometimes not. His was at best only the crudest of pidgin Cinrus skin, but he
persevered. Then suddenly there was an interruption.
"O'Mara here," said a voice from his room communicator. "You should be
awake now so here is the latest position, Doctor. We are still under attack, but
this has eased off somewhat since more volunteer e-ts arrived to reinforce us.
These are Melfans, some more Tralthans and a force of Illensan chlorine-
breathers. So you're going to have PVSJs to worry about, too. Then inside the
hospital..
There followed a detailed breakdown of casualties and available staff into
species, location and numbers, with further data on problems peculiar to each
section and their degree of urgency.
..... It's for you to decide where to start," O'Mara went on, "and the
sooner the better. But in case you are still feeling confused I'll repeat-"
"No need," said Conway, "I got it."
"Good. How do you feel?"
"Awful. Horrible. And very peculiar."
"That," said O'Mara dryly, "is in all respects a normal reaction. Off."
Conway released the strapping which held him to the bed and swung his legs
out. Immediately he stiffened, unable to let go. Many of the beings inhabiting
his mind were terrified by weightless conditions and the reaction was
instinctive. Because of this it was very difficult to counter, and he had a
moment of sheer panic when he discovered that his feet would not stick to the
ceiling the way Prilicla's did. And when he did relax his grip on the edge of
the bed he found that he had been holding on with an appendage that was pallid
and flabby and horribly different to the clean, hard outlines of the mandible he
had expected to see. But somehow he managed to cross his room into the corridor
and traverse it for a distance of fifty yards.
Then he was stopped.
An irate medical orderly in Corps green wanted to know why he was out of
bed and what ward he had come from. The Corpsman's language was colorful and not
at all respectful.
Conway became aware of his large, gross, fragile, loathsome pink body. A
perfectly good body, part of his mind insisted, if a little on the skinny side.
And this shapeless, puny, monstrosity was encircled, where it was joined by its
two lower appendages, by a piece of white fabric which served no apparent
purpose. The body looked ridiculous as well as alien.
Oh damn! thought Conway, struggling up through a smother of alien
impressions, I forgot to dress.
CHAPTER 21
Conway's first act was to install one representative from each species
room. A semblance of order had already been restored to the network by posting
Corpsmen at every intercom unit to forbid their use-if the would-be user was not
too persistent and well-muscled-to e-ts. This meant that Earth-human personnel
could talk to each other. But with e-ts on the switchboard, calls by other
species could be answered and redirected. Conway spent nearly two hours, more
time than he ever spent anywhere else, putting himself en rapport with the e-t
operators and devising a list of synonyms which would allow them to pass simple-
very simple-messages to each other. He had two Monitor language experts with him
on it, and it was they who suggested that he made a taped record of this seven-
way Rosetta stone, and make others to fit the conditions he would find in the
wards.
Wherever he went after that Prilicla, the language experts and a Corps
radio technician trailed behind, in addition to the nursing staff he accumulated
from time to time. It was an impressive procession, but Conway was in no mood to
appreciate it just then.
Earth-human medical staff made up more than half of the present
complement, but Earth-human Monitor casualties outnumbered the e-ts by thirty to
one. On some levels one nurse had a whole ward of Corpsmen in her charge, with a
few Tralthans or Kelgians trying to assist her. In such cases Conway's job was
simply that of arranging a minimum of communication between the human and e-t
nurses. But there were other instances when the staff were ELNTs and FGLIs and
the patients in their charge were DBLF, QCQL and Earth-human, or Earth-humans in
charge of ELNTs, or the plant-like AACPs looking after a mixed bag of
practically everything. The simple answer would have been to move the patients
into the charge of staff of their own species-except that they could not be
moved for the reason that they were too ill, that there was no staff available
to move them, or that there were no nurses of that particular species. In these
cases Conway's job was infinitely more complex.
The shortage of nursing staff of all species was chronic. With regard to
doctors the position was desperate. He called O'Mara.
"We haven't enough doctors," he said. "I think nurses should be given more
discretion in the diagnosis and treatment of casualties. They should do as they
think best without waiting for authority from a doctor who is too busy to
supervise anyway. The casualties are still coming in and I can't see any other
way of-"
"Do it, you're the boss," O'Mara broke in harshly.
"Right," said Conway, nettled. "Another thing. I've had offers by a lot of the
doctors to take two or three tapes for translation purposes in addition to the
tape they draw for current ops. And some of the girls have volunteered to do the
same- "No!" said O'Mara. "I've had some of your volunteers up here and
they aren't suitable. The doctors left to us are either very junior interns or
Corps medical officers and e-ts who came with the volunteer forces. None of them
have experience with multiple physiology tapes. It would render them permanently
insane within the first hour.
"As for the girls," he went on, a sardonic edge in his voice, "you have
noticed by this time that the female Earth-human DBDG has a rather peculiar
mind. One of its peculiarities is a deep, sex-based mental fastidiousness. No
matter what they say they will not, repeat not, allow alien beings to apparently
take over their pretty little brains. If such should happen, severe mental
damage would result. No again. Off."
Conway resumed his tour. It was beginning to get him down now. Even though
his technique was improving the process of Translation was an increasing strain.
And in the relatively easy periods between translations he felt as if there were
seven different people all arguing and shouting inside his brain, and his own
was very rarely the loudest voice. His throat was raw from making noises that it
had never been designed for, and he was hungry.
All seven of him had different ideas for assuaging that hunger,
revoltingly different ideas. Since the hospital's catering arrangement had
suffered as badly as everything else there was no wide selection from which he
could have picked neutral items that would not have offended, or at least not
completely nauseated, his alter egos. He was reduced to eating sandwiches with
his eyes shut, in case he would find out what was in them, and drinking water
and glucose. None of him objected to water.
Eventually an organization for the reception and treatment of casualties
was operating again in all the habitable levels-it was slow, but it was
operating. And now that there were facilities for treating them Conway's next
job was to move the patients who were currently jamming the approaches to the
airlocks. There were actually pressure-litters anchored to the outer hull, he
had been told.
Prilicla objected.
For a few minutes he tried to find out why. One of Prilicla's objections
was that Conway was tired, which he countered by telling it that everybody in
the hospital, including Prilicla itself, was tired. The other objections were
either too weak or too subtle for the limited communications available. Conway
ignored them and headed for the nearest lock.
The problems here were very similar to those inside the hospital- the
major disadvantage being his spacesuit radio which hampered translation
considerably. But to offset this he could get around much more quickly. The
tractor beam men who handled the wrecks and wreckage around the hospital could
whisk his whole party from point to point within seconds.
But he discovered that the Melfan segment of his mind, which had been
seriously troubled by the weightless conditions inside the hospital, was utterly
terrified outside it. The Melfan ELNT who had produced the tape had been an
amphibious, crab-like being who lived mainly under water and had had no
experience whatever of space. Conway had to fight down the panic which
threatened his whole, multi-tenanted mind as well as the fear which all of him
felt at the battle going on above his head.
O'Mara had told him that the attack was easing off, but Conway could not
imagine anything more savage than what he was seeing.
Between the warring ships no missiles were being used-the attackers and
defenders were too condensed, too inextricably tangled up. Like tiny, fast-
moving models, so sharply defined that he felt he could reach up and grab one,
the ships wheeled through their wild, chaotic dance. Singly and in groups they
lunged, whirled, took frantic evasive action, broke formation or had their
formations broken, reformed and attacked again. It was endless, implacable and
almost hypnotic. There was, of course, no noise. What missiles were launched
were directed at the hospital, a target too big to miss, and they were felt
rather than heard.
Between the ships, tractor and pressor beams jabbed out like solid,
invisible fingers, slowing or deflecting the target ship so that a rattler could
be focused. Sometimes three or more vessels would converge on a single target
and tear it apart within seconds. Sometimes a well-directed rattler would rip
apart the artificial gravity system an instant before it disrupted the drive.
With the crew hammered flat by high acceleration the ship would go tumbling out
of the fight, unless someone put another rattler on it or a tractor man on
Sector General's hull pulled it down to look for survivors.
Whether or not there were any survivors the wreck could be used...
The once smooth and shining hull was a mass of deep, jagged-edged craters
and buckled plating. And because the missile lighting did strike twice, or even
three times, in the same place-that was how the Translator computer had been
destroyed-the craters were being plugged with wreckage in an effort to keep the
missiles from exploding deeper inside the hospital. Any type of wreckage served,
the tractor men weren't choosy.
Conway was on a tractor-beam mount when one of the wrecks was pulled in.
He saw the rescue team shooting from the shelter of the airlock, circle the hulk
carefully, then enter. About ten minutes later they came out towing. . .
something.
"Doctor," said the NCO in charge of the installation, "I think I goofed.
My men say the beastie they've pulled out of that wreck is new to them and want
you to have a look. I'm sorry, but one wreck is like any other wreck. I don't
think it is one of ours. .
Six parts of Conway's mind contained personalities whose memories did not
contain data on the war and they did not think it mattered. As the minority
opinion Conway didn't think it mattered either, but he knew that neither the
sergeant nor himself had time to start an ethical debate on it. He had a quick
look, then said, "Take it inside. Level Two-forty, Ward Seven."
Since being given the tapes Conway had been forced to watch helplessly
while patients-casualties whose condition was such that they merited a fully
qualified Senior Physician at least to perform the surgery-were operated on by
tired, harassed, but well-intentioned beings who just did not have the required
skill. They had done the job as best they could because there was nobody else to
do it. Conway had wanted to step in many times, but had reminded himself and
been reminded by Prilicla and the rest of his entourage, that he had to consider
the Big Picture. Reorganizing the hospital then had been more important than any
one patient. But now he felt that he could stop being an organizer and go back
to being a doctor.
This was a new species to the hospital. O'Mara would not have a tape on
its physiology, and even if the patient recovered consciousness it would not be
able to cooperate because the Translators were dead. Conway had got to take this
one and nobody was going to talk him out of it.
Ward Seven was adjacent to the section where a Kelgian military doctor and
Murchison had been working wonders with a mixed bag of FGLI, QCQL and Earth-
human patients, so he asked them both to assist. Conway put the new arrival's
classification as TRLH, being aided in this by the fact that the patient's
spacesuit was transparent as well as flexible. Had the suit been less flexible
the being's injuries would have been less severe, but then the suit would have
cracked instead of bending with the force which had smashed against it.
Conway bored a tiny hole in the suit, drew off a sample of the internal
atmosphere and resealed it. He put the sample in the analyzer.
"And I thought the QCQLs were bad," said Murchison when he showed her the
result. "But we can reproduce it. You will need to replace the air here, I
expect?"
Conway said, "Yes, please."
They climbed into their operating suits-regulation light-weight pattern
except that the arms and hands sections ended in a fine, tight-fitting sheath
that was like a second skin. The air was replaced by the patient's atmosphere
and they began cutting it out of its suit.
The TRLH had a thin carapace which covered its back and curved down and
inward to protect the central area of its underside. Four thick, single-jointed
legs projected from the uncovered sections and a large, but again lightly boned
head contained four manipulatory appendages, two recessed but extensible eyes
and two months, one of which had blood coming from it. The being must have been
hurled against several metal projections. Its shell was fractured in six places
and in one area it had been almost shattered, the pieces being severely
depressed. In this area it was losing blood rapidly. Conway began charting the
internal damage with the X-ray scanner, then a few minutes later he signaled
that he was ready to start.
He wasn't ready, but the patient was bleeding to death.
The internal arrangement of organs was different from anything he had
previously encountered, and different from anything in the experience of the six
personalities sharing his mind. But from the QCQL he received pointers on the
probable metabolism of beings who breathed such highly corrosive air, from the
Melfan data on the possible methods of exploring the damaged carapace, and the
FGLI, DBLF, GLNO and AACP contributed their experience. But it was not always
helpful-at every stage they literally shrieked warnings to be careful, so much
so that for seconds at a time Conway stood with his hands shaking, unable to go
on. He was probing the recorded memories deeply now, hitherto it had only been
for data on language, and everything was coming up.
The private nightmares and neuroses of the individuals, triggered off by
being so inextricably mixed with the similar alien nightmares around them, and
all mounting, growing worse by the minutes. The beings who had produced the
tapes did not all have e-t hospital experience, they were not accustomed to
alien points of view. The proper thing was to keep reminding himself that they
were not separate personalities, Conway told himself, but merely a mass of alien
data of different types. But he was horribly, stupidly tired and he was
beginning to lose control of what was going on in his mind. And still the
memories welled up in a dark, turgid flood. Petty, shameful, secret memories
mostly concerned with sex-and that, in e-ts, was alien, so alien that he wanted
to scream. He found suddenly that he was bent over, sweating, as if there was a
heavy weight on his back.
He felt Murchison gripping his arm. "What's wrong, Doctor?" she said
urgently. "Can I help?"
He shook his head, because for a second he didn't know how to form words
in his own language, but he kept looking at her for all of ten seconds. When he
turned back he had a picture of her in his mind as she was to him, not as a
Tralthan or a Melfan or a Kelgian saw her. The concern in her eyes had been for
him alone. At times Conway had had secret thoughts of his own about Murchison,
but they were normal, human thoughts. He hugged them to him tightly and for a
time he was in control again. Long enough to finish with the patient.
Then suddenly his mind was tearing itself apart into seven pieces and he
was falling into the deepest, darkest pits of even different Hells. He did not
know that his limbs stiffened or bent or twisted as if something alien had
separate possession of each one. Or that Murchison dragged him out and held him
while Prilicla, at great danger to life and its fragile, spidery limbs, gave him
the shot which knocked him out.
CHAPTER 22
The intercom buzzer awakened Conway, instantly but without confusion in the
pleasant, familiar, cramped surroundings of his own room. He felt rested and
alert and ready for breakfast, and the hand he used to push back the sheets had
five pink fingers on it and felt just right that way. But then he became aware
of a certain strangeness which made him hesitate for a moment. The place was
quiet...
"To save you the where-am-I-what-time-is-it? routine," O'Mara's voice came
wearily, "you have not been consciously with us for two days. During that time,
early yesterday, to be exact, the attack ceased and has not yet been resumed and
I did a lot of work on you. For your own good you were given a hypno treatment
to forget everything, so you will not be eternally grateful for what I've done
for you. How do you feel now?"
"Fine," said Conway enthusiastically. "I can't feel any. . . I mean, there
seems to be plenty of room in my head. .
O'Mara grunted. "The obvious retort is that your head is empty, but I
won't make it."
The Chief Psychologist, despite his attempt to maintain his usual dry,
sardonic manner, sounded desperately tired-his words were actually slurred with
weariness. But O'Mara, Conway knew, was not the type who became tired-he might,
if driven long and hard enough, succumb to mental fatigue. .
"The fleet commander wants a meeting with us in four hours time," O'Mara
went one, "so don't get involved with any cases between now and then. Things are
running fairly smoothly now, anyway, so you can afford to play hooky for a
while. I'm going to sleep. Off."
But it was very difficult to spend four hours doing nothing, Conway found.
The main dining hall was jammed with Corpsmen-projector crews engaged on hull
defense, replacements for the defending ships, maintenance men and Medical
Division personnel who were supplementing the civilian medical staff.
Conversation was loud and nervous and too cheerful, and revolved around the past
and possible future aspects of the attack.
Apparently the Monitor force had practically been pushed down onto the
outer hull when an e-t force of volunteer Illensans had emerged from hyperspace
just outside the enemy globe. Illensan ships were big and badly designed and
looked like capital ships even though they only had the armament of a light
cruiser, and the sight of ten of them popping out of nowhere had put the enemy
off his stride. The attacking force had pulled back temporarily to regroup and
the Monitors, with nothing to regroup with, were concentrating on increasing the
armament of their last line of defense, the hospital itself. But even though it
concerned him as closely as anyone else in the room, Conway felt averse to
joining in the cheerfully morbid conversations.
Since O'Mara had erased all the physiology tapes and indulged in some
curative tinkering with his mind, the nightmare of two days ago and the e-t
language data he had gained had faded, so he could not indulge in polite
conversation with the e-ts scattered about the hall. And the Earth-human nurses
were being monopolized by Corpsmen, usually at the rate of ten or twelve to one,
with an obvious improvement in morale in both directions. Conway ate quickly and
left, feeling that his own morale was in need of improvement, too.
Which made him wonder suddenly if Murchison was on duty, off duty or
asleep. If she was asleep there was nothing he could do, but if she was on duty
he could very soon take her off it, and when she was off...
Strangely he felt only the slightest prick lings of conscience over this
shameless abuse of his authority for his own selfish ends. In time of war, he
thought, people became less bound by their professional and moral codes.
Ethically he was going to the dogs.
But Murchison was just going off duty when he arrived in her ward, so he
did not have to openly commit the crime he had been intent on committing. In the
same loud, too-cheerful tone that he had considered so artificial when he had
heard it in the dining hall he asked if she had any previous engagement,
suggested a date, and muttered something horribly banal about all work and no
play...
"Previous engage. . . play. . . ! But I want to sleep!" she protested;
then in more reasonable tones, "You can't. . . I mean, where would we go, what
would we do? The place is a wreck. Would I have to change?"
"The recreation level is still there," Conway said, "and you look fine."
The regulation nurses uniform of blue, tight-fitting tunic and slacks- very
tight-fitting so as to ease the problem of climbing in and out of protective
suits-flattered Murchison, but she looked worn out. As she unhooked the broad
white belt and instrument pouches and removed her cap and hairnet Conway growled
deep in his throat, and immediately burst into a fit of coughing because it was
still tender from making e-t noises.
Murchison laughed, shaking out her hair and rubbing her cheeks to put some
color into them. She said brightly, "Promise you won't keep me out too late ?"
On the way to the recreation level it was difficult not to talk shop. Many
sections of the hospital had lost pressure so that in the habitable levels
overcrowding was severe-there was scarcely an air-filled corridor which was not
also filled with casualties. And this was a situation which none of them had
foreseen. They had not expected the enemy to use limited warfare on them. Had
atomic weapons been used there would not have been any overcrowding, or,
possibly, any hospital. Most of the time Conway was not listening to Murchison,
but she didn't seem to notice. Perhaps because she wasn't listening to him.
The recreation level was the same in detail as they remembered it, but the
details had been dramatically changed around. With the hospital's center of
gravity being above the recreation level what little attraction there was
upward, and all the loose material normally on the ground or in the bay had
collected against the roof, where it made a translucent chaos of sand-veined
water, air-pockets and trailing watery globes through which the submerged sun
shone a deep, rich purple.
"Oh, this is nice!" said Murchison. "And restful, sort of."
The lighting gave her skin a warm, dusky coloration that was wholly
indescribable, Conway thought, but nice. Her lips-soft purple, verging on black-
were parted slightly to reveal teeth which seemed almost iridescent, and her
eyes were large and mysterious and glowing.
"The word," he said, "is romantic."
They launched themselves gently into the vast room in the direction of the
restaurant. Below them the tree tops drifted past and they ran through a wisp of
fog-cooling steam produced by the warm, underwater sun which beaded their faces
and arms with moisture. Conway caught her hand and held it gently, but their
velocities were not exactly matching and they began to spin around their center
of gravity. Conway bent his elbow slowly, drawing her toward him, and their rate
of spin increased. Then he slid his other arm around her waist and pulled her
closer still.
She started to protest and then suddenly, gloriously, she was kissing him
and clinging to him as fiercely as he was to her, and the empty bay, cliffs, and
purple, watery sky was whirling madly around them.
In a calm, impersonal corner of his mind Conway thought that his head
would have been spinning anyway even if his body hadn't, it was that sort of
kiss. Then they spun gently into the cliff-top at the other side of the bay and
broke apart, laughing.
They used the artificial greenery to pull themselves toward the onetime
restaurant. It was dim inside, and during its slow fall ceiling ward a lot of
water had collected under the transparent roof and on the undersides of the
table canopies. Like some fragile, alien fruit it hung in clusters which stirred
gently at their passage or burst into hundreds of tiny silvery globes when they
blundered against a table. With the low ceiling and dim light it was difficult
to keep from knocking into things and soon the globes were all around them,
seeming to crowd in, throwing back a hundred tiny, distorted reflections of
Murchison and himself. It was like an alien dream world, Conway thought; and it
was a wish-fulfillment dream. The dark, lovely shape of Murchison drifting
beside him left no doubt about that.
They sat down at one of the tables, but carefully so as not to dislodge
the water in the canopy above them. Conway took her hand in his, the others
being needed to hold them onto their chairs, and said, "I want to talk to you.
She smiled, a little warily.
Conway tried to talk. He tried to say the things that he had rehearsed to
himself many times, but what came out was a disjointed hodge-podge. She was
beautiful, he said, and he didn't want to be friends and she was a stupid little
fool for staying behind. He loved her and wanted her and he would have been
happy spending months-not too many months, maybe-getting her in a corner where
she couldn't say anything but yes. But now there wasn't time to do things
properly. He thought about her all the time and even during the TRLH operation
it had been thinking about her that let him hang on until the end. And all
during the bombardment he had worried in case...
"I worried about you, too," Murchison broke in softly. "You were all over
the place and every time there was a hit... And you always knew exactly what to
do and. . . and I was afraid you would get yourself killed."
Her face was shadowed, her uniform clung damply. Conway felt his mouth
dry.
She said warmly, "You were wonderful that day with the TRLH. It was like
working with a Diagnostician. Seven tapes, O'Mara said. I.. . I asked him to
give me one, earlier, to help you out. But he said no because. . ." She
hesitated, and looked away. ". . . because he said girls are very choosy who
they let take possession of them. Their minds, I mean...
"How choosy?" said Conway thickly. "Does the choice exclude... friends?"
He leaned forward involuntarily as he spoke, letting go his hold on the
chair with his other hand. He drifted heavily up from the table, jarred the
canopy and touched one of the floating globes with his forehead. With the
surface tension broken it collapsed wetly all over his face. Spluttering he
brushed it away, knocking it into a cloud of tiny, glowing marbles. Then he saw
it.
It was the only harsh note in this dream world, a pile of unarmed missiles
occupying a dark corner of the room. They were held to the floor by clamps and
further secured with netting in case the clamps were jarred free by an
explosion. There was plenty of slack in the netting. Still holding onto
Murchison, he kicked himself over to it, searched until he found the edge of the
net, and pulled it up from the floor.
"We can't talk properly if we keep floating into the air," he said
quietly. "Come into my parlor. .."
Maybe the netting was too much like a spider's web, or his tone resembled
too closely that of a predatory spider. He felt her hesitate. The hand he was
holding was trembling.
"I. . . I know how you feel," she said quickly, not looking at him. "I
like you, too. Maybe more than that. But this isn't right. I know we don't have
any time, but sneaking down here like this and. . . it's selfish. I keep
thinking about all those men in the corridors, and the other casualties still to
come. I know it sounds stuffy, but we're supposed to think about other people
first. That's why-"
"Thank you," said Conway furiously. "Thank you for reminding me of my
duty."
"Oh, please!" she cried, and suddenly she was clinging to him again, her
head against his chest. "I don't want to hurt you, or make you hate me. I didn't
think the war would be so horrible. I'm frightened. I don't want you to be
killed and leave me all alone. Oh, please, hold me tight and. . . and tell me
what to do. .
Her eyes were glittering and it was not until one of the tiny points of
light floated away from them that he realized she was crying silently. He had
never imagined Murchison crying, somehow. He held her tightly for a long time,
then gently pushed her away from him.
Roughly, he said, "I don't hate you, but I don't want you to discuss my
exact feelings at the moment, either. Come on, I'll take you home."
But he didn't take her home. The alarm siren went a few minutes later and
when it stopped a voice on the PA was asking Doctor Conway to come to the
intercom.
CHAPTER 23
Once it had been Reception, with three fast-talking Nidians to handle the
sometimes complex problems of getting patients out of their ambulances and into
the hospital. Now it was Command Headquarters and twenty Monitor officers
murmuring tensely into throat mikes, their eyes glued to screens which showed
the enemy at all degrees of magnification from nil to five hundred. Two of the
three main screens showed sections of the enemy fleet, the images partly
obliterated by the ghostly lines and geometrical figures that was a tactical
officer trying to predict what they would do next. The other screen gave a wide-
angle view of the outer hull.
A missile came down like a distant shooting star, making a tiny flash and
throwing up in minute fountain of wreckage. The tearing, metallic crash which
reverberated through the room was out of all proportion to the image.
Dermod said, "They've withdrawn out of range of the heavy stuff mounted on
the hospital and are sending in missiles. This is the softening up process
designed to wear us down prior to the main attack. A counterattack by our
remaining mobile force would result in its destruction, they are so heavily
outnumbered that they can operate effectively only if backed by the defenses of
the hospital. So we have no choice but to soak up this stage as best we can and
save our strength for-"
"What strength?" said Conway angrily. Beside him O'Mara made a
disapproving noise, and across the desk the Fleet commander looked coldly at
him. When Dermod spoke it was to Conway, but he didn't answer the question.
"We can also expect small raids by fast, maneuverable units designed to
further unsettle us," he went on. "Your casualties will come from Corpsmen
engaged on hull defense, personnel from the defending ships, and perhaps enemy
casualties. Which brings me to a point which I would like cleared up. You seem
to be handling a lot of enemy wounded, Doctor, and you've told me that your
facilities are already strained to the limit. .
"How the blazes can you tell?" said Conway. Dermod's expression became
more frigid, but this time he answered the question.
"Because I have reports of patients lying beside each other finding that
the other one is talking gibberish, patients of the same physological type, that
is. What steps are you taking to-"
"None!" said Conway, so angry suddenly that he wanted to take this cold,
unfeeling martinet by the throat and shake some humanity into him.
At the beginning he had liked Dermod. He had thought him a thoughtful and
sensitive as well as a competent Fleet commander, but during the past few days
he had become the embodiment of the blind, coldly implacable forces which had
Conway and everyone else in the hospital trapped. Daily conferences between the
military and medical authorities in the hospital had been ordered since the last
attack had begun, and at all three of them Conway had found himself running
across the fleet commander with increasing frequency.
But when Conway snapped, the Fleet commander did not snap back. Dermod
merely looked at him with his eyes so bleak and distant that Conway felt that
the commander wasn't seeing him at all. And it did no good at all when O'Mara
advised him quietly to hold his tongue and not be so all-fired touchy-that
Dermod had a war to fight and he was doing the best he could, and that the
pressures he was under excused a certain lack of charm in his personality.
"Surely," said Dermod coldly, just as Conway had decided that he really
ought to be more patient with this cold-blooded, military creature, you are not
treating enemy casualties the same as our own...
"It is difficult," said Conway, speaking so quietly that O'Mara looked
suddenly worried, "to tell the difference. Subtle variations in spacesuit design
mean nothing to the nursing staff and myself. And when, as frequently happens,
the suit and underlying uniform is cut away the latter may be unidentifiable due
to the bleeding. Between the injection of anti-pain and unconsciousness the oral
noises they make are not easily translatable. And if there is any way to tell
the difference between a Corpsman and one of the enemy screaming, I don't want
to know about it.
He had started quietly, but when he ended he was close to shouting. I won't make
any such distinction between casualties and neither
will my staff! This is a hospital, damn you! Well isn't it?"
"Take it easy, son. It's still a hospital," said O'Mara gently.
"It is also," Dermod snapped, "a military base!"
"What I don't understand," O'Mara put in quickly, trying desperately to
pour on the oil, "is why the hell they don't finish us with atomic warheads. . .
Another hit, more distant this time, sent its tinny echoes through the
room.
"The reason they don't finish us off with an atomic bomb, Major," he
replied, with his eyes still locked with Conway's, "is because they must make a
conquest. The political forces involved demand it. The Empire must take and
occupy this outpost of the hated enemy, the Emperor's general must have a
triumph and not a pyrrhic victory, and subjugating the enemy and capturing his
territory, no matter how few or how little, can be made to look like a triumph
to the citizens of the Empire.
"Our own casualties are heavy," Dermod went on coldly. "A space battle
being what it is only ten percent of the casualties survive to be hospitalized
and we are fortunate both in having medical facilities immediately available and
in occupying a strong defensive position. The number of enemy casualties is much
higher than ours, my estimate would be twenty to one, so that if they were to
knock us out with an atomic missile now, when they could have done the same
thing at the very beginning without losing a man, some very awkward questions
will be asked within the Empire. If the Emperor can't answer them he might find
that the war, and all the fine, martial fervor he has built up, will backfire on
him..."
"Why don't you communicate with them?" Conway interrupted harshly. "Tell
them the truth about us, and tell them about the wounded here. You surely don't
expect to win this battle now. Why don't we surrender.
"We cannot communicate with them, Doctor," the commander said bitingly,
"because they won't listen to us. Or if they do listen they don't believe what
we say. They know, or think they know, what we did on Etla and what we are
supposed to be doing here. Telling them that we were really helping the Etlan
natives and that we have been forced to defend our hospital is no good. A series
of plagues swept Etla soon after we left and this establishment no longer
behaves, outwardly, that is, like a hospital. What we say to them has no
importance, it is what we do that counts. And we are doing exactly what their
Emperor has lead them to expect of us.
"If they were really thinking," he continued savagely, "they would wonder
at the large number of our e-ts who are helping us. According to them our e-ts
are downtrodden, subject races who are little more than slaves. The volunteers
who have come out to help us do not fight like slaves, but at the present stage
that is too subtle a thing to make any impression. They are thinking emotionally
instead of logically...
"And I'm thinking emotionally, too!" Conway broke in sharply. "I'm
thinking of my patients. The wards are full. They are lying in odd corners and
along corridors all over the place, with inadequate protection against pressure
loss . .
"You've lost the ability to think about anything but your patients,
Doctor!" Dermod snapped back. "It might surprise you to know that I think about
them, too, but I try not to be so maudlin about it. If I did think that way I
would begin to feel angry, begin to hate the enemy. Before I knew it I would
want revenge..
Another hit rang like a loud, discordant gong through the hospital. The
commander raised his voice, and kept on raising it.
You must know that the Monitor Corps is the police force for most of the
inhabited Galaxy, and keeping the peace within the Federation calls for the
constant application of the psychological and social sciences. In short, guiding
and molding opinion both on the individual and planetary population levels. So
the situation we have here, a gallant band of Corpsmen and doctors holding out
against the savage, unceasing attacks of an overwhelmingly superior enemy, is
one I could use. Even so it would take the Federation a long time to become
angry enough to mobilize for war, far too long to do us personally any good, but
think how we would be avenged, Doctor...
His voice was shaking now, his face white and tight with fury. He was
shouting.
"In an interstellar war planets cannot be captured, Doctor. They can only
be detonated. That stinking little Empire with its forty planets would be
stamped out, destroyed, completely obliterated... !"
O'Mara did not speak. Conway couldn't, nor could he take his eyes off
Dermod to see how the psychologist was reacting to this outburst. He hadn't
thought it possible for the commander to blow up like this and it was suddenly
frightening. Because Dermod's sanity and self control, like O'Mara's, was
something Conway had depended on even though he hated it.
"But the Corps is a police force, remember?" he raged on. "We are trying
to think of this as a disturbance, a riot on an interstellar scale where as
usual the casualties among the rioters outnumber those of the police. Personally
I think it is past the time when anything will make them see the truth and a
full-scale war is inevitable, but I do not want to hate them. This is the
difference, Doctor, between maintaining peace and waging war.
"And I don't want any sniveling, narrow-minded doctors, who have nothing
to worry about except their patients, reminding me of all the horrible ways my
men are dying. Trying to make me lose my perspective, making me hate people who
are no different to us except that they are being fed wrong information.
"And I don't care if you treat enemy and Corps wounded alike," he yelled,
trying to bring his voice down but not succeeding, "but you will listen when I
give orders concerning them. This is a military base and they are enemy
casualties. The ones who are in a condition to move must be guarded against the
possibility of them committing acts of sabotage. Now do you understand, Doctor?"
"Yes, sir," said Conway in a small voice.
When he left Reception with O'Mara a few minutes later Conway still had
the feeling of being charred around the edges. It was plain now that he had
gravely misjudged the fleet commander, and he should apologize for the hard
things he had been thinking about Dermod. Underneath all the ice Dermod was a
good man.
Beside him O'Mara said suddenly, "I like to see these cold, controlled
types blow off steam occasionally. Psychologically it is desirable, considering
the pressures he is under at the present time. I'm glad you finally made him
angry."
"What about me?" said Conway.
"You, Doctor, are not controlled at all," O'Mara replied sternly. "Despite
your new authority, which should make you set an example of tolerance and good
behavior at least, you are fast becoming a bad-tempered brat. Watch it, Doctor."
Conway had been looking for sympathy for the tongue-lashing Dermod had
given him, and a little consideration for the pressures he himself was under,
not criticism from another quarter. When O'Mara turned off toward his office a
few minutes later, Conway was still too angry to speak.
CHAPTER 24
Next day Conway did not get the chance to apologize to the Fleet commander-the
rioters launched their most vicious attack yet and both the Station Inspector
and the Police Surgeon were much too busy to talk. But calling the battle a
riot, Conway thought cynically, made no difference to the nature and number of
the casualties which flooded suddenly in, because it began with a near-
catastrophe for both sides.
The enemy force closed in, stepping up the missile bombardment to a
fantastic rate and englobing the hospital so tightly that there were times when
they came within a few hundred feet of the outer hull. Dermod's ships-Vespasian,
a Tralthan capital ship and the other smaller units remaining to him-dropped
back to anchor with tractors against the hospital, there being no space to
maneuver without obstructing the heavy armament below them. They settled and
with their lighter weapons strengthened the fixed defenses wherever possible.
But this must have been the move which the enemy commander had been
waiting for. With the rapidity possible only to a well-planned maneuver the
ranks of the attacking globe thinned, scattered and reformed over one small area
of the hull. On this area was concentrated the total firepower of three-quarters
of the entire enemy force.
A storm of missiles tore into the heavy plating, blasting away the
wreckage which plugged earlier damage and gouging into the more fragile inner
hull. Tractors and rattlers seized the still-settling wreckage, shaking it
viciously apart and pulling it away so that the missiles could gouge deeper
still. Monitor defenses took a frightful toll of the tightly packed ships, but
only for minutes. The tremendous concentration of fire battered them down,
hammered them flat, ripped and worried at them until they were one with the
other shifting masses of savaged men and metal. They left a section of the outer
hull completely undefended, and suddenly it became plain that this was not only
an attack but an invasion.
Under the covering fire of the massed attackers, three, giant, unarmed
ships were dropping ponderously toward the undefended section. Transports...
At once Vespasian was directed to fill the gap in the defenses. It shot
toward the point where the first transport was about to touch down, running the
gauntlet of Monitor as well as enemy fire and throwing everything it had as soon
as the target appeared above the curve of the hull...
There were several excuses given for what happened then. An error in
judgment by its pilot, a hit by one of the enemy-or even its own people's-
missiles which deflected it from course at exactly the wrong moment. But it was
never suggested that Captain Williamson deliberately rammed the enemy transport,
because Williamson was known to be a clear-headed, competent officer and a one-
to-one swap, even at this desperate stage of the battle, was a tactically stupid
move considering how the enemy outnumbered them.
Vespasian struck the larger but more lightly constructed transport near
its stern and seemed to go right through it before grinding silently to a halt.
Inside the wreckage a single, small explosion lit the fog of escaping air but
the two ships remained locked together, spinning slowly.
For a second everything seemed to stop. Then the Monitor fixed defenses
lashed out, ignoring all other targets if their projectors would bear on the
second descending transport. Within minutes rattlers had torn off plating in
three areas of its hull and were biting deeper. The transport withdrew
ponderously, losing air. The third one was already pulling back. The whole enemy
force was pulling back, but not very far. Only slightly diminished in intensity
the bombardment continued.
It was not by any stretch of the imagination a victory for the Monitor
Corps. The enemy had merely made an error of judgment, been a little premature.
The hospital required further softening up.
Tractor beams reached out and gently brought the spinning wreckage to a
halt and lowered it onto the ravaged hull. Corpsmen jetted out to look for
survivors and soon the casualties were coming in. But by roundabout routes,
because under the wrecked ships there now stretched other wreckage and other
rescue teams working to free patients who were casualties for the second and
third time...
Dr. Prilicla was with the rescue teams. The GLNO life-form was the most
fragile known to the Federation, cowardice being acknowledged as one of their
prime survival characteristics. But Prilicla was guiding his thin-walled
pressure bubble over jagged plating and through wreckage which shifted visibly
all around it, seeking life. Living minds radiated even when unconscious and the
little GLNO was pointing out unerringly the living from the dead. With
casualties bleeding to death inside their suits or the suits themselves losing
pressure, such identification directed effort to where it did the most good, and
Prilicla was saving many, many lives. But for an empath, an emotion sensitive,
it was a hellish job in every horrible and painful sense of the word...
Major O'Mara was everywhere. If there hadn't been weightless conditions
the Chief Psychologist would have been dragging himself from place to place, but
as it was his extreme fatigue showed only in the way he misjudged distances and
collided with doors and people. But when he talked to Earth-human patients,
nurses and Corpsmen his voice was never tired. His mere presence had a steadying
effect on the e-t staff as well, for although they could not understand him they
remembered the person he had been when there were Translators and he could lift
off their hides with a few pungent words.
The e-t staff-the massive, awkward Tralthan FGLIs, the crab-like Melfan
ELNTs and all the others-were everywhere, on some levels directing Earth-human
staff and on others aiding the nurses and Corpsmen orderlies. They were tired
and harried and all too often they did not know what was being said to them, but
between them they saved a great many lives.
And every time a missile struck the hospital, they lost a little ground...
Dr. Conway never left the dining hall. He had communication with most of
the other levels, but the corridors leading to them were in many cases airless
or blocked with wreckage, and it was the general opinion that the hospital's
last remaining Senior Physician should stay in a reasonably safe place. He had
plenty of human casualties to look after and the difficult e-t cases, whether
combatants or casualties among his own staff, were sent to him.
In a way he had the biggest and most compact ward in the hospital. Since
nobody had time to gather for meals anymore and relied on packaged food sent to
the wards, the main dining hall had been converted. Beds and theater equipment
had been clamped to the floor, walls and ceiling of the great room and the
patients, being space personnel, were not troubled either by the weightlessness
or the sight of other patients hanging a few yards above them. It was convenient
for the patients who were able to talk.
Conway had reached the stage of tiredness where he no longer felt tired.
The tinny crash and clangor of missiles striking had become a monotonous
background noise. He knew that the bombardment was steadily eating through the
outer and inner hulls, a deadly erosion which must soon open every corridor and
ward to space, but his brain had ceased to react to the sound. When casualties
arrived he did what was indicated, but his reactions then were simply the
conditioned reflexes of a doctor. He had lost much of his capacity to think or
feel or remember, and when he did remember he had no sense of time. The last e-t
case- which had required him taking four physiology tapes-stood out amid the
weary, bloody, noisy monotony, as did the arrival of Vespasian's injured. But
Conway did not know whether that had been three days of three weeks ago, or
which incident had occurred first.
He remembered the Vespasian incident often. Cutting Major Stillman out of
his battered suit, stripping it off and pushing away the pieces which persisted
in floating around the bed. Stillman had two cracked ribs, a shattered humerus
and a minor decompression which was temporarily affecting his eyesight. Until
the hypo took hold he kept asking about the Captain.
And Captain Williamson kept asking about his men. Williamson was in a cast
from neck to toes, had very little pain and had remembered Conway immediately.
It had been a large crew and he must have known them all by their names. Conway
didn't.
"Stillman is three beds away on your right," Conway had told him, "and
there are others all over the place."
Williamson's eyes had moved along the patients hanging above him. He
couldn't move anything else. "There's some of them I don't recognize," he had
said.
Looking at the livid bruises around Williamson's right eye, temple and jaw
where his face had struck the inside of his helmet, Conway had dragged up his
mouth into the semblance of a smile and said, "Some of them won't recognize
you."
He remembered the second TRLH...
It had arrived strapped to a pressure litter whose atmosphere unit had
already filled it with the poison which the occupant called air. Through the
twin transparencies of the litter wall and the TRLH's suit its injuries were
plainly apparent-a large, depressed fracture of the carapace which had cut
underlying blood vessels. There was no time to take the tapes he had used during
the previous TRLH case because the patient was obviously bleeding to death.
Conway nodded for the litter to be clamped into the cleared area in the center
of the floor and quickly changed his suit gauntlets for litter gloves. From the
beds attached to the ceiling, eyes watched his every move.
He charged the gloves and pushed his hands against the sagging,
transparent fabric of the tent. Immediately the thin, tough material became
rubbery and pliable without losing any of its strength. It clung to the charged
gloves, if not like a second skin at least like another pair of thin gloves.
Carefully so as not to strain the fabric which separated the two mutually
poisonous atmospheres, Conway removed the patient's suit with instruments
clipped to the inside of the litter.
Quite complex procedures were possible while operating a flexible tent-
Conway had a couple of PVSJs and a QCQL a few beds away to prove it-but they
were limited by the instruments and medication available inside the tent, and
the slight hampering effect of the fabric.
He had been removing the splinters of carapace from the damaged area when
the crash of a missile striking nearby made the floor jump. The alarm bell which
indicated a pressure drop sounded a few minutes later and Murchison and the
Kelgian military doctor-the entire ward staff-had hurried to check the seals on
the tents of patients who were not able to check their own. The drop was slight,
probably a small leak caused by sprung plating, but to Conway's patient inside
the tent it could be deadly. He had begun working with frantic speed.
But while he had striven to tie off the severed blood vessels the thin,
tough fabric of the pressure litter began to swell out. It had become difficult
to hold instruments, virtually impossible to guide them accurately, and his
hands were actually pushed away from the operative field. The difference in
pressure between the interior of the tent and the ward was only a few pounds per
square inch at most, barely enough to have made Conway's ears pop, but the
fabric of the litter had continued to balloon out. He had withdrawn helplessly,
and half an hour later when the leak had been sealed and normal pressure
restored, he had started again. By then it had been too much.
He remembered a sudden impairment of vision then, and a shock of surprise
when he realized that he was crying. Tears weren't a conditioned medical reflex,
he knew, because doctors just did not cry over patients.
Probably it had been a combination of anger at losing the patient-who really
should not have been lost-and his extreme fatigue. And when he'd seen the
expressions of all the patients watching him, Conway had felt horribly
embarrassed.
Now the events around him had taken on a jerky, erratic motion. His eyes
kept closing and several seconds, or minutes, passed before he could force them
open again even though to himself no time at all went by. The walking wounded-
patients with injuries which allowed them to move about the ward and return
quickly to their tents in the event of a puncture-were moving from bed to bed
doing the small, necessary jobs, or chatting with patients who couldn't move, or
hanging like ungainly shoals of fish while they talked among themselves. But
Conway was always too busy with the newly-arrived patients, or too confused with
a multiplicity of tapes, to chat with the older ones. Mostly, however, his eyes
went to the sleeping figures of Murchison and the Kelgian who floated near the
entrance to the ward.
The Kelgian hung like a great, furry question mark, now and then emitting
the low moaning sound which some DBLFs made when they were asleep. Murchison
floated at the end of a snaking, ten-foot safety line, turning slowly. It was
odd how sleepers in the weightless condition adopted the fetal position, Conway
thought tenderly as he watched his beautiful, adult girl baby swaying at the end
of an impossibly thin umbilical cord. He desperately wanted to sleep himself,
but it was his spell on duty and he would not be relieved for a long time-five
minutes maybe, or five hours, but an eternity in either case. He would have to
keep doing something.
Without realizing he had made a decision he found himself moving into the
empty storeroom which housed the terminal and probable terminal cases. It was
only here that Conway spared himself the time to chat, or if talking was not
possible to do the essential and at the same time useless things which help to
comfort the dying. With the e-ts he could only stand by and hope that the
shattered, bloody wreckage of the Tralthan or Melfan or whatever would be given
a tiny flash of Prilicla's emphathetic faculty so that they would know he was a
friend and how he felt.
It was only gradually that Conway became aware that the walking wounded
had followed him into the room, together with patients who had no business being
outside their tents who were being towed by the others. They gathered slowly
around and above him, their expression grim, determined and respectful. Major
Stillman pushed his way to the front, awkwardly, because in his one good hand he
carried a gun.
"The killing has got to stop, Doctor," Stillman said quietly. "We've all
talked it over and that's what we decided. And it's got to be stopped right
now." He reversed the weapon suddenly, offering it to Conway. "You might need
this, to point at Dermod to keep him from doing anything foolish while we're
telling him what has been going on...
Close behind Stillman hung the mummified shape of Captain Williamson and
the man who had towed him in. They were talking to each other in low voices and
the language was both foreign and familiar to Conway. Before he could place it
the patients all began moving out again and he noticed how many of them were
armed. The weapons had been part of the spacesuits they had worn, and Conway had
not thought about guns when he had piled the suits into a ward storage space.
Dermod, he thought, would be very annoyed with him. Then he followed the
patients out to the main ward entrance, and the corridor which led to Reception.
Stillman talked nearly all the time, telling him what had been happening.
When they were almost there he said anxiously, "You don't think I'm . . . I'm a
traitor for doing this, Doctor?"
There were so many different emotions churning inside Conway that all he
could say was "No!"
CHAPTER 25
He felt ridiculous pointing the gun at the Fleet commander, but that had seemed
to be the only way to do this thing. Conway had entered Reception, threaded his
way through the officers around the control desks until he had reached Dermod,
then he had held the gun on the Fleet commander, while the others came in. He
had also tried to explain things, but he wasn't doing a very good job.
..... So you want me to surrender, Doctor," said Dermod wearily, not
looking at the gun. His eyes went from Conway's face to those of some of the
Corpsmen patients who were still floating into the room. He looked hurt and
disappointed, as if a friend had done a very shameful thing.
Conway tried again.
"Not surrender, sir," he said, pointing at the man who was still guiding
Williamson's stretcher. "We.. . I mean, that man over there needs a
communicator. He wants to order a cease fire..."
Stammering in his eagerness to explain what had happened, Conway started
with the influx of casualties after the collision between Vespasian and the
enemy transport. The interiors of both ships were a shambles and, while it was
known that there were enemy as well as Corpsmen injured, there had never been
time or the staff available to separate them. Then later, when the less
seriously injured began to move around, talking to or helping to nurse the other
patients, it became plain that almost half of the casualties were from the other
side. Oddly this did not seem to matter much to the patients, and the staff were
too busy to notice. So the patients went on doing the simpler, necessary and not
very pleasant jobs for each other, jobs which just had to be done in a ward so
drastically understaffed, and talking...
For these were Corpsmen from Vespasian, and Vespasian had been to Etla.
Which meant that its crew were variously proficient in the Etlan language, and
the Etlans spoke the same language as that used all over the Empire-a general
purpose language similar to the Federation's Universal. They talked to each
other a lot and one of the things they learned, after the initial caution and
distrust had passed, was that the enemy transport had contained some very high
officers. One of the ones who had survived the collision was third in line of
command of the Empire forces around Sector General...
And for the last few days peace talks have been going on among my
patients," Conway ended breathlessly. "Unofficial, perhaps, but I think Colonel
Williamson and Heraltnor here have enough rank to make them binding. ~
Heraltnor, the enemy officer, spoke briefly and vehemently to Williamson
in Etlan, then gently tilted the plaster encased figure of the Captain until he
could look at the fleet commander. Heraltnor watched Dermod, too. Anxiously.
"He's no fool, sir," said Williamson painfully. "From the sound of the
bombardment and the glimpses he's had of your screens he knows our defenses are
hammered flat. He says that his people could land now and we couldn't do a thing
to stop them. That is true, sir, and we both know it. He says his chief will
probably order the landing in a matter of hours, but he still wants a cease
fire, sir, not a surrender.
"He doesn't want his side to win," the Captain ended weakly. "He just
wants the fighting to stop. There are some things he has been told about this
war and us which need straightening out, he says.. ."
"He's been saying a lot," said Dermod angrily. His face had a tortured
look, as if he was wanting desperately to hope but did not dare let himself do
so. He went on, "And you men have been doing a lot of talking! Why didn't you
let me know about it...
"It wasn't what we said," Stillman broke in sharply, "it was what we did!
They didn't believe a word we told them at first. But this place wasn't at all
what they had been told to expect, it looked more like a hospital than a torture
chamber. Appearances could have been deceptive, and they were a very suspicious
bunch, but they saw human and e-t doctors and nurses working themselves to death
over them, and they saw him. Talking didn't do anything, at least not until
later. It was what we did, what he did...!"
Conway felt his ears getting warm. He protested, "But the same thing was
happening in every ward of the hospital!"
"Shut up, Doctor," Stillman said respectfully, then went on, "He never
seemed to sleep. He hardly ever spoke to us once we were out of danger, but the
patients in the side ward he never let up on, even though they were the hopeless
cases. A couple of them he proved not to be hopeless, and moved them out to us
in the main ward. It didn't matter what side they were on, he worked as hard for
everybody..
"Stillman," said Conway sharply, "you're dramatizing things...
Even then they were wavering a bit," Stillman went on regardless.
"But it was the TRLH case which clinched things. The TRLHs were enemy e-t
volunteers, and normally the Empire people don't think much of e-ts and expected
us to feel the same. Especially as this e-t was on the other side. But he worked
just as hard on it, and when the pressure drop made it impossible for him to go
on with the operation and the e-t died, they saw his reaction-"
"Stillman!" said Conway furiously.
But Stillman did not go into details. He was silent, watching Dermod
anxiously. Everybody was watching Dermod. Except Conway, who was looking at
Heraltnor.
The Empire officer did not look very impressive at that moment, Conway
thought. He looked like a very ordinary, graying, middle-aged man with a heavy
chin and worry-lines around his eyes. In comparison to Dermod's trim green
uniform with its quietly impressive load of insignia the shapeless, white
garment issued to DBDG patients put Heraltnor at somewhat of a disadvantage. As
the silence dragged on Conway wondered whether they would salute each other or
just nod.
But they did better than either, they shook hands.
There was an initial period of suspicion and mistrust, of course. The Empire
commander-in-chief was convinced that Heraltnor had been hypnotized at first,
but when the investigating party of Empire officers landed on Sector General
after the cease fire the distrust diminished rapidly to zero. For Conway the
only thing which diminished was his worries regarding wards being opened to
space. There was still too much for his staff and himself to do, even though
engineers and medical officers from the Empire fleet were doing all they could
to put Sector General together again. While they worked the first trickle of the
evacuated staff began to return, both medical and maintenance, and the
Translator computer went back into operation. Then five weeks and six days after
the cease fire the Empire fleet left the vicinity of the hospital. They left
their wounded behind them, the reasons being that they were getting the best
possible treatment where they were, and that the fleet might have more fighting
to do.
In one of the daily meetings with the hospital authorities-which still
consisted of O'Mara and Conway since nobody more senior to them had come with
the recent arrivals-Dermod tried to put a complex situation into very simple
terms.
..... Now that the Imperial citizens know the truth about Etla among other
things," he said seriously, "the Emperor and his administration are virtually
extinct. But things are still very confused in some sectors and a show of force
will help stabilize things. I'd like it to be just a show of force, which is why
I talked their commander into taking some of our cultural contact and sociology
people with him. We want rid of the Emperor, but not at the price of a civil
war.
"Heraltnor wanted you to go along, too, Doctor. But I told him that..
Beside him O'Mara groaned. "Besides saving hundreds of lives," the Chief
Psychologist said, "and averting a galaxy-wide war, our miracle working,
brilliant young doctor is being called on to-"
"Stop needling him, O'Mara!" Dermod said sharply. "Those things are
literally true, or very nearly so. If he hadn't . .
"Just force of habit, sir," said O'Mara blandly. "As a head-shrinker I
consider it my bounden duty to keep his from swelling..
At that moment the main screen behind Dermod's desk, manned by a Nidian
Receptionist now instead of a Monitor officer, lit with a picture of a furry
Kelgian head. It appeared that there was a large DBLF transport coming in with
FGLI and ELNT staff aboard in addition to the Kelgians, eighteen of which were
Senior Physicians. Bearing in mind the damaged state of the hospital and the
fact that just three locks were in operable condition, the Kelgian on the screen
wanted to discuss quarters and assignments before landing with the
Diagnostician-in-Charge...
"Thornnastor's still unfit and there are no other..." Conway began to say
when O'Mara reached across to touch his arm.
"Seven tapes, remember," he said gruffly. "Let us not quibble, Doctor. ~
Conway gave O'Mara a long, steady look, a look which went deeper than the
blunt, scowling features and the sarcastic, hectoring voice. Conway was not a
Diagnostician-what he had done two months ago had been forced on him, and it had
nearly killed him. But what O'Mara was saying-with the touch of his hand and the
expression in his eyes, not the scowl on his face and the tone of his voice-was
that it would be just a matter of time.
Coloring with pleasure, which Dermod probably put down to embarrassment at
O'Mara's ribbing, he dealt quickly with the quartering and duties of the staff
on the Kelgian transport, then excused himself. He was supposed to meet
Murchison at the recreation level in ten minutes, and she had asked him...
As he was leaving he heard O'Mara saying morosely, ..... And in addition
to saving countless billions from the horrors of war, I bet he gets the girl,
too . .