Sector General sg-5

by James White

  One of the flurries struck while they were helping Naydrad unload the litter, a bulky vehicle whose pressure envelope was capable of reproducing the gravity, pressure, and atmosphere requirements of most of the known life-forms. Gravity nullifiers compensated for the litter’s considerable weight, making it easily manageable by one person, but when the sudden wind caught it, Naydrad, Dodds, and Conway had to throw themselves across it to keep it from blowing away.

  “Sorry about this,” Lieutenant Dodds said, as if by studying the available information on the planet he was somehow responsible for its misdemeanors. “It is about two hours before local midday here, and the wind usually dies down by now. It remains calm until just before sunset, and again in the middle of the night when there is a severe drop in temperature. The sandstorms after sunset and before dawn are very bad and last for three to five hours, when outside work would be very dangerous. Work during the night lull is possible but inadvisable. The local animal life is small arid omnivorous, but those thorn carpets on the slope over there have a degree of mobility and have to be watched, especially at night. I’d estimate five hours of daylight calm to complete the rescue. If it takes longer than that, it would be better to spend the night on Rhabwar and come back tomorrow.”

  As the Lieutenant was speaking, the wind died again so that they were able to see the wreck, the dark objects scattered around it, and the harsh, arid landscape shimmering in the heat. Five hours should be more than enough to ferry up the casualties to Rhabwar for preliminary treatment. Anything done for then) down here would be done quickly, simple first aid.

  “Did they bother to name this Godforsaken planet?” the Captain asked, stepping down from the lander’s airlock.

  Dodds hesitated, then said, “Trugdil, sir.”

  Fletcher’s eyebrows rose, Murchison laughed, and they could

  see agitated movements of Naydrad’s fur under its lightweight suit. It was the Kelgian who spoke first.

  “The trugdil,” it said, “is a species of Kelgian rodent with the particularly nasty habit of—”

  “I know,” the astrogator said quickly. “But it was a Kelgian-crewed Monitor Corps scoutship which made the discovery. In the Corps it is customary for the Captain of the discovering ship to give his, her, or its name to the world which has been found. But in this instance the officer waived the right and offered it to his subordinates in turn, all of whom likewise refused to give their names to the planet. Judging by the name it ended with, they didn’t think much of the place either. There was another case when—”

  “Interesting,” Conway said quietly, “but we’re wasting time. Prilicla?”

  Through his helmet phones, the empath’s voice replied at once. “I hear you, friend Conway. Lieutenant Haslam is relaying an overall picture of the area to me through the telescope, and your helmet vision pickups enable me to see all that you see. Standing by.”

  “Very good,” Conway said. To the others he went on, “Naydrad will accompany me with the litter. The rest of you split up and take a quick look at the other casualties. If any of them are moving, or there are indications of recent movement, call Pathologist Murchison or me at once.”

  As they moved off he added, “It is important that we don’t waste time on cadavers at the expense of possible survivors. But be careful. This is a new life-form to us, and we are likewise strange to it. Physically we may resemble something it fears, and there is the added factor of the survivor being weak, in pain, and mentally confused. Guard against an instinctive, violent reaction from them which, in normal circumstances, would not occur.” He stopped talking because the others were already fanning our and the first casualty, lying very still and partly covered by sand, was only a few meters away.

  As Naydrad helped him scoop sand from around the body Conway saw that the being was six-limbed, with a stubby, cylindrical torso with a spherical head at one end and possibly a tail at the other extremity, although the severity of the injuries made it difficult to be sure. The two forelimbs terminated in long, flexible digits. There were two recognizable eyes, partially concealed by heavy lids, and various slits and orifices which were doubtless aural and olfactory sensors and the openings for respiration and ingestion. The tegument, which was pale brown shading to a deeper, reddish color on its top surface, showed many incised wounds and abrasions which had bled freely but had since congealed and become encrusted with sand — perhaps the sand had assisted in the process of coagulation. Even the large wound at the rear, which looked as if it might be the result of a traumatic amputation, was remarkably dry.

  Conway bent closer and began going over the body with his scanner. There was no evidence of fracturing or of damaged or displaced organs, so far as he could see, so the being could” be moved without risk of complicating its injuries. Naydrad was waiting with the litter to see whether it was a survivor for immediate loading or a cadaver for later dissection, when Con-way’s scanner’s sensors detected cardiac activity, extremely feeble but undoubtedly present, and respiration so slow and shallow that he had almost missed it.

  “Are you getting this, Prilicla?” he said.

  “Yes, friend Conway,” replied the empath. “A most interesting life-form.”

  “There is considerable tissue wastage,” he went on, still using the scanner. “Possibly the result of dehydration. And there is a similarity in degree and type of the injuries which I find strange …” He trailed off into silence as Naydrad helped him lift the casualty into the litter.

  “No doubt it has already occurred to you, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, using the form of words which was the closest it ever came to suggesting that someone had missed the obvious, “that the dehydration and the deeper coloration on the upper areas of the epidermis may be connected with local environmental factors, and the redness is due to sunburn.”

  It had not occurred to Conway, but fortunately the emotional radiation associated with his embarrassment was well beyond the range of the empath. He indicated the litter and said, “Naydrad, don’t forget to fit the sun filter.”

  In his phones he heard Murchison laughing quietly, then she said, “It hadn’t occurred to me, either, so don’t feel bad about it. But I have a couple of beasties over here I’d like you to look at. Both are alive, just barely, with a'large number of incised wounds. There is a great disparity in mass between them, and the arrangement of the internal organs in the large one is, well, peculiar. For instance, the alimentary canal is—”

  “Right now,” Conway broke in, “we must concentrate on separating the living and the dead. Detailed examinations and discussions will have to wait until we’re back on the ship, so spend as little time as possible on each one. But I know how you feel — my casualty has some peculiarities as well.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” she replied coldly, in spite of his half apology. Pathologists, even beautiful ones like Murchison, he thought, were strange people.

  “Captain? Lieutenant Dodds?” he said irritably. “Any other survivors?”

  “I haven’t been looking at them closely, Doctor,” Retcher replied. There was an odd harshness in his voice. Possibly the condition of the crash victims was distressing to a nonmedical man, Conway thought, and some of these casualties were in really bad shape. But before he could reply the Captain went on, “I’ve been moving around the area quickly, counting them and looking to see if any have been covered by sand or hidden between rocks. There are twenty-seven of them in all. But the positioning of the bodies is odd, Doctor. It’s as if the ship was in imminent danger of blowing up or catching fire, and they used the last of their remaining strength to escape from it.

  “The sensors show no such danger,” he added.

  Dodds waited for a few seconds to be sure that the Captain had finished speaking, then said, “Three alive and showing slight movement. One that looks dead, but you’re the doctor, Doctor.”

  “Thank you,” Conway said dryly. “We’ll look at them as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Lieutenant, help Naydrad load the li
tter, please.”

  He joined Murchison then, and for the next hour they moved among the casualties, assessing the degree of injury and readying them for transfer to the lander. The litter was almost full and had space for two of the medium-sized casualties, which they had tentatively classified as belonging to physiological type DCMH, or one of the large DCOJs. The very small DCLGs, which were less than half the mass of the DCMH Conway had first examined, were left for the time being because they all showed flickerings of life. As yet neither Murchison nor Conway could make sense of them physiologically. She thought the small DCLGs might be nonintelligent lab animals or possibly ship’s pets, while Conway was convinced that the large DCOJs were food animals, also nonintelligent. But with newly discovered e xtra-terrestrial life-forms, one could never be sure of anything, and all of them would therefore have to be treated as patients.

  Then they found one of the small aliens who was quite definitely dead. Murchison said briskly, “I’ll work on it in the lander. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have something to tell Prilicla about their basal metabolism before the casualties begin arriving.”

  A flurry of wind blew the sand disturbed by her feet ahead of her as she moved toward the lander, the small cadaver supported by her shoulder and one arm while the other hand, carrying her med kit, acted as a counterbalance. Conway was about to suggest that a proper examination on Rhabwar, where the full laboratory facilities were available, would be better. But Murchis-on would already have considered doing that and decided agai nst it, for two obvious reasons: If she returned to the ambulance ship with Dodds and Naydrad, some of the casualties already loaded would have to be left behind, and she needed to tell Prilicla only enough for the empath to provide emergency surgery and supportive treatment until the survivors were taken to Sector General.

  “Captain, you overheard?” Conway said. “I’d like Dodds and Naydrad to take off as soon as Pathologist Murchison is through. It looks as if three trips will be necessary to lift all of them, and another for ourselves. We’re going to be pushed for time if th is is to be wrapped up before the sunset storm hits the area.”

  There wa_s no reply from Fletcher, which usually signified assent when Conway was in command. He went on, “Murchison will stay behind and assemble another batch of casualties for the next lift. We’ll collect them where there is shelter from the sun and sand. The lee side of the wreck would do, or better still, inside it if there isn’t too much debris.”

  “No, Doctor,” the Captain said. “I’m worried about what we might find on that ship.”

  Conway did not reply, but the sigh he gave as he continued his examination of the casualty he was working on made his impatience clear. Fletcher was one of the Monitor Corps’ acknowledged experts in the field of alien ship technology. This was the reason he had been given command of Sector General’s most advanced ambulance ship — it had long been recognized that a rescue mission’s greatest danger was to the rescuers, who would be looking for survivors in a distressed vessel whose technology and operating principles they did not understand. Fletcher was careful, conscientious, highly competent, and did not as a rule worry out loud about his work or ability to carry it out. Conway was still wondering about the Captain’s uncharacteristic behavior when a shadow fell across the casualty he was examining.

  Fletcher was standing over him and looking as worried as he had sounded. “I realize, Doctor,” the Captain said awkwardly, “that during rescue operations you have the rank. I want you to know that I go along with this willingly. But on this occasion I believe the circumstances are such that complete authority should revert to me.” He glanced back at the wreck and then down at the badly injured alien. “Doctor, do you have any experience in forensic medicine?”

  Conway sat back on his haunches and simply gaped at him. Retcher took a deep breath and went on. “The distribution and condition of the casualties around the wreck seemed wrong to me,” he said seriously. “It indicated a rapid evacuation of a relatively undamaged ship, even though our sensors showed no radiation or fire hazard. As well, all of the casualties were severely injured to varying degrees and with the same type of wounding. It seemed to me that some of them would have been able to make a greater distance from their ship than others, yet sll of them collapsed within a relatively small radius from the wreck. This made me wonder whether the injuries had been sustained inside the ship or close to where they were lying.”

  “A local predator,” Conway said, “which attacked them as

  they came out already shocked and weakened as a result of the crash.”

  The Captain shook his head. “No life-form capable of inflicting such injuries inhabits this world. Most of the injuries I’ve seen are incised wounds or those caused by the removal of a limb. This suggests the use of a sharp instrument of some kind. The user of the instrument may or may not be still on board the ship. If it is on board, it may be that the beings who escaped were the lucky ones, in which case I hate to think of what we may find inside the wreck. But you can see now why I must resume overall responsibility, Doctor.

  “The Monitor Corps is the Federation’s law-enforcement arm,” he concluded quietly. “It seems to me that a very serious-crime has been committed, and I am a policeman first and an ambulance driver second.”

  Before Con way could reply, Murchison said, “The condition of this cadaver, and the other casualties I’ve examined, does not preclude such a possibility.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the Captain said. “That is why I want the medical team back on Rhabwar while Dodds and I arrest this criminal. If things go wrong, Chen and Haslam can get you back to the hospital—”

  “Haslam, sir,” the Communications Officer’s voice broke in. “Shall I request Corps assistance?”

  The Captain did not reply at once, and Con way began thinking that the other’s theory could very well explain why a previously undamaged ship had released a distress beacon and then left the scene to try for a planetary landing. Something had gotten loose among the crew, perhaps. Something which might have been confined had escaped, something very, very nasty. With an effort Conway brought his runaway imagination under control. “We can’t be absolutely sure that a criminal was responsible for this. A nonintelligent experimental animal which broke loose, injured and perhaps maddened with pain, could have done—”

  “Animals use teeth and claws, doctor,” the Captain broke in. “Not knives.”

  “This is a completely new species,” Conway replied. “We don’t know anything about them, their culture or their codes of behavior. They may be ignorant of our particular laws.”

  “Ignorance of the law,” Fletcher said impatiently, “has never been an acceptable excuse for committing a criminal act against another intelligent being. Just as ignorance of law by the innocent victim does not exclude the being concerned from its protection.”

  “I agree—” Conway began. “But I am not completely sure that a crime has been committed,” he went on. “Until I am sure, you, Haslam, will not send for help. But keep a close watch on this area and if anything moves, apart from the survivors or ourselves, let me know at once. Very soon Dodds will be taking off with the lander and—”

  “Naydrad and the casualties,” Murchison ended for him. Quietly but firmly she went on, “Your theory scares hell out of me, Captain, but it is still only a theory. You’ve admitted as much yourself. The facts are that there are a large number of casualties all around us. They don’t know it yet but they are entitled to the protection of Federation law. Whether their injuries are due to the crash or to being carved up by some psychopathic or temporarily deranged alien, they are also entitled, under that same law, to all necessary medical assistance.”

  The Captain looked toward the lander where the Pathologist was still working on the specimen, then back to the Doctor.

  “I’ve nothing to add,” Conway said.

  Fletcher remained silent while Murchison completed her investigation and Dodds and Naydrad transferred two casualt
ies into the lander. He did not speak while the vehicle was taking off or when Conway selected a spot under a large outcropping of rock which would give waiting casualties shelter from the sun and windblown sand. Neither did he offer to help them carry the injured e-ts to the assembly point even though, without the litter, it was hot, back-breaking work. Instead he moved among the e-ts with his vision pickup, recording them individually before and after the ground had been disturbed around ftem by Murchison and Conway, and always positioning himself between the two medics and the wreck.

  Plainly the Captain was taking his strange, new role as a Policeman and protector of the innocent bystanders very seriously indeed.

  The cooling unit in his suit did not seem to be working very hard and Conway would have loved to open his visor for a few minutes. But doing that, even in the shelter of the outcropping, would have meant letting in a lot of windblown sand.

  “Let’s rest for a while,” he said as they placed another casualty beside its fellows. “Time we had a talk with Prilicla.”

  “That is a pleasure at any time, friends Murchison and Conway,” the empath said promptly. “While I am, of course, beyond the range of the emotional radiation being generated down there, I sympathize and hope that your feelings of anxiety about the criminal are not too unpleasant.”

  “Our feelings of bewilderment are much stronger,” Conway said dryly. “But maybe you can help relieve them by going over our information, incomplete as it is, before the first casualties reach you.”

  There was still a little doubt about the accuracy of the physiological classifications, Conway explained, but there were three separate but related types — DCLG, DCMH, and DCOJ. The wounds fell into two general categories, incised and abraded wounds which could have resulted when the ship’s occupants were hurled against sharp-edged metal during the crash, and a traumatic amputation of major limbs which was so prevalent among the casualties that an explanation other than the crash was needed to explain them.