Sector General sg-5

by James White

  “At last,” Thornnastor growled through its translator, “you are about to discuss the needs of the patient.”

  “The delay was intentional, sir,” Conway said, “since we must repair the ship before we can help the occupant. Regarding this entity, or entities, Pathologist Murchison and myself have examined one cadaver and we seek confirmation of our preliminary findings and as much additional physiological data as you can provide from the specimens brought back in Tyrell, and from the contents of the intravenous infusion equipment which is used, apparently, to induce, extend, and reverse the suspended animation process. Specifically, we require much more information on the nervous system, the linkages to the voluntary and involuntary musculature, the degree and rapidity of tissue regeneration we can expect if surgical intervention is necessary and additional data on the transparent material which covers and protects the raw areas at the forward and rear extremities. Naturally, sir, this information is required the day before yesterday.”

  “Naturally,” Thornnastor growled. Its six elephantine feet, which had been silent while Conway was speaking, resumed their slow thumping. Clearly-the Tralthan was eager to go to work on those specimens of the completely new life-form.

  O’Mara waited for precisely three seconds, then he scowled up at Conway and said, “And that is all you require. Doctor?”

  Conway nodded. “For the present.”

  Colonel Skempton leaned forward and said caustically, “'For the present he needs the services of a Sector subfleet, including Descartes and Vespasian. Before we can recommend the deployment of so many Service units we should refer the matter to the Federation Council for—” He broke off because the thumping of Thornnastor’s feet was making conversation difficult.

  “Your pardon, Colonel,” the Tralthan said, “but it seems to me that if we refer this matter to the Council they will ponder on it at great length and then decide to make it the responsibility of the beings best able to understand and solve the problem, who are the entities comprising the technical and medical crew of Rhabwar. The special ambulance ship program was designed to deal with the unexpected, and the fact that this problem is unexpectedly large is beside the point.

  “This is an entity, or entities, of a hitherto unknown species,” it went on, “and I recommend that Senior Physician Conway be given the assistance he requires to rescue and treat it. However, I have no objection to you recommending this course and referring the matter to the Council for discussion and ratification, and for amendment should they come up with a better idea. Well, Colonel?”

  Skempton shook his head. He said doggedly, “It’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, for a newly appointed ship commander and a medic to be given so much authority. But the Rhabwar people are the only ones who know what they are doing at the moment. Reluctantly, I agree. O’Mara?”

  All their eyes, the Colonel’s and Conway’s two and Thorn-nastor’s four, were on the Chief Psychologist, who kept his steadily on Conway. Finally he spoke.

  “If you have nothing else to say, Doctor,” he said dryly, “I suggest you return to Rhabwar as quickly as possible before the area becomes so congested that you can’t find your own ship.”

  The reaction time of the Monitor Corps to an emergency large or small was impressively fast. In Tyrell’s forward view-screen the area resembled a small, untidy star cluster in which Rhabwar’s beacon flashed at its center like a short-term variable. Apart from acknowledging their arrival and giving them permission to lock on, Fletcher did not speak to them because, he explained, fifteen more scoutships had arrived unexpectedly and he was busy fitting them into his retrieval program. For this reason Conway did not get an opportunity to tell him about the other unexpected things which were about to happen until he was back on board the ambulance ship, and by that time it was too late.

  “Rkabwar,” a voice said from the wall speaker as Conway entered Control, “this is the survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes, Colonel Okaussie commanding. I’m told you have work for us, Major Fletcher.”

  “Well, yes, sir,” the Captain said. He looked appealingly at Conway, then went on, “If 1 might respectfully suggest, sir, that your translation specialists—”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Colonel Okaussie broke in. “Respectfully suggest, I mean. When I know as much about this situation as you do I’ll accept suggestions, respectful or otherwise. But until then, Major, stop wasting time and tell me what you want us to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fletcher said. Speaking quickly, concisely, and, out of habit, respectfully, he did just that. Then a few seconds after he broke contact the radar screen showed a new trace which was even larger than Descartes. It identified itself as the Hudlar-crewed depot ship Motann, a star-going engineering complex normally used to bring technical assistance to vessels whose hyperdrive generators had failed noncatastrophically leaving them stranded in normal space between the stars. Its captain, who was not a Monitor Corps officer, was also happy to take his instructions from Fletcher. But then ah even larger blip appeared on the screen, indicating that a very large ship indeed had just emerged from hyperspace. Automatically Lieutenant Haslam fed the bearing to the telescope and tapped for maximum magnification.

  The tremendous, awe-inspiring sight of an Emperor-class battlecruiser filled the screen.

  “Rhabwar, this is Vespasian.”

  Fletcher paled visibly at the thought of giving instructions to the godlike entity who would be in command of that ship, whose communications officer was relaying the compliments of Fleet Commander Dermod and a request for full vision contact as soon as convenient. Conway, who had not had time to tell the Captain what to expect because it was already happening, got to his feet.

  “I’ll be in the Casualty Deck lab,” he said. Grinning, he reached across to clap Fletcher reassuringly on the shoulder and added, “You’re doing fine, Captain. Just remember that, a long, long time ago, the Fleet Commander was a major, too.”

  The conversation between Fletcher and the Fleet Commander, complete with visuals, was on the Casualty Deck’s repeater when he arrived, but the sound was muted because Prilicla was on another frequency giving instructions to one of the scoutship medical officers regarding a cadaver the other had found and which Murchison wanted brought in for examination. Murchison and Naydrad were still working on the first specimen, which had been reduced to what seemed to be its component parts.

  Murchison nodded toward the repeater screen and said, “You seem to have been given everything you needed. Was O’Mara in a good mood?”

  “His usual sarcastic, helpful self,” Conway said, moving to join her at the dissection table. “Do we know anything more about this outsize boa constrictor?”

  “I don’t know what we know,” she said crossly, “but I know a little more and feel more than a little confused by the knowledge. For instance …”

  The thick pencil of nerve ganglia with its localized bunch-ings and swellings which ran through the center of the cylindrical body was, almost certainly, the CRLT’s equivalent of a brain, and the idea of a missing head or tail was beginning to seem unlikely — especially since the transparent material which covered the raw areas fore and aft was, despite its appearance, equally as tough as the being’s leathery body tegument.

  She had been successful in tracing the nerve connections between the core swellings and the eyes, mouths, and manipulatory appendages, and from both ends of the axial nerve bundle to the puzzling system of muscles which underlay the raw areas on the forward and rear faces of the creature.

  The specimen appeared to be male — at least, the female genitalia at the other end were shrunken and seemed to be in a condition of early atrophy — and she had identified the male sperm generator and the method of transfer to a female.

  “… There is evidence of unnatural organ displacement,” she went on, “which can only be caused by weightlessness. Gravity, real or artificial, is a physiological necessity for this life-form. During hibernation the absence of weight would no
t be fatal, but weightlessness while conscious would cause severe nausea, sensory impairment, and, I feel sure, intense mental and physical distress.”

  Which meant that the being would have to be in position on the rim of its rotating vessel or affected by natural gravity, that of its target world, when it was revived. It isn’t a doctor this patient needed, Con way thought wryly, it’s a miracle worker!

  “With the Captain’s help,” Murchison continued, “we have established that the medication which produces and or extends the hibernation anesthesia occupies the larger volume of a dispenser mechanism which also contains a smaller quantity of the complex organic secretion which can only be the reviver. Fletcher also traced the input to the automatic sensor and actuator which switches the mechanism from the hibernation to the resuscitation mode and found that it reacted to the combined presence of gravity and external pressure. The same actuator mechanism is also responsible for ejecting the endplates of its hibernation compartment which would enable the CRLT to disembark.

  “Sooner or later we’re going to have to revive one of these things,” she ended worriedly, “and we’ll have to be very sure that we know what we are doing.”

  Conway was already out of his spacesuit and climbing into his surgical coveralls. He said, “Anything in particular you’d like me to do?”

  They worked on the cadaver while the hours flickered past on the time display to become days, then weeks. From time to time a terse, subspace message from Thornnastor would arrive confirming their findings or suggesting new avenues of investigation, but even so it seemed that their rate of progress was slow to nonexistent.

  Occasionally they would look up at the Control Room repeater, but with decreasing frequency. Fletcher, a Hudlar space construction specialist, and variously qualified Monitor Corps officers were usually showing each other pieces of twisted metal via their vision channels, comparing identification symbols and talking endlessly about them. No doubt it was all vitally important stuff, but it made boring listening. Besides, they had their own organic jigsaw puzzle to worry about.

  A pleasant break in the routine would occur when they had to go outside to look at one of the other cadavers which had been brought in and attached to the outer hull, there being room for only one CRLT at a time inside Rhabwar. On these occasions the investigations were conducted in airless conditions and only the organic material which was of special interest to them was excised for later study. As a result they found a bewildering variety of age and sex combinations which seemed to indicate that the older CRLTs were well-developed males whose raw areas at each extremity had a brownish coloration, while the younger beings were clearly female and the areas concerned were a livid pink under the transparent covering.

  Once there was a break in the investigative routine which was not pleasant.' For several hours they had been studying a flaccid, purplish lump of something which might have been the organic trigger for the being’s hibernation phase, and making very little progress with it, when Prilicla broke into their angry, impatient silence.

  “Friend Murchison,” the empath said, “is feeling tired.”

  “I’m not,” the pathologist said, with a yawn which threatened to dislocate her firm but beautifully formed lower mandible. “At least, I wasn’t until you reminded me.”

  “As are you, friend Conway—” Prilicla began, when there was an interruption. The furry features of Surgeon-Lieutenant Krach-Yul replaced the pieces of alien hardware which had been filling the repeater screen.

  “Doctor Conway,” the Orligian medic said, “I have to report an accident. Two Earth-human DBDGs, simple fractures, no decompression damage—”

  “Very well,” said Conway, clenching his teeth on a yawn. “Now’s your chance to get in some more other-species surgical experience.”

  “—And a Hudlar engineer, physiological classification FROB,” Krach-Yul went on. “It has sustained a deep, incised, and lacerated wound which has been quickly but inadequately treated by the being itself. There has been a considerable loss of body fluid and associated internal pressure, diminished sen-soria, and—”

  “Coming,” Conway said. To Murchison he muttered, “Don’t wait up for me.”

  While Tyrell was taking him to the scene of the accident, an area where three of the coilship sections were being fitted together, Conway reviewed his necessarily scant surgical experience with the Hudlar life-form.

  They were a species who rarely took sick, and then only during preadolescence, and they were fantastically resistant to physical injury, with eyes which were protected by a hardv transparent membrane, tegument like flexible armor, and no body orifices except for the temporary ones opened for mating and birth.

  The FROBs were ideally suited to space construction projects. Their home planet, Hudlar, pulled four Earth gravities, and its atmospheric pressure — if that dense, soupy mixture of oxygen, inerts, and masses of microscopic animal and vegetable nutrient in suspension could be called an atmosphere — was seven times Earth-normal. At home they absorbed the food-laden air through their incredibly tough yet porous skin, while offplanet they sprayed themselves regularly and frequently with nutrient paint. Their six flexible and immensely strong limbs terminated in four-digited hands which, when the fingers were curled inward and the knuckles presented to the ground, served also as feet.

  Environmentally, the Hudlars were a very adaptable species, because the physiological features which protected them against their own planet’s crushing gravity and pressure also enabled them to work comfortably in any noncorrosive atmosphere of lesser pressure right down to and including the vacuum of space. The only item of equipment a Hudlar space construction engineer needed, apart from its tools, was a communicator which took the form of a small, air-filled blister enclosing its speaking membrane and a two-way radio.

  Conway had not bothered to ask if there was an FROB medic on the Hudlar ship. Curative surgery had been a completely alien concept to that virtually indestructible species until they had joined the Federation and learned about places like Sector General, so that medically trained Hudlars were about as rare outside the hospital as physically injured ones inside it.

  Captain Nelson placed Tyrell within fifty meters of the scene of the accident. Conway headed for the injured Hudlar. Krach-Yul had already reached the Earth-human casualties, one of whom was blaming himself loudly and unprintably for causing the accident and tying up the suit frequency in the process.

  Conway gathered that the two Earth-humans had been saved from certain death by being crushed between two slowly closing ship sections by the Hudlar interposing its enormously strong body, which would have escaped without injury if the jagged-edged stump of an external bracing member had not snagged one of the FROB’s limbs close to the point where it joined the body.

  When Conway arrived, the Hudlar was gripping the injured limb with three of its hands, tourniquet fashion, while the two free hands remaining were trying to hold the edges of the wound together — unsuccessfully. Tiny, misshapen globules of blood were forming between its fingers to drift weightlessly away, steaming furiously. It could not talk because its air bag had been lost, leaving its speaking membranes to vibrate silently in the vacuum.

  Conway withdrew a limb sleeve-piece, the largest size he carried, from his Hudlar medical kit and motioned for the casualty to bare the wound.

  He could see that it was a deep wound by the way the dark red bubbles grew suddenly larger before they broke away, but he was able to snap the sleeve-piece in position before too much blood was lost. Even so there was a considerable leakage around both ends of the sleeve as the Hudlar’s high internal pressure tried to empty it of body fluids. Conway quickly attached circlips at each end of the sleeve and began to tighten one while the Hudlar itself tightened the other. Gradually the fluid loss slowed and then ceased, the casualty’s hands drifted away from the injured limb, and its speaking membrane ceased its silent vibrating. The Hudlar had lost consciousness.

  Ten minutes later
the Hudlar was inside Tyrell’s cargo lock and Conway was using his scanner to search for internal damage caused by the traumatic decompression. The longer he looked

  the less he liked what he saw, and as he was concluding the examination Krach-Yul joined him.

  “The Earth-humans are simple fracture cases, Doctor,” the Orligian reported. “Before setting the bones I wondered if you, as a member of their own species, would prefer to—”

  “And rob you of the chance to increase your other-species experience?” Conway broke in. “No, Doctor, you treat them. They’re on antipain, I take it, and there is no great degree of urgency?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Krach-Yul said.

  “Good,” Conway said, “because I have another job for you — looking after this Hudlar Until you can move it to Sector General. You will need a nutrient sprayer from the Hudlar ship, then arrange with Captain Nelson to increase the air pressure' and artificial gravity in this cargo lock to levels as close to Hudlar-normal as he can manage. Treatment will consist of spraying the casualty with nutrient at hourly intervals and checking on the cardiac activity, and periodically easing the tightness of the sleeve-piece if your scanner indicates a serious reduction of circulation to the injured limb. While you are doing these things you will wear two gravity neutralizers. If you were wearing one and it failed under four-G conditions there would be another seriously injured casualty, you.

  “Normally I would travel with this patient,” he went on, stifling a yawn, “but I have to be available in case something urgent develops with the CRLT. Hudlar surgery can be tricky so I’ll tape some notes on this one for the operating team, including the suggestion that you be allowed to observe if you wish to do so.”

  “Very much,” Krach-Yul said, “and thank you, Doctor.”

  “And now I’ll leave you with your patients and return to Rhabwar” Conway said. Silently he added, to sleep.

  “Tyrell was absent for eight days and was subsequently assigned to courier duty, taking specimens to Sector General and returning with information, advice, and detailed lists of questions regarding the progress of their work from Thomnas-tor. The great, spiral jigsaw puzzle which was the alien ship was beginning to take shape — or more accurately, to take a large number of semicircular and quarter-circular shapes — as the hibernation cylinders were identified, positioned, and coupled. Many of the cylinders were still missing because they had been so seriously damaged that their occupants had died or they had still to be found and retrieved by the scoutships.