by James White
“They haven’t been able to control the bleeding very well,” the team leader went on, “so they are moving it from the Hudlar section two levels above us to the Kelgian theater just below, and taking it through the water-filled levels to save time … Excuse me, Doctor, here they come.
Several things happened at once just then. With an untranslatable gurgle of pleasure Surreshun released itself from the wheel and went rolling ponderously along the floor, zig-zagging slowly among the patients and nursing staff who ranged from squat, crab-like Melfans to the forty foot long tentacled crocodile who were natives of the ocean-covered world of Chalderescol. The other Drambon had twitched itself free of Conway’s grip and was drifting away, while high up on the opposite wall a seal had opened and the injured Kelgian was being moved in, attended by too many people for Conway’s assistance to be either necessary or desirable.
There were five Earth-humans wearing lightweight suits like his own, two Kelgians, and an Illensan whose transparent envelope showed the cloudy yellow of chlorine inside. One of the Earth-human helmets contained a head which he recognized, that of his friend Mannon who specialized in Hudlar surgery. They swarmed around the Kelgian casualty like a shoal of ungainly fish, pushing and tugging it toward the other side of the ward, the size of the shoal increasing as the reception-team leader and his men swam closer to assess the situation. The Drambon jellyfish also moved closer.
At first Conway thought the being was merely curious, but then he saw that the carpet of iridescence was undulating toward the injured being with intent.
“Stop it!” Conway shouted.
They all heard him because he saw them jerk as his voice rattled deafeningly from their suit phones. But they did not know and there was no time to tell them who, what, or even how to stop it.
Cursing the inertia of the water Conway swam furiously toward the injured Kelgian, trying to head the Drambon off. But the big, blood soaked area of fur on the Kelgian’s side was drawing the other like a magnet and, like a magnet, its attraction increased with the inverse square of the distance. Conway did not have time to shout a warning before the Drambon struck softly and clung.
There was a soft explosion of bubbles as the Drambon’s probes ruptured the Kelgian’s pressure litter and slid into the already damaged suit it had been wearing in the Hudlar theater and through the thick, silvery fur beneath. Within seconds its transparent body was turning a deepening shade of red as it sucked the blood from the injured Kelgian.
“Quickly,” Conway yelled, “get them both to the air-filled section!”
He could have saved his breath because everyone was talking and overloading the suit radio. The direct sound pickup was no help, either- all he could hear was the deep, water-borne growl of the ward’s emergency siren and too many voices jabbering at once, until one very loud, translated Chalder voice roared out above the others.
“Animal! Animal!”
His strenuous swimming had overloaded the drying elements in his suit, but those words caused the sweat bathing his body to turn from hot to cold.
Not all the inhabitants of Sector General were vegetarians by any means, and their dietary requirements necessitated vast quantities of meat from extraterrestrial as well as terrestrial sources to be shipped in. But the meat invariably arrived frozen or otherwise preserved, and for a very good reason. This was to avoid cases of mistaken identity on the part of the larger, meat-eating life-forms who very often came into contact with smaller e-ts who frequently bore a physical resemblance to the former’s favorite food.
The rule in Sector General was that if a being was alive, no matter what size or shape it might take, then it was intelligent.
Exceptions to this rule were very rare and included pets-nonviolent, of course-belonging to the staff or important visitors. When a nonintelligent being entered the hospital by accident, protective measures had to be taken very quickly if the smaller intelligent life-forms were not to suffer.
Neither the medical staff engaged in transferring the casualty nor the reception team were armed, but in a few minutes’ time the alarm siren would bring corpsmen who would be and meanwhile one of the Chalder patients-all multitentacled, armored, thirty feet of it-was moving in to remove the clinging Drambon with one or at most two bites of its enormous jaws.
“Edwards! Mannon! Help me keep it off!” Conway shouted, but there were still too many other people shouting for them to hear him. He grabbed two fistfuls of the Drambon’s tegument and looked around wildly. The team leader had reached the scene at the same time and he had pushed one leg between the injured Kelgian and the clinging SRJH and with his hands was trying to pry them apart. Conway twisted around, drew both knees up to his chin and with both feet booted the team leader clear. He could apologize later. The Chalder was moving dangerously close.
Edwards arrived then, saw what Conway was doing and joined him.
Together they kicked out at the gigantic snout of the Chalder, trying to drive it away. They could not hurt the brute, but were trusting the e-t not to attack two intelligent beings in order to kill an apparent animal who was attacking a third intelligent being. The situation was sufficiently confused, however, for a mistake to be made. It was quite possible that Edwards and Conway could have their legs amputated from the waist down.
Suddenly Conway’s foot was grabbed by a pair of large, strong hands and his friend Mannon swarmed along his body until their helmets were touching.
“Conway, what the blazes are you …
“There’s no time to explain,” he replied. “Just get them both to the air-filled section quickly. Don’t let anyone hurt the SRJH, it isn’t doing any harm.
Mannon looked at the being who was covering the Kelgian like an enormous, blood-red blister. No longer transparent, the blood of the injured nurse could actually be seen entering and being diffused throughout the Drambon’s great, slug-like body which now seemed filled to bursting point.
“You could have fooled me,” said Mannon, and pulled away. With one hand he gripped one of the Chalder’s enormous teeth, swung around until he was staring it in an eye nearly the size of a football and with his other hand made jabbing, sideways motions. Looking confused the Chalder drifted away, and a few seconds later they were in the lock leading to the air-filled section.
The water drained out and the seal opened to show two green-clad Corpsmen standing in the lock antechamber, weapons at the ready. One of them cradled an enormous gun with multiple magazines capable of instantly anesthetizing any one of a dozen or more life-forms who came within the category of warm-blooded oxygen breathers, while the other held a tiny and much less ferocious-looking weapon which could blast the life from a bull elephant or any e-t equivalent.
“Hold it!” said Conway, slipping and skidding across the still-wet floor to stand in front of the Drambon. “This is a VIP visitor. Give us a few minutes. Everything will be all right, believe me.
They did not lower their weapons, neither did they look as though they believed him.
“You’d better explain,” said the team leader quietly, but with the anger showing in his face.
“Yes,” said Conway. “I, ah, hope you weren’t hurt when I kicked you back there.”
“Only my dignity, but I still—”
“O’Mara here,” roared a voice from the communicator on the wall opposite. “I want vision contact. What’s happening down there?”
Edwards was closest. He trained and focused the vision pickup as directed and said, “The situation is rather complicated, Major—”
“Naturally, if Conway has anything to do with it,” said O’Mara caustically. “What is he doing there, praying for deliverance?”
Conway was on his knees beside the injured Kelgian, checking on its condition. From what he could see the Drambon had attacked itself so tightly that very little water had entered the pressure litter or the damaged protective suit-it was breathing normally with no indications of water in its lungs. The Drambon’s color had lightened agai
n. No longer deep red, it had returned to its normal translucent iridescent coloring tinged only faintly with pink. As Conway watched, it detached itself from the Kelgian and rolled like a great, water-filled balloon to come to rest against the wall.
Edwards was saying … A full report on this life-form three days ago. I realize three days is not a long time for the results to be disseminated throughout an establishment of this size, but none of this would have happened if the Drambon had not been exposed to a seriously injured being who—”
“With respect, Major,” said O’Mara in a voice oozing with everything else but, “a hospital is a place where anyone at any time can expect to see serious illness or injury. Stop making excuses and tell me what happened!”
“The Drambon over there,” put in the team leader, “attacked the injured Kelgian.”
“And?” said O’Mara.
“Cured it instantly,” said Edwards smugly.
It was not often that O’Mara was lost for words. Conway moved to one side to allow the Kelgian, who was no longer a casualty, to climb to its multitudinous feet. He said, “The Drambon SRJH is the closest thing to a doctor that we have found on that planet. It is a leech-like form of life which practices its profession by withdrawing the blood of its patients and purifying it of any infection or toxic substances before returning it to the patient’s body, and it repairs simple physical damage as well. Its reaction in the presence of severe illness or injury is instinctive. When the injured Kelgian appeared suddenly it wanted to help. The casualty was suffering from poisoning due to toxic material from the Hudlar theater environment infecting the wound. So far as the Drambon was concerned it was a very simple case.
“Not all the blood withdrawn is returned, however,” Conway went on, 'and we have not been able to establish whether it is physiologically impossible for the being to return all of it or whether it retains a few ounces as payment for services rendered.”
The Kelgian gave a low-pitched hoot like the sound of a modulated foghorn. The noise translated as “It’s very welcome, I’m sure.”
The DBLF moved away then followed by the two armed corpsmen. With a baffled look at the Drambon the team leader waved his men back to their stations and the silence began to drag.
Finally O’Mara said, “When you’ve taken care of your visitors and if there are no physiological reasons against it, I suggest we meet to discuss this. My office in three hours.”
His tone was ominously mild. It might be a good idea if Conway roped in some moral as well as medical support for the meeting with the Chief Psychologist.
Conway asked his empath friend Prilicla to attend the meeting as well as the Monitor officers Colonel Skempton and Major Edwards, Doctor Mannon, the two Drambons, Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, and two medics from Hudlar and Melf who were currently taking courses at the hospital. It took several minutes for them all to enter O’Mara’s enormous outer office-a room normally occupied only by the Major’s aide and more than a score of pieces of furniture suited to the e-ts with whom O’Mara had professional contact. On this occasion it was the Chief Psychologist who occupied his assistant’s desk and waited with visibly controlled impatience for everyone to sit, lie, or otherwise insinuate themselves into the furniture.
When they had done so O’Mara said quietly, “Since the period of high drama accompanying your arrival, I have caught up with the latest Meatball reports, and to know all is to forgive all — except, of course, your presence here, Conway. You were not due back for another three—”
“Drambo, sir,” said Conway. “We use the native word sound for it now.
“We prefer that,” Surreshun’s translated voice joined in. “Meatball is not an accurate name for a world covered with a relatively thin layer of animal life, or for what we consider to be the most beautiful planet in the galaxy-even though we have not as yet had an opportunity to visit any of the others. Besides, your translator tells me that Meatball as a name lacks accuracy, reverence and respect. The continued use of your name for our glorious planet will not anger me-I have too great an understanding of the often shallow thinking engaged in by your species, too much sympathy for these mental shortcomings to feel anger or even irritation—”
“You’re too kind,” said O’Mara.
“That as well,” agreed Surreshun.
“The reason I returned,” Conway said hastily, “was simply to get help. I wasn’t making any progress with the Drambo problem and it was worrying me.”
“Worry,” said O’Mara, “is a particularly useless activity — unless, of course, you do it out loud and in company. Ah, now I see why you brought half the hospital along.”
Conway nodded and went on, “Drambo is badly in need of medical assistance, but the problem is unlike any other that we have already met on Earth-human or e-t planets and colonies. On those occasions it was simply a matter of investigating and isolating the diseases, bringing in or suggesting where the specifics could be distributed most effectively and then allowing the people affected to administer their own medicine through local doctors and facilities. Drambo is not like that. Instead of trying to diagnose and treat a large number of individuals, the patients are relatively few but very, very large indeed.
“The reason for this is that within the past few years Surreshun’s race has learned how to liberate atomic energy,” Conway went on, then added, “Explosively, of course, and with vast quantities of radiational dirt. They are very …” he hesitated, trying to find a diplomatic word for careless, or criminally stupid or suicidal, and failing … proud of their new-found ability to kill large areas of the strata creatures and render the shallows around these living coastlines safe for their expanding population.
“But living in or under and perhaps controlling these strata creatures is yet another intelligent race whose land is quite literally in danger of dying all around them,” Conway continued. “These people made the tool which came aboard Descartes, and judging by that gadget they are highly advanced indeed. But we still know nothing at all about them.
“When it became clear that Surreshun’s people were not the tool makers,” Conway went on, “we asked ourselves where they would be most likely to be found, and the answer was in those areas where their living country was under attack. It was in this situation that I expected to find their medical people as well, and I did in fact find our transparent friend here. It saved my life, in its rather disconcerting fashion, and I’m convinced that it is the Drambon equivalent of a doctor. Unfortunately it does not seem to be able to communicate in any fashion that I can understand and, bearing in mind the fact that anyone can directly observe its innards without the necessity for X rays, there doesn’t seem to be a localized gathering of nerve ganglia or indeed anything at all resembling a brain.
“We badly need the help of its people,” Conway added seriously, “which is the reason for bringing it here so that a specialist in e-t communications can succeed, perhaps, where the ship’s contact experts and myself failed.”
He looked pointedly at O’Mara, who was looking thoughtfully at the leech-like Drambon. It, in turn, had put one of its eyes into a pseudopod and had extended it toward the ceiling so that it could look at the fragile, insect-like figure of the empath Prilicla. Prilicla had enough eyes to look everywhere at once.
“Isn’t it odd,” said Colonel Skempton suddenly, “that one of your Drambons is heartless and the other appears to be brainless?”
“Brainless doctors I am used to,” said O’Mara dryly. “I communicate with them, on the whole successfully, every day. But this isn’t your only problem?”
Conway shook his head. “I’ve already said that we have to treat a small number of very large patients. Even with the assistance of all the Drambon medical people I would still need help in charting-and I do mean charting by photoreconnaissance-the extent of the trouble as accurately as possible and probing subsurface areas. X rays on this scale are impossible. A full-scale drilling operation to withdraw deep
tissue samples would be of little use either, since the drill would be a short and impossibly fine needle. So we will need to investigate the diseased or damaged areas in person, using armored ground cars and, where possible, our hands and feet inside heavy-duty spacesuits. Entrance to the affected areas will be through natural body openings, and the exercise will go much faster if we have the help of people with medical training who do not need the protection of armored vehicles and suits. I’m thinking of species like the Chalders and Hudlars and Melfans who are armored already.
“From Pathology,” he went on, looking toward Thornnastor, “I would like suggestions for providing a cure by surgery rather than medication. Present indications are that the trouble will be largely the result of radiation poisoning, and while I realize that we can cure even advanced cases these days, the treatment may well be impossible to apply to patients this size, not to mention the fact that the regenerative medication required for only one of them could represent the total output of that drug from a dozen planets for many years. Hence the necessity for a surgical solution.”
Skempton cleared his throat and said, “I begin to see the scope of your problem, Doctor. My part will be in organizing transport and supplies for your medical people. I’d also suggest a full battalion of engineers to set up and maintain the special equipment …
“To begin with,” said Conway.
“Naturally,” said the Colonel a trifle coldly, “we shall continue to assist you in whatever—”
“You misunderstood me, sir,” said Conway. “I can’t be sure just how much help we will need at the present time, but I had been thinking in terms of a full sector sub fleet armed with long-range lasers, surface penetrating torpedoes, tactical atomic weapons-clean, of course-and whatever other forms of frightfulness you can suggest that are both concentrated and capable of being directed accurately.
“You see, Colonel,” Conway concluded, “surgery on this scale will mean that the operation will be military rather than surgical.” To O’Mara he added, “Those are a few of the reasons for my unscheduled return. The others are less urgent and …