Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  “You,” said the Monitor, “started it.”

  There was no answer to that.

  It must have been hours later that Conway felt a touch on his shoulder and straightened to find a DBLF nurse behind him. The being was holding a hypodermic. It said, “Pep-shot, Doctor?”

  All at once Conway realized how wobbly his legs had become and how hard it was to focus his eyes. And he must have been noticeably slowing down for the nurse to approach him in the first place. He nodded and rolled up his sleeve with fingers which felt like thick, tired sausages.

  “Yipe!” he cried in sudden anguish. “What are you using, a six-inch nail?”

  “I am sorry,” said the DBLF, “but I have injected two doctors of my own species before coming to you, and as you know our tegument is thicker and more closely grained than yours is. The needle has therefore become blunted.”

  Conway’s fatigue dropped away in seconds. Except for a slight tingling in hands and feet and a grayish blotching which only others could see in his face he felt as clear-eyed, alert and physically refreshed as if he had just come out of a shower after ten hours sleep. He took a quick look around before finishing his current examination and saw that here at least the number of patients awaiting attention had shrunk to a mere handful, and the number of Monitors in the room was less than half what it had been at the start. The patients were being taken care of, and the Monitors had become patients.

  He had seen it happening all around him. Monitors who had had little or no sleep on the transport coming here, forcing themselves to carry on helping the overworked medics of the hospital with repeated pep-shots and sheer, dogged courage. One by one they had literally dropped in their tracks and been taken hurriedly away, so exhausted that the involuntary muscles of heart and lungs had given up with everything else. They lay in special wards with robot devices massaging their hearts, giving artificial respiration and feeding them through a vein in the leg. Conway had heard that only one of them had died.

  Taking advantage of the lull, Conway and Williamson moved to the direct vision panel and looked out. The waiting swarm of ships seemed only slightly smaller, though he knew that these must be new arrivals. He could not imagine where they were going to put these people—even the habitable corridors in the hospital were beginning to overflow now, and there was constant re-arranging of patients of all species to make more room. But that wasn’t his problem, and the weaving pattern of ships was an oddly restful sight …

  “Emergency,” said the wall annunciator suddenly. “Single ship, one occupant, species as yet unknown requests immediate treatment. Occupant is in only partial control of its ship, is badly injured and communications are incoherent. Stand by at all admittance locks … !”

  Oh, no, Conway thought, not at a time like this! There was a cold sickness in his stomach and he had a horrible premonition of what was going to happen. Williamson’s knuckles shone white as he gripped the edge of the viewport. “Look!” he said in a flat, despairing tone, and pointed.

  An intruder was approaching the waiting swarm of ships at an insane velocity and on a wildly erratic course. A stubby, black and featureless torpedo shape, it reached and penetrated the weaving mass of ships before Conway had time to take two breaths. In milling confusion the ships scattered, narrowly avoiding collision both with it and each other, and still it hurtled on. There was only one ship in its path now, a Monitor transport which had been given the all-clear to approach and was drifting in toward an admittance lock. The transport was big, ungainly and not built for fast acrobatics—it had neither the time nor the ability to get out of the way. A collision was certain, and the transport was jammed with wounded …

  But no. At the last possible instant the hurtling ship swerved. They saw it miss the transport and its stubby torpedo shape foreshorten to a circle which grew in size with heart-stopping rapidity. Now it was headed straight at them! Conway wanted to shut his eyes, but there was a peculiar fascination about watching that great mass of metal rushing at him. Neither Williamson nor himself made any attempt to jump for a spacesuit—what was to happen was only split seconds away.

  The ship was almost on top of them when it swerved again as its injured pilot sought desperately to avoid this greater obstacle, the hospital. But too late, the ship struck.

  A smashing double-shock struck up at them from the floor as the ship tore through their double skin, followed by successively milder shocks as it bludgeoned its way into the vitals of the great hospital. A cacophony of screams—both human and alien—arose briefly, also whistlings, rustlings and gutteral jabberings as beings were maimed, drowned, gassed or decompressed. Water poured into sections containing pure chlorine. A blast of ordinary air rushed through a gaping hole in the compartment whose occupants had never known anything but trans-Plutonian cold and vacuum—the beings shriveled, died and dissolved horribly at the first touch of it. Water, air and a score of different atmospheric mixtures intermingled forming a sludgy, brown and highly corrosive mixture that steamed and bubbled its way out into space. But long before that had happened the air-tight seals had slammed shut, effectively containing the terrible wound made by that bulleting ship.

  VII

  There was an instant of shocked paralysis, then the hospital reacted. Above their heads the annunciator went into a quiet, controlled frenzy. Engineers and Maintenance men of all species were to report for assignment immediately. The gravity neutralizer grids in the LSVO and MSVK wards were failing—all medical staff in the area were to encase the patients in protective envelopes and transfer them to DBLF theater Two, where one-twentieth G conditions were being set up, before they were crushed by their own weight. There was an untraced leak in AUGL corridor Nineteen, and all DBDG’s were warned of chlorine contamination in the area of their dining hall. Also, Dr. Lister was asked to report himself, please.

  In an odd corner of his mind Conway noted how everybody else was ordered to their assignments while Dr. Lister was asked. Suddenly he heard his name being called and he swung around.

  It was Dr. Mannon. He hurried up to Williamson and Conway and said, “I see you’re free at the moment. There’s a job I’d like you to do.” He paused to receive Conway’s nod, then plunged on breathlessly.

  When the crashing ship had dug a hole half-way through the hospital, Mannon explained, the volume sealed off by the safety doors was not confined simply to the tunnel of wreckage it had created. The position of the doors was responsible for this—the result being analogous to a great tree of vacuum extending into the hospital structure, with the tunnel created by the ship as its trunk and the open sections of corridors leading off it the branches. Some of these airless corridors served compartments which themselves could be sealed off, and it was possible that these might contain survivors.

  Normally there would be no necessity to hurry the rescue of these beings, they would be quite comfortable where they were for days, but in this instance there was an added complication. The ship had come to rest near the center—the nerve center, in fact—of the hospital, the section which contained the controls for the artificial settings of the entire structure. At the moment there seemed to be a survivor in that section somewhere—possibly a patient, a member of the Staff or even the occupant of the wrecked ship—who was moving around and unknowingly damaging the gravity control mechanisms. This state of affairs, if continued, could create havoc in the wards and might even cause deaths among the light-gravity life-forms.

  Dr. Mannon wanted them to go in and bring the being concerned out before it unwittingly wrecked the place.

  “A PVSJ has already gone in,” Mannon added, “but that species is awkward in a spacesuit, so I’m sending you two as well to hurry things along. All right? Hop to it, then.”

  Wearing gravity neutralizer packs they exited near the damaged section and drifted along the Hospital’s outer skin to the twenty-foot wide hole gouged in its side by the crashing ship. The packs allowed a high degree of maneuverability in weightless conditions, and t
hey did not expect anything else along the route they were to travel. They also carried ropes and magnetic anchors, and Williamson—solely because it was part of the equipment issued with the service Standard suit, he said—also carried a gun. Both had air for three hours.

  At first the going was easy. The ship had sheared a clean-edged tunnel through ward bulkheads, deck plating and even through items of heavy machinery. Conway could see clearly into the corridors they passed in their descent, and nowhere was there a sign of life. There were grisly remnants of a high-pressure life-form which would have blown itself apart even under Earth-normal atmospheric conditions. When subjected suddenly to hard vacuum the process had been that much more violent. And in one corridor there was disclosed a tragedy; a near-human DBDG nurse—one of the red, bear-like entities—had been neatly decapitated by the closing of an air-tight door which it had just failed to make in time. For some reason the sight affected him more than anything else he had seen that day.

  Increasing amounts of “foreign” wreckage hampered their progress as they continued to descend—plating and structural members torn from the crashing ship—so that there were times when they had to clear a way through it with their hands and feet.

  Williamson was in the lead—about ten yards below Conway that was—when the Monitor flicked out of sight. In the suit radio a cry of surprise was abruptly cut off by the clang of metal against metal. Conway’s grip on the projecting beam he had been holding tightened instinctively in shocked surprise, and he felt it vibrate through his gauntlets. The wreckage was shifting! Panic took him for a moment until he realized that most of the movement was taking place back the way he had come, above his head. The vibration ceased a few minutes later without the debris around him significantly changing its position. Only then did Conway tie his line securely to the beam and look around for the Monitor.

  Knees bent and arms in front of his head Williamson lay face downward partially embedded in a shelving mass of loose wreckage some twenty feet below. Faint, irregular sounds of breathing in his phones told Conway that the Monitor’s quick thinking in wrapping his arms around his head had, by protecting his suit’s fragile face-plate, saved his life. But whether or not Williamson lived for long or not depended on the nature of his other injuries, and they in turn depended on the amount of gravitic attraction in the floor section which had sucked him down.

  It was now obvious that the accident was due to a square of deck in which the artificial gravity grid was, despite the wholesale destruction of circuits in the crash area, still operative. Conway was profoundly thankful that the attraction was exerted only at right angles to the grid’s surface and that the floor section had been warped slightly. Had it been facing straight up then both the Monitor and himself would have dropped, and from a distance considerably greater than twenty feet.

  Carefully paying out his safety line Conway approached the huddled form of Williamson. His grip tightened convulsively on the rope when he came within the field of influence of the gravity grid, then eased as he realized that its power was at most only one and a half Gs. With a steady attraction now pulling him downward toward the Monitor, Conway began lowering himself hand over hand. He could have used his neutralizer pack to counteract that pull, of course, and just drifted down, but that would have been risky. If he accidentally passed out of the floor section’s area of influence, then the pack would have flung him upward again, with probably fatal results.

  The Monitor was still unconscious when Conway reached him, and though he could not tell for sure, owing to the other wearing a spacesuit, he suspected multiple fractures in both arms. As he gently disengaged the limp figure from the surrounding wreckage it was suddenly borne on him that Williamson needed attention, immediate attention with all the resources the hospital could provide. He had just realized that the Monitor had been the recipient of a large number of pep-shots; his reserves of strength must be gone. When he regained consciousness, if he ever did, he might not be able to withstand the shock.

  VIII

  Conway was about to call through for assistance when a chunk of ragged-edged metal spun past his helmet. He swung around just in time to duck another piece of wreckage which was sailing toward him. Only then did he see the outlines of a nonhuman, spacesuited figure which was partially hidden in a tangle of metal about ten yards away. The being was throwing things at him!

  The bombardment stopped as soon as the other saw that Conway had noticed it. With visions of having found the unknown survivor whose blundering about was playing hob with the hospital’s artificial gravity system he hurried across to it. But he saw immediately that the being was incapable of doing any moving about at all, it was pinned down, but miraculously unhurt, by a couple of heavy structural members. It was also making vain attempts to reach around to the back of its suit with its only free appendage. Conway was puzzled for a moment, then he saw the radio pack which was strapped to the being’s back, and the lead dangling loose from it. Using surgical tape he repaired the break and immediately the flat, Translated tones of the being filled his ear-phones.

  It was the PVSJ who had left before them to search the wrecked area for survivors. Caught by the same trap which had snagged the unfortunate Monitor, it had been able to use its gravity pack to check its sudden fall. Overcompensating, it had crashed into its present position. The crash had been relatively gentle, but it had caused some loose wreckage to subside, trapping the being and damaging its radio.

  The PVSJ—a chlorine-breathing Illensan—was solidly planted in the wreckage: Conway’s attempts to free it were useless. While trying, however, he got a look at the professional insignia painted on the other’s suit. The Tralthan and Illensan symbols meant nothing to Conway, but the third one—which was the nearest expression of the being’s function in Earth-human terms—was a crucifix. The being was a padre. Conway might have expected that.

  But now Conway had two immobilized cases instead of one. He thumbed the transmit switch of his radio and cleared his throat. Before he could speak the harsh, urgent voice of Dr. Mannon was dinning in his ears.

  “Dr. Conway! Corpsman Williamson! One of you, report quickly, please!”

  Conway said, “I was just going to,” and gave an account of his troubles to date and requested aid for the Monitor and the PVSJ padre. Mannon cut him off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly, “but we can’t help you. The gravity fluctuations have been getting worse here, they must have caused a subsidence in your tunnel, because it’s solidly plugged with wreckage all the way above you. Maintenance men have tried to cut a way through but—”

  “Let me talk to him,” broke in another voice, and there were the magnified, fumbling noises of a mike being snatched out of someone’s hand. “Dr. Conway, this is Dr. Lister speaking,” it went on. “I’m afraid that I must tell you that the well-being of your two accident cases is of secondary importance. Your job is to contact that being in the gravity control compartment and stop him. Hit him on the head if necessary, but stop him—he’s wrecking the hospital!”

  Conway swallowed. He said, “Yes, sir,” and began looking for a way to penetrate further into the tangle of metal surrounding him. It looked hopeless.

  Suddenly he felt himself being pulled sideways. He grabbed for the nearest solid looking projection and hung on for dear life. Transmitted through the fabric of his suit he heard the grinding, tearing jangle of moving metal. The wreckage was shifting again. Then the force pulling him disappeared as suddenly as it had come and simultaneously there came a peculiar, barking cry from the PVSJ. Conway twisted around to see that where the Illensan had been a large hole led downward into nothingness.

  He had to force himself to let go of his handhold. The attraction which had seized him had been due, Conway knew, to the momentary activating of an artificial gravity grid somewhere below. If it returned while he was floating unsupported … Conway did not want to think about that.

  The shift had not affected Williamson’s position—he st
ill lay as Conway had left him—but the PVSJ must have fallen through.

  “Are you all right?” Conway called anxiously.

  “I think so,” came the reply. “I am still somewhat numb.”

  Cautiously, Conway drifted across to the newly-created opening and looked down. Below him was a very large compartment, well-lit from a source somewhere off to one side. Only the floor was visible about forty feet below, the walls being beyond his angle of vision and this was thickly carpeted by a dark blue, tubular growth with bulbous leaves. The purpose of this compartment baffled Conway until he realized that he was looking at the AUGL tank minus its water. The thick, flaccid growth covering its floor served both as food and interior decoration for the AUGL patients. The PVSJ had been very lucky to have such a springy surface to land on.

  The PVSJ was no longer pinned down by wreckage and it stated that it felt fit enough to help Conway with the being in the gravity control department. As they were about to resume the descent Conway glanced toward the source of light he had half-noticed earlier, and caught his breath.

  One wall of the AUGL tank was transparent and looked out on a section corridor which had been converted into a temporary ward. DBLF caterpillars lay in the beds which lined one side, and they were by turns crushed savagely into the plastifoam and bounced upward into the air by it as violent and random fluctuations rippled along the gravity grids in the floor. Netting had been hastily tied around the patients to keep them in the beds, but despite the beating they were taking they were the lucky ones.

  A ward was being evacuated somewhere and through his stretch of corridor there crawled, wriggled and hopped a procession of beings resembling the contents of some cosmic Ark. All the oxygen-breathing life-forms were represented together with many who were not, and human nursing orderlies and Monitors shepherded them along. Experience must have taught the orderlies that to stand or walk upright was asking for broken bones and cracked skulls, because they were crawling along on their hands and knees. When a sudden surge of three or four Gs caught them they had a shorter distance to fall that way. Most of them were wearing gravity packs, Conway saw, but had given them up as useless in conditions where the gravity constant was a wild variable.