by James White
So it was too late to stop the Corps making contact with the aliens. The only course now was for him to “cure” the patient.
If he was allowed …
The wall annunciator clicked, coughed and said, “Dr. Conway, report to Major O’Mara’s office immediately.” He was thinking bitterly that Thornnastor had lost no time in registering a complaint when Prilicla said, “Respiration almost gone. Irregular heartbeat.”
Conway snatched up the ward intercom mike and yelled, “Conway, here. Tell O’Mara I’m busy!” Then to Prilicla he said, “I caught it, too. How about emotion?”
“Stronger during the erratic pulse, but both back to normal now. Registration is still fading.”
“Right. Keep your ears and mind open.”
Conway took a sample of expelled air from one of the breathing orifices and ran it through the analyzer. Even considering the shallowness of the being’s respiration this result, like the others he had taken during the past twelve hours, left no possibility for doubt. Conway began to feel a little more confident.
“Respiration almost gone,” said Prilicla.
Before Conway could reply, O’Mara burst through the door. Stopping about six inches from Conway he said in a dangerously quiet voice. “Just what are you busy at, Doctor?”
Conway was practically dancing with impatience. He asked pleadingly, “Can’t this wait?”
“No.”
He would not be able to get rid of the psychologist without some sort of explanation for his recent conduct, Conway knew, and he desperately wanted to have the next hour free from interference. He moved quickly to the patient and over his shoulder gave O’Mara a hasty résumé of his deductions regarding the alien ambulance ship and the colony from which it had come. He ended by urging the psychologist to call Skempton to delay the first contact until something more definite was known about the patient’s condition.
“So you knew all this a week ago and didn’t tell us,” O’Mara said thoughtfully, “and I can understand your reasons for keeping quiet. But the Corps had made a great many first contacts and managed them very well, thank you. We have people specially trained for this sort of thing. You, however, have been reacting like an ostrich—doing nothing and hoping that the problem would go away. This problem, involving a culture advanced enough to have crossed intergalactic space, is too big to be dodged. It has to be solved quickly and positively. Ideally it would involve us showing proof of good feeling by producing the survivor alive and well …”
O’Mara’s voice hardened suddenly into an angry rasp, and he was so close behind Conway that the doctor could feel his breath on his neck.
“ … Which brings us back to the patient here, the being which you are supposed to be treating.
“Look at me, Conway!”
Conway turned around, but only after ensuring that Prilicla was still keeping a close watch. Angrily he wondered why everything had come to the boil at once instead of happening in a nice, consecutive fashion.
“At the first examination,” O’Mara resumed quietly, “you fled to your room before we could make any headway. This looked like professional cold feet to me, but I was inclined to make allowances. Later, Dr. Mannon suggested a line of treatment which although drastic was not only allowable but definitely indicated in the patient’s condition. You refused to move. Then Pathology developed a specific which could have cured the patient in a matter of hours, and you balked at using even that!
“Ordinarily I discount rumors and gossip in this place,” O’Mara continued, his voice rising again, “but when they become both widespread and insistent, especially among the nursing staff who generally know what they’re talking about medically, I have to take notice. It has become plain that despite the constant watch you have kept on the patient, the frequent examinations and the numerous samples you have sent to Pathology, you have done absolutely nothing for the being.
“It has been dying while you pretended to treat it. You’ve been so afraid of the consequences of failure that you were incapable of making the simplest decision—”
“No!” Conway protested. That had stung even though O‘Mara’s accusation was based on incomplete information. And much worse than the words was the look on the Major’s face, an expression of anger and scorn and a deep hurt that someone he had trusted both professionally and as a friend could have failed him so horribly. O’Mara was blaming himself almost as much as Conway for his business.
“Caution can be taken to extremes, Doctor,” O’Mara said almost sadly. “You have to be bold, sometimes. If a close decision is necessary you should make it, and stick to it no matter what …”
“And what the blazes,” asked Conway furiously, “do you think I’m doing?”
“Nothing!” shouted O’Mara. “Absolutely nothing!”
“That’s right!” Conway yelled back.
“Respiration has ceased,” Prilicla said quietly.
Conway swung around and thumbed the buzzer for Kursedd. He said, “Heart action? Mind?”
“Pulse faster. Emoting a little more strongly.”
Kursedd arrived then and Conway began rattling out instructions. He needed instruments from the adjoining DBLF theater and detailed his requirements. Aseptic procedure was unnecessary, likewise anesthetics—he wanted only a large selection of cutting instruments. The nurse disappeared and Conway called Pathology, asking if they could suggest a safe coagulant for the patient should extensive surgery be necessary. They could and said he would have it within minutes. As he was turning from the intercom, O’Mara spoke:
“All this frantic activity, this window-dressing, proves nothing. The patient has stopped breathing. If it isn’t dead it is as near to it as makes no difference, and you’re to blame. Heaven help you, Doctor, because nobody here will.”
Conway shook his head distractedly. “Unfortunately you may be right, but I’m hoping that it won’t die,” he said. “I can’t explain just now, but you could help me by contacting Skempton and telling him to go easy on that alien colony. I need time, just how much of it I still don’t know.”
“You don’t know when to give up,” said O‘Mara angrily, but went to the intercom nevertheless. While he was arranging a link-up, Kursedd undulated in with an instrument trolley. Conway placed it convenient to the patient, then said over his shoulder to O’Mara, “Here is something you might think about. For the past twelve hours the air expelled from the patient’s lungs has been free from impurities. It has been breathing but apparently not using its breath …”
He bent quickly, adjusted his stethoscope and listened. The heartbeats were a little faster, he thought, and stronger. But there was a jarring irregularity to them. Through the thick, almost solid growth which enclosed it the sounds were both magnified and distorted. Conway could not tell if the heart alone was responsible for the noise or if other organic movements were contributing. This worried him because he didn’t know what was normal for a patient like this. The survivor had, after all, been in an ambulance ship, which meant that there might have been something wrong with it in addition to its present condition …
“What are you raving about?” O’Mara broke in roughly, making Conway realize that he had been thinking aloud. “Are you saying now that the patient isn’t sick … ?”
Absently, Conway said, “An expectant mother can be suffering, yet not be technically ill.”
He wished that he knew more of what was going on inside his patient. If the being’s ears had not been completely covered by the growth he would have tried the Translator again. The sucking, bumping, gurgling noises could mean anything.
“Conway … !” began O’Mara, and took a breath which could be heard all over the ward. Then he forced his voice down to a conversational level and went on, “I’m in touch with Skempton’s ship. Apparently they made good time and have already contacted the aliens. They’re fetching the Colonel now …” He broke off, then added, “I’ll turn up the volume so you can hear what he says.”
�
��Not too loud,” said Conway, then to Prilicla, “How is it emoting?”
“Much stronger. I detect separate emotions again. Feelings of urgency, distress and fear—probably claustrophobic—approaching the point of panic.”
Conway gave the patient a long, careful appraisal. There was no visible movement. Abruptly he said, “I can’t risk waiting any longer. It must be too weak to help itself. Screens, Nurse.”
The screens were meant only to exclude O’Mara. Had the psychologist seen what was to come without fully knowing what was going on he would doubtless have jumped to more wrong conclusions, probably to the extent of forcibly restraining Conway.
“Its distress is increasing,” Prilicla said suddenly. “There is no actual pain, but there are intense feelings of constriction …”
Conway nodded. He motioned for a scalpel and began cutting into the growth, trying to establish its depth. It was now like soft, crumbling cork which offered little resistance to the knife. At a depth of eight inches he bared what looked like a grayish, oily and faintly irridescent membrane, but there was no rush of body fluid into the operative field. Conway heaved a sigh of relief, withdrew, then repeated the process in another area. This time the membrane revealed had a greenish tinge and was twitching slightly. He moved on again.
Apparently the average depth of the growth was eight inches. Working with furious speed Conway opened the covering growth in a total of nine places, spaced out at roughly equal intervals around the ring-like body, then he looked a question at Prilicla.
“Much worse now,” said the GLNO. “Extreme mental distress fear, feelings of … of stangulation. Pulse is up, and irregular—there is considerable strain on the heart. Also it is losing consciousness again …”
Before the empath had finished speaking Conway was hacking away. With long, sawing, savage strokes he linked together the openings already made with deep, jagged incisions. Everything was sacrificed for speed. By no stretch of the imagination could what he was doing be called surgery, because a lumberjack with a blunt axe could have performed neater work.
Finished, he stood looking at the patient for three whole seconds, but there was still no sign of movement. Conway dropped the scalpel and began tearing at the growth with his hands.
Suddenly the voice of Skempton filled the ward, excitedly describing his landing on the alien colony and the opening of communications with them. He went on, “ … And O’Mara, the sociological set-up is weird, I’ve never heard of anything like it, or them! There are two distinct life-forms—”
“But belonging to the same species,” Conway put in loudly as he worked. The patient was showing definite signs of life and was beginning to help itself. He felt like yelling with sheer exhultation, but instead he went on, “One form is the ten-legged type of our friend here, but without their tails sticking in their mouths. That is a transition-stage position only.
“The other form is … is …” Conway paused to give the being now revealed before him a searching, analytical stare. The remains of the growth which had covered it lay about the floor, some thrown there by Conway and the rest which it had shaken off itself. He continued, “Let’s see, oxygen-breathing, of course. Oviparous. Long, rod-like but flexible body possessing four insectile legs, manipulators, the usual sense organs, and three sets of wings. Classification GKNM. Visual aspect something like a dragonfly.
“I would say that the first form, judging by the crudely-developed appendages we noticed, performed most of the hard labor. Not until it passed the ‘Chrysalis’ stage to become the more dexterous, and beautiful, dragonfly form would it be considered mature and capable of doing responsible work. This would, I suppose, make for a complicated society …”
“I had been about to say,” Colonel Skempton broke in, his voice reflecting the chagrin of one whose thunder has just been stolen, “that a couple of the beings are on their way to take care of the survivor. They urge that nothing whatever be done to the patient …”
At that point O’Mara pushed through the screen. He stood gaping at the patient who was now engaged in shaking out its wings, then with a visible effort pulled himself together. He said, “I suppose apologies are in order, Doctor. But why didn’t you tell someone … ?”
“I had no clear proof that my theory was right,” Conway said seriously. “When the patient went into a panic several times when I suggested helping it, I suspected that the growth might be normal. A caterpillar could be expected to object to anyone trying to remove its chrysalis prematurely, for the good reason that such a course would kill it. And there were other pointers. The lack of food intake, the ring-like position with the appendages facing outward—obviously a defense mechanism from a time when natural enemies threatened the new being inside the slowly hardening shell of the old, and finally the fact that its expelled breath during the later stages showed no impurities, proving that the lungs and heart we were listening to had no longer a direct connection.”
Conway went on to explain that in the early stages of the treatment he had been unsure of his theory, but still not doubtful enough in his mind to allow Mannon or Thornnastor to have their way. He had made the decision that the patient’s condition was normal, or fairly normal, and the best course would be to do absolutely nothing. Which was what he had done.
“ … But this is a hospital which believes in doing everything possible for a patient,” Conway went on, “and I can’t imagine Dr. Mannon, yourself or any of the other people I know just standing by and doing nothing while their patient was apparently dying on them. Maybe someone would have accepted my theory and agreed to act on it, but I couldn’t be sure. And we just had to cure this patient, because its friends at that time were rather an unknown quantity …”
“All right, all right,” O’Mara broke in, holding up his hands. “You’re a genius, Doctor, or something. Now what?”
Conway rubbed his chin, then said thoughtfully, “We must remember that the patient was in a hospital ship, so there must have been something wrong with it in addition to its condition. It was too weak to break out of its own chrysalis and had to have help. Maybe this weakness was its only trouble. But if it was something else, Thornnastor and his crowd will be able to cure it now that we can communicate and get its cooperation.”
“Unless,” he said, suddenly worried, “our earlier and misguided attempts to reassure it have caused mental damage.” He switched on the Translator, chewed at his lips for a moment, then addressed the patient;
“How do you feel?”
The reply was short and to the point, but in it were contained all the implications which gladden a worried doctor’s heart.
“I’m hungry,” said the patient.
STAR SURGEON
TO GEORGE L. CHARTERS FOR LOTS OF 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 viewports 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 unsane 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.