by James White
Before he could say anything, however, Mannon switched subjects abruptly. He wanted to know where Conway and Murchison had been during the fourth, fifth and sixth days of the evacuation. He said that it was highly suggestive that both of them were out of circulation at exactly the same time and he began to list some of the suggestions which occurred to him—which were colorful, startling and next to physically impossible. Soon Prilicla joined in, although the sexual mores of two Earth-human DBDGs could have at most only an academic interest to a sexless GLNO, and Conway was defending himself strenuously from both sides.
Both Prilicla and Mannon knew that Murchison and himself, along with about forty other members of the staff, had been keeping at peak operating efficiency by means of pep-shots for nearly sixty hours. Pep-shots did not give something for nothing, and Conway and the others had been forced to adopt the horizontal position of the patient for three days while they recovered from an advanced state of exhaustion. Some of them had literally dropped in their tracks and been taken away hurriedly, so exhausted that the involuntary muscles of heart and lungs were threatening to give up with everything else. They had been taken to special wards where robot devices massaged their hearts, gave artificial respiration and fed them intraveneously.
Still, it did look bad that Conway and Murchison had not been seen around together, or separately, or at all for three whole days …
The alarm siren saved Conway just as the counsels for the prosecution were having it all their own way. He swung out of his seat and sprinted for the door with Mannon pounding along behind him and Prilicla, its not quite atrophied wings aided by its anti-gravity devices, whirring away in front.
Come Hell, high water or interstellar war, Conway thought warmly as he headed for his wards, while there was a reputation to blacken or a leg to pull, Mannon would be there with the latest scandal and prepared to exert traction on the limb in question until it threatened to come off at the acetabulum. In the circumstance all this scandal-mongering had irritated Conway at first, but then he had begun to realize that Mannon was making him see that the whole word hadn’t come to an end yet, that this was still Sector General—a frame of mind rather than a place—and that it would continue to be Sector General until the last one of its dedicated and often wacky staff had gone.
When he reached his ward the siren, a constant reminder of the probable manner of their going, had stopped.
Pressure tents hung slackly over all twenty-eight occupied beds, already sealed and with their self-contained air units operating against the possibility of the ward being opened suddenly to space. The nurses on duty, a Tralthan, a Nidian and four Earth-humans, were struggling into their suits. Conway did the same, sealing everything as the others had done with the exception of the faceplate. He made a quick around of his patients, expressed approval to the Tralthan Senior Nurse, then opened the switch which cut off the artificial gravity grids in the floor.
Irregularities in the power supply, and that was no rare occurrence when the hospital’s defensive screens were under attack or its weapons went into action, could cause the artificial gravity grid to vacillate between one half and two Gs, which was not a good thing when the patients were mainly fracture cases. It was better to have no gravity at all.
Once patients and staff were protected so far as was possible there was nothing to do but wait. To keep his mind off what was going on outside Conway insinuated himself into an argument between a Tralthan nurse and one of the red-furred Nidians about the modifications currently going on in the giant Translator computer. This vast electronic brain—the Translator packs which everyone wore were merely extensions of it, just sending and receiving units—which handled all the e-t translations in the hospital was, since the evacuation, operating at only a small fraction of its full potential. Hearing this Dermod, the fleet commander, had ordered the unused sections to be reprogrammed to deal with tactical and supply problems. But despite the Corps’ reassurances that they were allowing ample circuits for Translation the two nurses were not quite happy. Suppose, they said, there should be an occasion when all the e-ts were talking at once?
Conway wanted to tell them that in his opinion the e-ts, especially the nurses, were always talking period so that there was really no problem, but he couldn’t think of a tactful way of phrasing it.
An hour passed without anything happening so far as the hospital was concerned; no hits and no indication that its massive armament had been used. The nurses on duty were relieved by the next shift, three Tralthans and three Earth-humans this time, the senior nurse being Murchison. Conway was just settling down to a very pleasant chat when the siren sounded a steady, low-pitched, faintly derisive note. The attack was over.
Conway was helping Murchison out of her suit when the PA hummed into life.
“Attention, please,” it said urgently. “Will Doctor Conway go to Lock Five at once, please …”
Probably a casualty, Conway thought, one they are not sure how to move … But then the PA shifted without a break into another message.
“ … Will Doctor Mannon and Major O’Mara go to Lock Five immediately, please …”
What, Conway wondered, could be at Lock Five which required the services of two Senior Physicians and the Chief Psychologist. He began to hurry.
O’Mara and Mannon had been closer to Five to begin with and so were there ahead of him by a few seconds. There was a third person in the lock antechamber, clad in a heavy-duty suit with its helmet thrown back. The newcomer was graying, had a thin, lined face and a mouth which was like a tired gray line, but the overall harshness was offset by a pair of the softest brown eyes Conway had ever seen in a man. The insignia on his collar was more ornate than Conway had ever seen before, the highest ranking Corps officer he’d had dealings with being a Colonel, but he knew instinctively that this was Dermod, the fleet commander.
O’Mara tore off a salute which was returned as punctiliously as it had been given, and Mannon and Conway received handshakes with apologies for the gauntlets being worn. Then Dermod got straight down to business.
“I am not a believer in secrecy when it serves no useful purpose,” he began crisply. “You people have elected to stay here to look after our casualties, so you have a right to know what is happening whether the news is good or bad. Being the senior Earth-human medical staff remaining in the hospital, and having an understanding of the probable behavior of your staff in various contingencies, I must leave it up to you whether this information should or should not be made public.”
He had been looking at O‘Mara. His eyes moved quickly to Mannon, then Conway, then back to O’Mara again. He went on, “There has been an attack, a completely surprising attack in that it was totally abortive. We did not lose a single man and the enemy force was completely wiped out. They didn’t seem to know the first thing about deployment or … or anything. We were expecting the usual sort of attack, vicious, pressed home regardless of cost, that previously has taken everything we’ve got to counter. This was a massacre …”
Dermod’s voice and the look in his eyes, Conway noted, did not reflect any joy at the victory.
“ … Because of this we were able to investigate the enemy wreckage quickly enough to have a chance of finding survivors. Usually we’re too busy licking our own wounds to have time for this. We didn’t find any survivors, but …”
He broke off as two Corpsmen came through the inner seal carrying a covered stretcher. Dermod was looking straight at Conway when he went on.
He said, “You were on Etla, Doctor, and will see the implications behind this. And at the same time you might think about the fact that we are under attack by an enemy who refuses either to communicate or negotiate, fights as though driven by a fanatical hatred, and yet uses only limited warfare against us. But first you’d better take a look at this.”
When the cover was pulled off the stretcher nobody said anything for a long time. It was the tattered, grisly remnant of a once-living, thinking and feeling enti
ty who was now too badly damaged even to classify with any degree of accuracy. But enough remained to show that it was not and never had been a human being.
The war, Conway thought sickly, was spreading.
CHAPTER 18
Since Vespasian left Etla we have been trying to infiltrate the Empire with our agents,” Dermod resumed quietly,”and have been successful in planting eight groups including one on the Central World itself. Our intelligence regarding public opinion, and through it the propaganda machinery used to guide it, is fairly dependable.
“We know that feeling against us is high over the Etla business,” he continued, “or rather what we are supposed to have done to the Etlans, but I’ll come to that later. This latest development will make things even worse for us …”
According to the Imperial government, Dermod explained, Etla had been invaded by the Monitor Corps. Its natives, under the guise of being offered medical assistance, had been callously used as guinea-pigs to test out various types of bacteriological weapons. As proof of this hadn’t the Etlans suffered a series of devastating plagues which had commenced within days of the Monitors leaving? Such callous and inhuman behavior could not go unpunished, and the Emperor was sure that every citizen was behind him in the decision he had taken.
But information received—again according to Imperial sources—from a captured agent of the invaders made it plain that their behavior on Etla was no isolated instance of wanton brutality. On that luckless planet the invaders had been preceded by an extra-terrestrial—a stupid, harmless being sent to test the planet’s defenses before landing themselves, a mere tool about which they had denied any connection or knowledge when later they contacted the Etlan authorities. It was now plain that they made wide use of such extra-terrestrial life-forms. That they used them as servants, as experimental animals, probably as food …
There was a tremendous structure maintained by the invaders, a combination military base and laboratory, where atrocities similar to those practiced on Etla were carried on as a matter of course. The invader agent, who had been tricked into giving the spatial coordinates of this base, had confessed to what went on there. It appeared that the invaders ruled over a large number of differing extra-terrestrial species, and it was here that the methods and weapons were developed which held them in bondage.
The Emperor stated that he was quite willing, indeed he considered it his duty, to use his forces to stamp out this foul tyranny. He also felt that he should use only Imperial forces, because he had to confess with shame that relations between the Empire and the extra-terrestrials within its sphere of influence had not always been as warm as they should have been. But if any of these species who may have been slighted in the past were to offer their aid, he would not refuse it …
“ … And this explains many of the puzzling aspects of these enemy attacks,” Dermod went on. “They are restricting themselves to vibratory and chemical weapons, and in the confined space of our defense globe we must do the same, because this place must be captured rather than destroyed. The Emperor must find out the positions of the Federation planets to keep the war going. The fact that they fight viciously and to the death can be explained by their being afraid of capture, because to them the hospital is nothing but a space-going torture chamber.
“And the completely ineffectual recent attack,” he continued, “must have been mounted by some of the hot-headed e-t friends of the Empire, who were probably allowed to come here without proper training or information about our defenses. They were wiped out, and that will cause a lot of e-ts on their side who are wavering to make up their minds.
“In the Empire’s favor,” he ended bitterly.
When the fleet commander stopped speaking Conway remained silent; he had had access to the Empire reports sent to Williamson and knew that Dermod was not exaggerating the situation. O’Mara had had similar information and maintained the same grim silence. But Dr. Mannon was not the silent type.
“But this is ridiculous!” he burst out. “They’re twisting things! This is a hospital, not a torture chamber. And they’re accusing us of the things they are doing themselves … !”
Dermod ignored the outburst, but in such a way as not to give offense. He said soberly, “The Empire is unstable politically. With enough time we could replace their present government with something more desirable. The Imperial citizens would do it themselves, in fact. But we need time. And we also have to stop the war from spreading too much, from gaining too much momentum. If too many extra-terrestrial allies join the Empire against us the situation will become too complex to control, the original reasons for fighting, or the truth or otherwise of these accusations, will cease to matter.
“We can gain time by holding out here as long as possible,” he ended grimly, “but there isn’t much we can do about restricting the war. Except hope.”
He swung his helmet forward and began to fasten it, although his face-plate was still open for conversation. It was then that Mannon asked the question which Conway had wanted to ask for a long time, but fear of being thought a coward had stopped him from asking it.
“Do we have any chance, really, of holding out?”
Dermod hesitated a moment, obviously wondering whether to be reassuring or to tell the truth. Then he said, “A well-supported and supplied defensive globe is the ideal tactical position. It can also, if the enemy outnumbers it sufficiently, be a perfect trap …”
When Dermod left, the specimen he had brought with him was claimed by Thornnastor, the Tralthan Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology, who would no doubt be happy with it for days. O’Mara went back to bullying his charges into remaining sane, and Mannon and Conway went back to their wards. The reaction of the staff to the possibility of e-ts attacking them was about equally divided between concern over the war spreading and interest regarding the possible methods necessary to treat casualties belonging to a brand new species.
But two weeks passed without the expected attack developing. The Monitor Corps warships continued to arrive, shoot their astrogators back in life-ships, and take up their positions. From the hospital’s direct vision ports they seemed to cover the sky, as if Sector General was the center of a vast, tenuous star cluster with every star a warship. It was an awesome and tremendously reassuring sight, and Conway tried to visit one of the direct vision panels at least once every day.
Then on the way back from one of these visits he ran across a party of Kelgians.
For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes. All the Kelgian DBLFs had been evacuated, he had watched the last of them go himself, yet here were twenty-odd of the outsize caterpillars humping along in single file. A closer look showed that they were not wearing the usual brassard with engineering or medical emblems on it—instead their silvery fur was dyed with circular and diamond patterns of red, blue and black. This was Kelgian military insignia. Conway went storming off to O’Mara.
“ … I was about to ask the same question, Doctor,” the Chief Psychologist said gruffly, indicating his vision screen, “although in much more respectful language. I’m trying to get the fleet commander now, so stop shouting and sit down!”
Dermod’s face appeared a few minutes later. His tone was polite but hurried when he said, “This is not the Empire, gentlemen. We are obliged to inform the Federation government and through it the people of the true state of affairs as we see them, although the item about our being attacked by an enemy e-t force has not yet been made public.
“But you must give the e-ts within the Federation credit for having the same feelings as ourselves,” he went on, “Extra-terrestrials have stayed behind at Sector General, and on their various home worlds their friends are beginning to feel that they should come out here and help defend them. It is as simple as that.”
“But you said that you didn’t want the war to spread,” Conway protested.
“I didn’t ask them to come here, Doctor,” Dermod said sharply, “but now they’re here I can certainly use them. The lates
t intelligence reports indicate that the next attack may be decisive …”
Later over lunch Mannon received the news about the e-t defenders with the deepest gloom. He was beginning to enjoy being only himself and guzzling steak at dinner, he told Conway sadly, and now with the likelihood of e-t casualties coming in it looked as if they were all going to be tape-ridden again. Prilicla ate spaghetti and observed how lucky it was that the e-t staff hadn’t left the hospital after all, not looking at Conway when it said it, and Conway said very little.
The next attack, Dermod had said, may be decisive …
It began three weeks later after a period during which nothing happened other than the arrival of a volunteer force of Tralthans and a single ship whose crew and planet of origin Conway had never heard of before, and whose classification was QLCL. He learned that Sector General had never had the opportunity of meeting these beings professionally because they were recent, and very enthusiastic, members of the Federation. Conway prepared a small ward to receive possible casualties from this race, filling it with the horribly corrosive fog they used for an atmosphere and stepping up the lighting to the harsh, actinic blue which QLCLs considered restful.
The attack began in an almost leisurely fashion, Conway thought as he watched it through the observation panel. The main defense globe seemed barely disturbed by the three minor attacks launched at widely separate points on its surface. All that was visible was three tiny, confused swirls of activity—moving points of light that were ships, missiles, counter-missiles and explosions—which looked too slow to be dangerous. But the slowness was only apparent, because the ships were maneuvering at a minimum of five Gs, with automatic anti-gravity devices keeping their crews from being pulped by the tremendous accelerations in use, and the missiles were moving at anything up to fifty Gs. The wide-flung repulsion screens which sometimes deflected the missiles were invisible as were the pressors and rattlers which nearly always stopped those which the screens missed. Even so this was merely an initial probing at the hospital’s defenses, a series of offensive patrols, the curtain-raiser …