Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  He wondered if a great, slow-moving creature like this could feel pain, and if so, how much? Was the condition he could see confined to hundreds of acres of “skin” or did it go much deeper? What would happen to the beings living in or under it if too many of the carpets died, decomposed? Even the rollers with their offshore culture would be affected—the ecology of the whole planet would be wrecked! Somebody was going to have to talk to the rollers, politely but very, very firmly, if it wasn’t already too late.

  All at once the horse-trading aspect of his assignment, the swapping of tools for medical assistance, was no longer important. Conway was beginning to think like a doctor again, a doctor with a desperately ill patient.

  At Descartes the copter he had requested was waiting. Conway changed into a lightweight suit with a propulsion motor strapped onto his back and extra air tanks on his chest. Camsaug had too great a lead for him to follow on foot, so Conway would fly out to the being’s present position by helicopter. Harrison was at the controls.

  “You again,” said Edwards.

  The Lieutenant smiled. “This is where the action is. Hold tight.”

  After the mad dash to the mother ship the helicopter trip seemed incredibly slow. Conway felt that he would fall flat on his face if it did not speed up and Edwards assured him that the feeling was mutual and that they would have made better time swimming. They watched Camsaug’s trace grow larger in the search screen while Harrison cursed the birds and flying lizards diving for fish and suiciding on his rotor blades.

  They flew low over the settled stretch of coast where the shallows were protected from the large predators of the sea by a string of offshore islands and reefs. To this natural protection the rollers had added a landward barrier of dead land-beast by detonating a series of low-power nuclear devices inside the vast creature’s body. The area was now so settled that doughnuts could roll with very little danger far inside the beast’s cavernous mouths and prestomachs and out again.

  But Camsaug was ignoring the safe area. It was rolling steadily toward the gap in the reef leading to the active stretch of coast where predators large, medium and small ate and eroded the living shore.

  “Put me down on the other side of the gap,” said Conway. “I’ll wait until Camsaug comes through, then follow it.”

  Harrison brought the copter down to a gentle landing on the spot indicated and Conway lowered himself onto a float. With his visor open and his head and shoulders projecting through the floor hatch he could see both the search screen and the half-mile distant shore. Something which looked like a flatfish grown to the dimensions of a whale hurled itself out of the water and flopped back again with a sound like an explosion. The wave reached them a few seconds later and tossed the copter about like a cork.

  “Frankly, Doctor,” said Edwards, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Is it scientific curiosity regarding roller mating habits? A yen to look into the gaping gullet of a land beast? We have remote-controlled instruments which will let you do both without danger once we get a chance to set them up …”

  Conway said, “I’m not a peeping Tom, scientific or otherwise, and your gadgetry might not tell me what I want to know. You see, I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for, but I’m pretty sure that this is where I can contact them—”

  “The tool users? But we can contact them visually, through the plants.”

  “That may be more difficult than we expect,” Conway said. “I hate to attack my own lovely theory, but let’s say that because of their vegetable vision they have difficulty in grasping concepts like astronomy and space travel or, as beings who live in or under their enormous host, of visualizing it from an outside viewpoint …”

  This was just another theory, Conway went onto explain, but the way he saw it the tool users had gained a large measure of control over their environment. On a normal world environmental control included such items as reforestation, protection against soil erosion, efficient utilization of natural resources and so on. Perhaps on this world these things were not the concern of geologists and farmers but of people who, because their environment was a living organism, were specialists in keeping it healthy.

  He was fairly sure that these beings would be found in peripheral areas where the giant organism was under constant attack and in need of their assistance. He was also sure that they would do the work themselves rather than use their tools because these thought-controlled devices had the disadvantage of obeying and shaping themselves to the nearest thought source—this had been proved many times at the Hospital as well as earlier today. Probably the tools were valuable, too much so to risk them being swallowed and/or rendered useless by the savage and disorganized thinking of predators.

  Conway did not know what these people called themselves—the rollers called them Protectors or Healers or an almost certain method of committing suicide because they killed more often than they cured. But then the most famous Tralthan surgeon in the Federation would probably kill an Earth-human patient if it had no medical knowledge of the species and no physiology tape available. The tool users worked under a similar handicap when they tried to treat rollers.

  “But the important thing is they do try,” Conway went on. “All their efforts go toward keeping one big patient alive instead of many. They are the medical profession on Meatball and they are the people we must contact first!”

  There was silence then except for the gargantuan splashing and smacking sounds coming from the shoreline. Suddenly Harrison spoke.

  “Camsaug is directly below, Doctor.”

  Conway nodded, closed his visor and fell awkwardly into the water. The weight of his suit’s propulsor and extra air tanks made him sink quickly and in a few minutes he spotted Camsaug rolling along the sea bottom. Conway followed, matching the roller’s speed and keeping just barely in sight. He had no intention of invading anyone’s privacy. He was a doctor rather than an anthropologist and he was interested in seeing what Camsaug did only if it ran into trouble of a medical nature.

  The copter had taken to the air again, keeping pace with him and maintaining constant radio contact.

  Camsaug was angling gradually toward the shore, wobbling past clumps of sea vines and porcupine carpets which grew more thickly as the bottom shelved, sometimes circling for several minutes while one of the big predators drifted across its path. The vines and prickly carpets had poisonous thorns and quills and they lashed out or shot spines at anything which came too close. Conway’s problem now was how to drift past them at a safe altitude but remain low enough so as not to be scooped up by a giant flatfish.

  The water was becoming so crowded with life and animal and vegetable activity that he could no longer see the surface disturbance caused by the helicopter. Like a dark-red precipice the edge of the land beast loomed closer, almost obscured by its mass of underwater attackers, parasites and, possibly, defenders—the situation was too chaotic for Conway to tell which was which. He began to encounter new forms of life—a glistening black and seemingly endless mass which undulated across his path and tried to wrap itself around his legs and a great, iridescent jellyfish so transparent that only its internal organs were visible.

  One of the creatures had spread itself over about twenty square yards of seabed while another drifted just above it. They did not carry spines or stings so far as he could see, but everything else seemed to avoid them and so did Conway.

  Suddenly Camsaug was in trouble.

  Conway had not seen it happen, only that the roller had been wobbling more than usual and when he jetted closer he saw a group of poisoned quills sticking out of its side. By the time he reached it Camsaug was rolling in a tight circle, almost flat against the ground, like a coin in slow motion that has almost stopped spinning. Conway knew what to do, having dealt with a similar emergency when Surreshun was being transferred into the Hospital. He quickly lifted the roller upright and began pushing it along the bottom like an oversize, flabby hoop.

  Camsaug was maki
ng noises which did not translate, but he felt its body grow less flabby as he rolled it—it was beginning to help itself. Suddenly it wobbled away from him, rolling between two clumps of sea vines. Conway rose to a safe height meaning to head it off, but a flatfish with jaws gaping rushed at him and he dived instinctively to avoid it.

  The giant tail flicked past, missing him but tearing the propulsion unit from his back. Simultaneously a vine lashed out at his legs, tearing the suit fabric in a dozen places. He felt cold water forcing its way up his legs and under the skin something which felt like liquid fire pushing along his veins. He had a glimpse of Camsaug rolling like a stupid fool onto the edge of a jellyfish and another of the creatures was drifting down on him like an iridescent cloud. Like Camsaug, the noises he was making were not translatable.

  “Doctor!” The voice was so harsh with urgency that he could not recognize it. “What’s happening?”

  Conway did not know and could not speak anyway. As a precaution against damage in space or in a noxious atmosphere his suit lining was built in annular sections which sealed off the ruptured area by expanding tightly against the skin. The idea had been to contain the pressure drop or gas contamination in the area of damage, but in this instance the expanded rings were acting as a tourniquet which slowed the progress of the poison into his system. Despite this Conway could not move his arms, legs or even his jaw. His mouth was locked open and he was able—just barely able—to breathe.

  The jellyfish was directly above him. It edges curled down over his body and tightened, wrapping him in a nearly invisible cocoon.

  “Doctor! I’m coming down!” It sounded like Edwards.

  He felt something stab several times at his legs and discovered that the jellyfish had spines or stings after all and was using them where the fabric of his suit had been torn away by the vines. Compared with the burning sensation in his legs the pain was relatively slight, but it worried him because the jabs seemed very close to the popliteal arteries and veins. With a tremendous effort he moved his head to see what was happening, but by then he already knew. His transparent cocoon was turning bright red.

  “Doctor! Where are you? I can see Camsaug rolling along. Looks like it’s wrapped up in a pink plastic bag. There’s a big, red ball of something just above it—”

  “That’s me …” began Conway weakly.

  The scarlet curtain around him brightened momentarily. Something big and dark flashed past and Conway felt himself spinning end over end. The redness around him was becoming less opaque.

  “Flatfish,” said Edwards. “I chased it with my laser. Doctor?”

  Conway could see the Major now. Edwards wore a heavy-duty suit which protected him from vines and quills but made accurate shooting difficult—his weapon seemed to be pointing directly at Conway. Instinctively he put up his hands and found that his arms moved easily. He was able to turn his head, bend his back and his legs were less painful. When he looked at them the area of his knees was bright red but the body around it seemed more rather than less transparent.

  Which was ridiculous!

  He looked at Edwards again and then at the awkward, dangerously slow rolling of the wrapped-up Camsaug. A great light dawned.

  “Don’t shoot, Major,” said Conway weakly but distinctly. “Ask the Lieutenant to drop the rescue net. Winch both of us up to the copter and to Descartes, fast. Unless our friend here can’t survive in air, of course. In that case haul us both to Descartes submerged—my air will last. But be very careful not to hurt it.”

  They both wanted to know what the blazes he was talking about. He did his best to explain, adding, “So you see, not only is it my opposite number, the Meatball equivalent of a doctor, but I owe it my life as well. There is a close, personal bond between us—you might almost say that we were blood brothers.”

  MEATBALL

  Conway had been worrying about the Meatball problem during the whole of the trip back to the hospital, but only in the past two hours had the process become a constructive one. That had been the period during which he had finally admitted to himself that he could not solve the problem and had begun thinking of the names and professional capabilities of some of the beings, human and otherwise, who might help him find the solution. He was worrying so hard and constructively that he did not know that their ship had materialized the regulation twenty miles from the hospital until the flat, translated voice of Reception rattled from the control room’s speaker.

  “Identify yourself, please. Patient, visitor, or staff, and species.”

  The Corps lieutenant who was piloting looked back at Conway and Edwards, the mother ship’s medical officer and raised an eyebrow.

  Edwards cleared his throat nervously and said, “This is scoutship D1-835, tender and communications ship to the Monitor Corps survey and cultural contact vessel Descartes. We have four visitors and one staff member onboard. Three are human and two are native Drambons of different—”

  “Give physiological classifications, please, or make full-vision contact. All intelligent races refer to themselves as human and consider others to be non-human, so what you call yourself is irrelevant so far as preparing or directing you to suitable accommodation is concerned.”

  Edwards muted the speaker and said helplessly to Conway, “I know what we are, but how the blazes do I describe Surreshun and the other character to this medical bureaucrat?”

  Thumbing the transit switch, Conway said, “This ship contains three Earth-humans of physiological classification DBDG. They are Major Edwards and Lieutenant Harrison of the Monitor Corps and myself, Senior Physician Conway. We are carrying two Drambon natives. Drambo is the native name for the planet—you may still have it listed as Meatball, which was our name for it before we knew it had intelligent life. One of the natives is a CLHG, water-breathing with a warm-blooded oxygen-based metabolism. The other is tentatively classified as SRJH and seems comfortable in either air or water.

  “There is no urgency about the transfer,” Conway went on. “At the same time the CLHG occupies a physically irksome life-support mechanism and would doubtless feel more comfortable in one of our water-filled levels where it can roll normally. Can you take us at lock Twenty-three or Twenty-four?”

  “Lock Twenty-three, Doctor. Do the visitors require special transport or protective devices for the transfer?”

  “Negative.”

  “Very well. Please inform Dietetics regarding food and liquid requirements and the periodicity of their meals. Your arrival has been notified and Colonel Skempton would like to see Major Edwards and Lieutenant Harrison as soon as possible. Major O’Mara would like to see Doctor Conway sooner than that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Conway’s words were received by the being who was manning the reception board, whose translator pack relayed them to the computer which occupied three whole levels at the nerve-center of the hospital, which in turn returned them stripped of all emotional overtones to the scaly, furry, or feathery receptionist in the form of hoots, cheeps, growls, or whatever other odd noises the being used as its spoken language.

  To Edwards, Conway said, “Unless you are attached to a multienvironment hospital you normally meet e-ts one species at a time and refer to them by their planet of origin. But here, where rapid and accurate knowledge of incoming patients is vital, because all too often they are in no condition to furnish this information themselves, we have evolved the four-letter classification system. Very briefly, it works like this.

  “The first letter denotes the level of physical evolution,” he continued. “The second indicates the type and distribution of limbs and sense organs and the other two the combination of metabolism and gravity-pressure requirements, which in turn gives an indication of the physical mass and form of tegument possessed by a being. Usually we have to remind some of our e-t students at this point that the initial letter of their classification should not be allowed to give them feelings of inferiority, and that the level of physical evolution has no relation to t
he level of intelligence.”

  Species with the prefix A, B and C, he went onto explain, were water breathers. On most worlds life had begun in the seas and these beings had developed high intelligence without having to leave it. D through F were warm-blooded oxygen breathers, into which group fell most of the intelligent races in the galaxy, and the G to K types were also oxygen-breathing but insectile. The Ls and Ms were light-gravity, winged beings.

  Chlorine-breathing life-forms were contained in the O and P groups, and after that came the more exotic, the more highly evolved physically and the downright weird types. Radiation eaters, frigid-blooded or crystalline beings and entities capable of modifying their physical structure at will. Those possessing extrasensory powers sufficiently well-developed to make walking or manipulatory appendages unnecessary were given the prefix V regardless of size or shape.

  “There are anomalies in the system,” Conway went on, “but those can be blamed on a lack of imagination by its originators—the AACP life-form, for instance, which has a vegetable metabolism. Normally the prefix A denotes a water breather, there being nothing lower in the system than the piscatorial life-forms, but the AACPs are intelligent vegetables and plants came before fish—”

  “Sorry, Doctor,” said the pilot. “We’ll be docking in five minutes and you did say that you wanted to prepare the visitors for transfer.”

  Conway nodded and Edwards said, “I’ll lend a hand, Doctor.”

  The scoutship entered the enormous cubic cavern which was Lock Twenty-three while they were donning the lightweight suits used for environments where the liquid or gas was lethal but at reasonably normal pressures. They felt the grapples draw them into the adjustable cradle and staggered slightly as the artificial gravity grids were switched on. The Lock’s outer seal clanged shut and there was the sound of waterfalls pouring down metal cliffs.